Earlier this month, I hosted K from Combat Studies Group.  He held a GroundRod Level 1 course here at Camp Ponderosa.  A good number of guys came and we learned a ton about digital privacy and how to defeat the surveillance state.  The guys loved the location here as well as K's outstanding content.

A few weeks ago, NC Scout said during a podcast that if you can only afford to take one class this year, you should start with GroundRod.  He is 100% correct.  Tightening up your digital tradecraft and reducing your online footprint is worth far more than K charges.

Normally, this is where I'd say you need to be a paid subscriber to learn more, but I feel like this is so vital and I'd like to convince others to sign up as monthly supporters.  Consider this a free preveiw of the types of studies, analysis, and reviews that we do over here.  It's worth the $5 a month.  We do video training, intelligence reporting and analysis, and reviews of books, gear, and classes.

I'm not going to give away any of K's content, but we are going to go over some of the topics.

The course series (4 classes) covers information security, communications security, personal security, escape & evasion, and tradecraft.  GroundRod 1 is concerns with the first two, as well as digital tradecraft.  K drew an interesting Venn diagram highlighting that the class covers the intersection of privacy, security, and anonymity.

We talked about the threat environment involving not just government activity, but also corporations and criminals.  An interesting note is that the Five Eyes countries use each other's intelligence agencies to get around restrictions against spying on citizens, ala Chris Steele and Donald Trump.

K covered common attack surfaces, including lesser-known ones like "juice jacking" where when you plug in your phone to a public charging cable at a coffee shop or airport, criminals withdraw the data on your phone.  K gave specific countermeasures for that.

K offered up ways to secure your home router, ways to stay safe on public internet, and how to reduce the amount of "pattern of life" data you emit, enabling survielllance of yourself.  That backs up what NC Scout teaches when he talks about building a pattern of life on SIGINT targets.

The class covered more secure operating systems that you can boot from a USB drive to better protect your data and your browsing, to hide that pattern of life data.  It also covered basic and advanced methods of cryptology as well as some advanced steganography.  

Everyone in the class built their own Operating System flash drive and encrypted vault memory systems.  

The course covered a lot of great digital fieldcraft like how to hide or research metadata in files, how to trace emails, and how specifically internet traffic is routed, so that you can game that system.  Once you know how traffic is routed, how DNS servers work, and how MAC addresses work, you can then develop a strategy to work around the tracking protocols that are built into the system.

K gave his advice on good VPN services as well as which ones to avoid.

Some of the more in-the-weeds stuff was how to set up your browsers internal settings to maximize privacy and reduce tracking.  It's a lot of tech nerd stuff but absolutely vital as things progress here in the Western nations.

We went over various search engines and chat services, discussing merits of them.  For example, we learned that despite their public statements, Duck Duck Go isn't really private at all.  And, as I keep saying, K pointed out that Signal has no place in partisan activity.

K finally was able to break through my reluctance to using crypto.  He went over the blockchain entirely and expalined that most of it isn't as completely anonymous as they claim, but it is anonymous enough to make tracking hard.  He went over which coins were more secure and which were not safe.

There was much more in the class, including the tracking of your vehicle by the manufacturers and how to defeat license plate readers.

I highly recommend taking this class if it is offered anywhere near you.

GroundRod 2, which we have scheduled here at Camp Ponderosa for January 18-19, is a continuation of these topics.  You can register at CSG Calendar.

GroundRod 3 and 4 deal with the physical security skills of escape and evasion, kidnap resistance, and tradecraft.

Get trained and learn how to reduce your attack surfaces.

A couple of weeks ago, another guy and I ran a two-vehicle convoy from Michigan to Montana.  We coordinated and communicated using GMRS radio.  Along the way, I had my vehicle mounted XTL 5000 radio from Motorola scanning the GMRS repeaters and the simplex channels.  In this article, we're going to talk about what we learned, what worked, and what didn't work.  We'll also talk about how you can better prepare and practice yourself.

First, let's talk gear.  My vehicle radio is a Motorola XTL 5000.  It's a UHF radio that you can find on e-bay for a couple hundred dollars.  It's a 50 watt radio that allows you to program 1000 channels, as long as you have the software and cable.  Mine is in what Motorola calls "UHF I" range or 380-470 Mhz.  This is important because UHF II is 450-520 Mhz, and while both can do GMRS, I have mine programmed for international operations and need a lower range (446 Mhz) for Europe.  This radio has a detachable control head that is kept on my console, with the main unit being under the driver's seat.  The external speaker sits on the transmission hump.

Bill used a Baofeng AR-152 10 watt handheld.  As a supplement, I had a Motorola XTS 5000, the handheld version of the vehicle radio, only because it scans faster than the Baofeng does.  Truthfully, aside from scanning speed and encryption, the Baofeng UV-5R and AR-152 units OUTPERFORM the expensive Motorolas where it matters - transmit and receive range.  Sure, the Motorola has better features, but in what really matters, the Baofeng is king.

Let's talk about what we learned....but first, this is where you become a paid supporter.

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I first learned of the Kenwood TK-3140 radio long ago, while working for the security department of a major US corporation.  One of my projects was upgrading the radios for a surveillance team dedicated to fighting organized retail crime.  At the time, digital radios were brand new.  This "FleetSync" was an entirely new concept, a radio that functioned as an analog radio, but it had a built-in text message capability.  This meant that for a surveillance team, they could communicate without raising a radio to their mouth.

Now, today, that's not all that uncommon, as DMR radios have increased in popularity and come down in cost.  However, it is generally the realm of amateur radio operators, as most types of DMR require a license number (call sign) to access the system.  Not so for the Kenwood FleetSync radios, at least for digital DATA, like text messages.

Recently, rule changes to GMRS have made short text messages legal over GMRS.  The problem with that is that most modern DMR radios require an entire channel to operate as digital to do this.  The FleetSync digital protocol on these TK-3140 radio doesn't require it, and it's secure.  We'll talk about that farther down the article, for supporters only (become a supporter to learn the spicy stuff ya noob).

I recently got contacted by someone who knew I had used these and offered to sell me a complete sytem of 15 TK-3140 radios, two gang chargers, and some spare batteries for $600.  Knowing that when I bought these for a company before they were each over $1500 new, I jumped at the chance.  I mean, this made each unit $40, roughly the equivalent of a Baofeng radio. What a steal!

They are very compact and concealable radios, making them excellent for surveillance or clandestine communications.  They are 5 watts, so just as powerful as most handheld radios.  The units allow 250 channels, organized into zones with no limit on the number of channels per zone (motorola and others limit you to 16 channels per zone).  They are certainly more rugged and more water-resistant than the Baofeng.

In fact, my students used these during my recent Fieldcraft class and they worked solidly.

The main drawback is that you need Kenwood's "Field Programming Unit (FPU)" software to program these, but it's widely available (even for free if you look) and a proprietary cable.  I buy my cables from BlueMaxer 49 on Ebay, as his handmade cables work and are under $50 each.  He also provides copies of the software as long as you buy a cable.  He's also great about helping you through programming issues.  

Another drawback is that you can buy these either as UHF (GMRS-style) or VHF (MURS/Marine Radio) but never both.  The Baofeng is a dual band radio and these are not.  I look at these as specific radios for clandestine work like intelligence gathering and surveillance, and Baofengs as tactical radios.  They are different tools for different jobs.

Now, let's talk about using these for clandestine comms.

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