SPARTAN9 | Newsletter 8/2020

Dear <<First Name>>

My name is Grant Rayner, and I'm the founder of Spartan9. We provide consulting and training services designed to enable you and your organisation to operate safely, securely, and successfully in complex and higher-risk environments.

This is our monthly newsletter for August, which we use to keep our clients, partners, and friends updated on what we're up to. If this isn't your thing and you'd like to unsubscribe, you can click on the link at the bottom of the email.

PROJECT UPDATES

What we've been doing, where we've been travelling to, and what's next.

New book release

I've been continuing with the writing spree this month, and have released another Field Guide:

The Field Guide to Personal Security

This Field Guide goes a level deeper than our earlier titles, covering a broad range of situations, risks and threats that travellers may face while operating in higher-risk environments.

The Field Guide covers a diverse range of topics, including:
- Essential aspects of deployment preparation.
- Orientating to your new environment.
- Staying safe while in your accommodation, while on the streets and while driving.
- How to stay safe in protests and riots, including when situations where non-lethal weapons and riot control agents are being used.
- How to avoid, detect and evade hostile surveillance
- How to navigate a range of petty corruption scenarios.
- How to respond to confrontation in the streets, including how to deal with armed engagements.
 

Previous book releases

This new Field Guide follows the two books released last month:

1. The Guide to Travelling in Higher-Risk Environments

2. The Field Guide to Deployment Planning


All three books are currently available on the Apple Bookstore (available in 51 countries right now). I set up an Amazon KDP account last week, and will aim to publish all titles on Amazon in the next few months. 

Thank you to everyone who purchased a copy of these books last month. I hope you found them interesting and useful.

If you read the books and find any errors or inconsistencies, please let me know and I’ll add it to a backlog for the next review and release. Similarly, if you have any thoughts, or want to argue about weapon ranges or gas mask standards, happy to chat.
 

Please help to spread the word

If you feel so inclined, I’d appreciate you helping to get the word out to people you know who might benefit from reading these books.
 

More to come

I have another Field Guide in [very, very close to] final draft format, which should be out next month.

Over the last few days I've been in a 'writer's retreat' in a rustic lodge in Singapore, solely focused on tackling the design chapter of a book I'm writing on designing and delivering crisis simulation exercises. I think I've broken the back of this chapter, so hoping to get this one out in October (or November...).

TRAINING UPDATES

Training workshops, retreats, and customised training solutions.

On the back of the books I've been releasing, I'm building a new training capability called 'GREY CATALYST'. I'm in the process of writing the code for the website. More to follow on this initiative next month. 

Otherwise, if you have specific training needs, please get in touch.

GEAR AND TECH

Useful gear and technology for operating in challenging work from home environments.

We've found a couple of new pieces of kit this month:

Garmin Montana 700i. A rugged GPS Touchscreen Navigator with inReach Technology. Provides two-way messaging, an interactive SOS feature, and a range of other useful capabilities. A big step up from the previous Garmin InReach units. Details here.

Pentax 4X20 VD WP 3-in-1 Binocular. This innovative set of binoculars can be quickly and easily converted from a simple binocular into either two separate monoculars or, with the optical tubes stacked one in front of the other, a powerful 16x spotting scope. Details here.

USEFUL LINKS

Links to topical and useful information.

The Secret SIMs Used By Criminals to Spoof Any Number. Criminals use so-called Russian, encrypted, or white SIMs to change their phone number, add voice manipulation to their calls, and try to stay ahead of law enforcement. Read here.

Putin Chef's Kisses of Death: Russia's Shadow Army's State-Run Structure Exposed. A long-running investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel has uncovered that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s disinformation, political interference and military operations. Read here.

When Private Security Cameras Are Police Surveillance Tools. Civil rights activists warn of "mission creep," as cameras installed to prevent break-ins are increasingly used to monitor protesters and communities of colour. Read here.

CrimeOps: The Operational Art of Cyber Crime. The Grudge does a deep dive into the operational techniques and innovations of FIN7. Read here.

Jalisco cartel adopts new tactic: drones armed with C-4 explosive. A citizens’ militia group in Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, reports finding two drones armed with C-4 explosives inside an armoured car that cartel hitmen had abandoned after an attempted raid. Read here.

Picking Locks with Audio Technology. Security researchers say they have proven that the series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key penetrates a lock can now be deciphered by signal processing software to reveal the precise shape of the sequence of ridges on the key's shaft, enabling a working key to be 3D printed. Read here.

Why Don’t The Dead Matter? This article asks whether two decades’ worth of foreign wars have conditioned American not to care all that much about human life. Read here.

Blanked-Out Spots On China's Maps Helped Us Uncover Xinjiang's Camps. China's Baidu blanked out parts of its mapping platform. A BuzzFeed team used those locations to find a network of buildings bearing the hallmarks of prisons and internment camps in Xinjiang. Here's how they did it. Read here.

That's it for this month folks. Stay safe out there.
 

Grant Rayner
Spartan9

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