Was reading a thread further down in this forum about being off the grid, and the issue of OPSEC was being brought up, which reminded me of this recent event with my wife and I... and thought maybe some can learn from it (nothing bad happened, but you will see the vulnerability further into the story).
OPSEC is subjective, meaning just like with security clearances, there is information that is NOFORN, confidential, secret, top secret etc... and you can be a hard target, by controlling who knows what.
That said, my wife and I had a talk after a conversation she had while getting new tires on the car at China-mart...
We were sitting in the waiting room, and the counter clerk was busy for awhile, and I was reading a coin-collectors magazine.
Once it slowed down, the counter clerk (a young african-american, good natured and working hard) started talking with my wife about how much he had been working that week. He said he had been pulling 10-12 hour shifts, and that day was his 8th or 9th straight day of those hours.
My wife, being polite and bored, begins telling him about my work schedule, 12 hour shifts, 4-6 days/week, 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights.... and the conversation goes on... eventually it comes out, that the reason he is working so many hours, is because he and his wife, both young, around 21 or 22 years old, just had their first kid (a daughter) and he needs all the money he can come up with, and he is glad walmart is letting him get the overtime.
My wife then talks about our daughter, now almost grown, and the joys of child raising, and the challenges, like recently, our daughter beginning to date. The guy says he has a gun, and will make sure when his daughter is dating, that any suitor that comes along, will see him cleaning it, and he'll probably take him shooting, just to emphasize the functionality of the firearm and his ability to use it.
So I thought, this guy doesn't even know us, and is volunteering he has a gun in his home, not the smartest, if say, we were anti-gun and notified childrens services, or his employer... or if we decided we needed a gun, we could follow him home and wait until he wasn't there. It was just him assuming we were good people, like-minded, etc...
THEN... my wife goes on talking about how we have guns too, and how I caught our daughters boyfriend sneaking out of the house at 2am in the middle of the night, when we heard a noise, and he almost found himself at the business end of my shotgun... (different story, for another time).
THEN she says that we have several guns, and that maybe her boyfriend bought his gun recently, so he didn't feel so outgunned by his girlfriends dad... jokingly of course.
Which then got me to thinking... now this man knows I have MULTIPLE firearms, he knows what my wife and I look like, and that we have two teenagers left at home... he knows what our car looks like (it's sitting up on the hydraulic lift for new tires) and he has our billing information in his computer, and knows where we live. All from what my wife felt was innocent and polite conversation.
SOOO yes, my wife and I had to talk for a bit. I started off thinking this guy was the one violating opsec, and in the end, we were the ones far more vulnerable, just from friendly conversation.
OPSEC is subjective, meaning just like with security clearances, there is information that is NOFORN, confidential, secret, top secret etc... and you can be a hard target, by controlling who knows what.
That said, my wife and I had a talk after a conversation she had while getting new tires on the car at China-mart...
We were sitting in the waiting room, and the counter clerk was busy for awhile, and I was reading a coin-collectors magazine.
Once it slowed down, the counter clerk (a young african-american, good natured and working hard) started talking with my wife about how much he had been working that week. He said he had been pulling 10-12 hour shifts, and that day was his 8th or 9th straight day of those hours.
My wife, being polite and bored, begins telling him about my work schedule, 12 hour shifts, 4-6 days/week, 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights.... and the conversation goes on... eventually it comes out, that the reason he is working so many hours, is because he and his wife, both young, around 21 or 22 years old, just had their first kid (a daughter) and he needs all the money he can come up with, and he is glad walmart is letting him get the overtime.
My wife then talks about our daughter, now almost grown, and the joys of child raising, and the challenges, like recently, our daughter beginning to date. The guy says he has a gun, and will make sure when his daughter is dating, that any suitor that comes along, will see him cleaning it, and he'll probably take him shooting, just to emphasize the functionality of the firearm and his ability to use it.
So I thought, this guy doesn't even know us, and is volunteering he has a gun in his home, not the smartest, if say, we were anti-gun and notified childrens services, or his employer... or if we decided we needed a gun, we could follow him home and wait until he wasn't there. It was just him assuming we were good people, like-minded, etc...
THEN... my wife goes on talking about how we have guns too, and how I caught our daughters boyfriend sneaking out of the house at 2am in the middle of the night, when we heard a noise, and he almost found himself at the business end of my shotgun... (different story, for another time).
THEN she says that we have several guns, and that maybe her boyfriend bought his gun recently, so he didn't feel so outgunned by his girlfriends dad... jokingly of course.
Which then got me to thinking... now this man knows I have MULTIPLE firearms, he knows what my wife and I look like, and that we have two teenagers left at home... he knows what our car looks like (it's sitting up on the hydraulic lift for new tires) and he has our billing information in his computer, and knows where we live. All from what my wife felt was innocent and polite conversation.
SOOO yes, my wife and I had to talk for a bit. I started off thinking this guy was the one violating opsec, and in the end, we were the ones far more vulnerable, just from friendly conversation.