Fading Covers: The Tourist

A fading cover is a passing situational disguise measure enacted on the fly or impromptu for brief and advancing interactions.

A typical or obviously recognizable tourist roaming a city blends in to the environment despite being an outsider, it’s a type of reverse urban camouflage.

A tourist sticks out yet they belong.

This type of cover allows for keen observation of your surroundings such as curiously looking up and around while taking photos of anything and everything. An excellent method of surveillance and reconnaissance without the need or risk of hiding your intentions.

When you look like a tourist and observe this intently, it raises no suspicious as this is expected.

Whereas if you’re in tactical gear or even dressed like a local, it could cause unwanted attention as it may appear you’re on a mission or “casing a joint”.

Generally, the best form of urban camouflage is in fact to look and act like a local. But this isn’t always ideal, other than the aforementioned point.

The tourist cover is particularly useful when your race, skin color and other physical differences are too different from the local area to really blend in.

For example; a big black man in Tijuana, a short Asian man in Copenhagen or a tall white man in Tokyo.

    Enacting This Cover :

All that’s required to look the part is to dress differently from the local population, carry a travel bag and look like you’re sightseeing.

Look up, look around, look lost, look at a map, walk in circles and appear to take lots of photos.

Sometimes you just can’t blend in naturally, as such, you can still belong in a natural way as a tourist.

The observing nature and wandering behavior of a tourist gives this cover plausibility to repeatedly pass by the same area, “people watch” and film.

These benefits could be crucial in operations in any number of ways while hiding in plain site.

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