While I touched on it a few times in
Get a harvest every 2 weeks, I haven't talked much about security in this thread- until now.
You might be anonymous on this board but that doesn't mean you can't make bad information security moves.
NEVER post pics of how your beans were sent to you. Any stealth that your sender managed is totally defeated. You can bet LEO reads RIU, too.
NEVER order beans to be posted to the address where you intend to grow them. If the beans
were detected in shipping, LEO now knows you have beans at that address and may check in a few weeks down the track to see how they are growing for you. Use a once-off maildrop location where beans will never be grown, preferably not even a smoker at that addy.
Everything you post on RIU gives away a certain amount of information. Once a post goes up, the genie is very nearly impossible to put back in the bottle. Be very careful about specifics you let slip.
The ideal grow situation is when you live alone in a place you own instead of rent (think periodic property inspections), but that's a pretty rare arrangement. No-one but you should know about your op, but it's likely that you live with other people, who
should be fully aware of what you're doing- and should be on board.
It says in my sig, "
don't even THINK about asking me how to hide your grow from your MOM." The reason for this is that if your grow gets busted, everyone in the place is likely to be charged. The house may be seized, or if a rental, you will be evicted. All residents should have the ability to choose whether they want to take the risk. At the same time, you should take total responsibility for your grow and your housemate/s should have
plausible deniability; they should be able to
reasonably say they didn't know what you were doing in your closet. If the other person/s must commonly have access to the grow space as a function of living in that dwelling, plausible deniability is lost.
Grow partners are a bad thing in 99.99999999% of cases. Too many cooks really do spoil the broth. If you're going to run a grow, run it by yourself. Grow no more than you can manage and harvest by yourself. Make all decisions of how the op will be run, with ONLY you as President & Dictator for Life in your op. Have
no one who can make any claim to any portion of your harvest- this is the point where LEO rubs his hands together gleefully because he knows that when grow partners squabble, he will be soon be getting another tipoff- and YOU become another drug war statistic.
NEVER steal electricity. Bypassing a power meter is one of the very quickest ways to go to jail. If the pwr co's billing dept notices your meter isn't reading, they send out a techo to replace it. When the techo notices the new meter isn't spinning but he still measures a current in the line, he knows exactly what's going on. He'll be back later with a supervisor and probably a detective, too.
Your rubbish bin is not private. Don't put anything in it that can get a warrant issued for your house. Old media can go out in common rubbish, bagged up to look like the rest of your general rubbish, but make sure it's got no leaf or stem material in it. Deface or remove labels from nutrient jugs. Waste leaf material is best composted or buried in a garden patch. Great fertiliser for the veg patch. Composting totally destroys the evidence but may not be good for growers in freezing climes in winter. Snowbunnies need to find other disposal methods.
Your neighbours DO watch you and your house. No 5-minute visitors, especially not late at night. You're best not having ppl visit you- visit them instead. If you're earning a living off your op and don't leave everyday to go to a job, have a cover story; you are a computer geek and work from home, you're disabled and can't work, whatever.
Don't drive a flashy car. Drive something nerdy, ordinary and old but keep it in
immaculate mechanical condition. No lights out, no dodgy tyre treads, no busted muffler, NEVER a boomping stereo, no reasons for a cop to pull you over. Don't have anything distinctive on your car, no stickers, fancy wheels, nothing that makes your car stand out.
If you're a big shoot-em-up party dawg,
don't run a grow op. Loud parties are excuse #1 for a cop to visit. If s/he suspects anyone's in danger (i.e. alcohol poisoning etc) in the house, he can enter without a warrant.
Keep your buds
far away from drunks. Drunks get busted at the next roadside breath test with a bag of YOUR buds in pocket and YOUR number programmed in their phone under 'pot dealer.' Alcohol causes a certain kind of stooopid. Alcohol added to other drugs like valium/xanax or oxycontin causes an infinitely worse kind of stoopid that makes people want to open airplane doors at 30,000 feet... and never remember
a bit of it. You don't need much stooopid in your life.
If you're smart and grow small, you will be swimming in buds for the rest of your days with never a legal scrape. Once you're a client of the legal system, they will keep you as one. With a record, you're fair game as a suspect in future drug activity and you will see cops regularly for the rest of your life. Don't get busted the first time.
I won't say it's impossible for me to get busted, but I manage my risks very carefully and have contingencies in place if the worst happens. I've been at it more than 20 years and have never even come
close to any sort of drug related arrest, for growing or possession. It's not because I'm well-connected, lucky or even all that smart- I just plan ahead, enjoy my quiet life and fly low & slow, under the radar.
