Background and Qualifications
He is a counter-surveillance expert, communications engineer, security consultant, and instructor with a reputation for designing and installing some of the most powerful secure communications systems used by both government agencies and major corporations. He has designed over 130 electronic and tactical products ranging from GPS devices, test instruments, radio equipment, audio products, modified bouchons, HRT devices, cryptographic equipment, surveillance devices, SIGINT/COMINT products, and various other devices and systems.
He is also a prolific computer programmer having authored over 150 software titles ranging from accounting packages and databases to sophisticated engineering software for TSCM, cryptographic, signals intelligence, RADAR, and electronic warfare. He has written several software and hardware suites that allow for the detection of virtually "undetectable bugs", and the detection of extremely low RADAR cross section targets. His preferred language is C, C++, and raw assembler but he is also proficient in, FORTRAN, COBOL, Visual Basic, and several variations thereof (including multiple scripting languages such as Perl, HTML, Java, and others). He is also skilled with the development of applications requiring high performance digital signal processing, and with the merging of high performance hardware and software into a single solution.
Mr. Atkinson has been trained by the U.S. Government in Intelligence, Covert Operations, Technical Surveillance, and Cryptanalysis, and is a graduate of multiple government schools. He is one of a very small number of professionals who have been formally certified and trained by the NSA as a TEMPEST Engineer, and Cryptographic Technician. He has extensive experience with the design and development of SIGINT systems to exploit and/or control compromising emanations, and has an intimate understanding of how our foreign adversaries eavesdrop upon the United States and its allies - and also what can be done to stop it. Additionally, he has many years of experience working deep inside highly classified and highly sensitive cryptographic, communications, switching, and computer systems.
The visual and instrumented TSCM (Technical Surveillance Counter Measure) surveys that he performs include: analysis of all signals present on the airways, evaluation of all telephone lines and computer networks, detection of computer viruses and Trojan horses, security of voice and data switching systems, and any mechanism by which a spy could commit technical eavesdropping or surveillance against, or exploitation of, a target through technical means. Also included in these responsibilities are the studies of electromagnetic interference (EMI), and the study of electromagnetic compliance (EMC), to include the performance of visual and instrumented TEMPEST inspections, and measures to mitigate other technical weaknesses in communications and computer systems.
Mr. Atkinson has an excellent academic background, has earned multiple academic degrees, and actually started attending college courses while still in his early teens. Prior to beginning his military service he was employed as a professional computer programmer and hardware developer (while still in his mid-teens), and enlisted in the military as soon as he reached legal age. Before he was old enough to drive he had developed several dozen commercial computer programs including a sophisticated BASIC and FORTRAN compiler, and had become quite proficient not only in raw assembler language programming, but also in reverse engineering both hardware and software.
He is a Cold War military veteran with eight years of service. While in the military he became trained, qualified, and certified as a computer and switching systems technician and worked on some of the most highly classified, dangerous, and sophisticated computer equipment used by the United States government. He also successfully cross-trained into cryptographic systems, satellite communications and specialized in signals intelligence and related disciplines. He has also studied the sophisticated methods which countries use to spy on each other, and has helped developed standards, protocols, and procedures that are vital to not only our own national defense, but the defense of our allies as well.
Mr. Atkinson is one of a small number of people who have actually been certified by the government to work on the highly classified computer and communications systems including those used by Strategic Air Command and other related agencies. More specifically he spent years directly working on (and trained others to work on) the systems used to control and command nuclear missiles, bombers, including the classified equipment used in command posts, classified bunkers, missile silos, plus hardened facilities and systems designed to operate in a post-atomic holocaust.
He has attended extensive private and government sponsored TSCM, TEMPEST, ECM, ECCM, EMI, EMC, SIGINT, cryptographic, technical intelligence, electronics, and security training both in the United States and abroad. He has been involved in thousands of TSCM, TEMPEST, and related inspections, over the past 27 years of government and private sector assignments. Also, he maintains the worlds largest private reference library regarding technical surveillance devices, and TSCM protocols used internationally. Included in this library is a computerized database of over a quarter million eavesdropping devices. This computerized database includes complex mathematic models which permit the quantitative modeling, evaluation, and analysis of eavesdropping devices, which in turn allows Granite Island Group to detect eavesdropping devices and surveillance threats that other firms and many government agencies are incapable of finding.
In addition to a strong background in intelligence operations and electronics he also has extensive training in tactical operations, including Instructor and Master Instructor certifications for: Pistol, Shotgun, Rifle, Sniper Weapons Systems, Assault Weapons, Grenade Launchers, Chemical Weapons, Explosive Breaching, Stun and Distraction Devices, Straight/Expandable and Riot Baton, Non Lethal Use of Force, Specialty Impact Munitions, Riot Control, Vehicle Operations, and related tactical subjects. He is literally certified as the "teacher who teaches the teachers".
Mr. Atkinson is a graduate of multiple executive protection, tactical driving, police vehicle operations, SWAT/SRT, and special operations and counter-terrorism programs. He is also a factory trained and certified armorer on multiple military and police weapons systems, and holds an expert marksmans rating with many of those systems.
On a related note: James M. Atkinson has also been heavily interviewed and quoted in the media by such prestigious national and international publications as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Investor Business Daily, The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Wired Magazine, Playboy, Mother Jones, London Times, and hundreds of other national and international newspaper, magazine, related publications, radio interviews, and related media. He has also contributed heavily to numerous books dealing with "bug sweep" subject matters, and in several cases has written entire textbooks or chapters of textbooks on the subject.
He is one of the few people in the county who can take highly complex technical issues, and explain to a lay-man, or non-technical person, and is a trusted advisor to many clients. His clients include major corporations, heads-of-state, diplomats, government agencies, defense contractors, hospitals, courthouses, police stations, banks, universities, publicly traded companies, private companies, stockbrokers, ranchers, farmers, fisherman, accountants, law firms, restaurants, hotels, oil companies, political leaders, ministers, small businesses, and private individuals. He is one of a select few people who can clearly explain the highly technical and highly classified subject matters such as TEMPEST, TSCM, and technical security in an unclassified way, so that a non-technical layman can understand it.
James M. Atkinson has been extensively published on these subject matters, has authored materials that have affected national policy, has testified before Congress several times, has been consulted by the Executive Branch, and foreign governments as the internationally recognized expert in TSCM, TEMPEST, and technical counter-intelligence matters. He has personally authored thousands of pages in the form of technical books and manuals in regards to these subject matters, and in addition published the first, the largest, and the most comprehensive website on Earth on the subject matter.
He is also unique within the TSCM business in that as he has personally installed millions of feet of telecommunications wiring, installed thousands of telephones and computers. He has designed and installed large corporate, government, academic, and private networks from the ground up, not only with an eye to high performance and rock solid reliability, but also with providing a high level of security, and resistance to eavesdropping. In turn when these communication systems are subjected to future TSCM inspections even the slightest manipulation or eavesdropping activities is quickly detected.
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Training (from Apple) than anyone else we have on record." - Apple Computer Training Department, Austin TX, Fall 1995 |
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Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft throught footless halls of air. Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew. And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. - John Gillespie Magee, High Flight |
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