Protection thrives where local familiarity lowers the cost of intelligence

Evidence

In general, we can expect to be better at protecting all transactions over a small territory rather than some over a variety of territories. The area where we were born or have lived longest is the best in which to begin operations, for there we know every resident and every street corner. Simply frequenting the right places—bars, shops, the bank, the church—is sufficient to bring useful information to our attention. We can monitor directly the reliability of the information we collect. We are likely to have a higher concentration of friends and relatives here than elsewhere, and they represent cheap and trustworthy sources of information. Women talk to other women, children to other children, and report back to us. In small territories new faces stand our; often under the traditional guise of hospitality strangers are questioned, and their business, role, accent, and common acquaintances are determined. Mafiosi can run real investigative inquiries through their network of family and friends by pretending a generic curiosity: Who was at work that day? Who was not seen at the usual spot? — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 98

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Gambetta/Milgrom framework: territorial knowledge substitutes for formal vetting, mirroring how Champagne Fair private judges knew their traders.
• SEED: The ‘generic curiosity’ intelligence-gathering mirrors modern OSINT — angle: how informal local information networks scale or fail to scale territory by territory.