I’m always fascinated but saddened to read about cases where wealthy people pay large sums of money to buy intelligence from shady information brokers. The recent case of two police officers, caught bugging phones and hacking into computers is a classic case. As is so often the case, it seems that most clients are domestic, i.e. husbands spying on wives or vice versa. You rarely see blue chip companies engaging in such practices. Of course, we have seen one recent example of dirty tricks within a top technology organisation. But that’s the exception. Most respectable companies will avoid engaging in illegal information gathering activities at all costs because the risks are too great and it's always possible that some company staff will object or blow the whistle.
That’s not to say that organisations shouldn’t engage in healthy competitive intelligence gathering, which is a fundamental business requirement in a fast-moving competitive environment. But it’s vital to draw a clear line around the limits of acceptable activity and to avoid crossing it at all times. Because it’s increasingly hard to keep secrets in today’s world of free-flowing, open communications. And if you’re caught it’s hugely damaging to corporate reputation and staff morale.
Comments (2)
I'm assuming that open source intelligence gathering would be acceptable? This can be a very valuable stream of information. Very recently I had an interesting discussion with a person from a large UK based open source monitoring service. This person had a particular foreign language capability and was being utilised to monitor blogs and harvest the pertinent information.
It just goes to show that you can't be sure how information you create and publish now will be used against you in the future. For an insight The Register has an interesting article: "Digital data can bite you in the ass"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/22/protecting_data_usenix/
I think it's more important than ever for business and individuals to take a critical look at what they publish.
Posted by Duncan | June 28, 2007 2:44 PM
Posted on June 28, 2007 14:44
Whilst blue-chip companies may not formally engage in shady intelligence gathering; we should assume that individuals employed in such companies do. Information that allows an individual to make an informed decision about an acquisition, a bid for a piece of business, the technology behind some product development etc, may earn him/her a huge bonus, take a few steps up the corporate ladder. And what should we classify as shady? Is calling a competitor's helpdesk, posing as a prospective customer, ask questions about products, security etc, for your own competitor analysis, is that shady?
Posted by Ken | July 12, 2007 6:20 PM
Posted on July 12, 2007 18:20