Weekend FiTi reports on "the enemy within" corporations and the growth of "competitive intelligence" as cold war spy tactics are adapted to big business. Excerpts: Nobody in the surveillance business really knows how much commercial spying goes on. A lot of the eavesdropping is done, perfectly legally, by managers listening in to their own staff. It is, of course, in the interest of equipment suppliers and corporate consultants to maximise the dangers that companies face. "All companies are paranoid about their own security," said the spokesman of one well-known British multinational. "They don't seem to mind paying consultants to tell them things they know already." Yet all agree that the field of "competitive intelligence", as it is politely termed, is an expanding one. The privatisation of whole economies, the deregulation of monopoly markets, the globalisation of business, the spread of foreign investment and contested takeovers, the proliferation of technology and the sheer volume of information - all have made companies more aggressive, and more vulnerable. A consultant called in to investigate a theft may find himself pitted against another. In order to sanitise the business, a professional association called the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals has been set up. Its 5,000 members are meant to follow a code which vaguely urges them to obey the law, identify themselves when asking questions, and avoid "unethical practices". SCIP is influenced by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, a group described as "very powerful" by Andre Pienaar, a young manager at the corporate investigators Kroll Associates who has written a doctoral thesis on business and intelligence. "Company information has become very valuable," he said, "more valuable than physical assets." Protecting that information is becoming ever more difficult. It is not just the tappers, buggers and hackers who are the problem, however. The problem is the loyalty - or lack of it - of employees in a world of short contracts, rapid turnover and big inducements. Tony McStravick, former acting head of the Metropolitan police Fraud Squad in London, has worked for Kroll and is now at Control Risks Group. "It all comes down to management in the end," he said. "Companies have lost the hearts and minds of their employees because of performance pay, delayering, downsizing." "You have to have a culture of honesty, from the top down. You must find the balance between maximising profits and being fair and honest. A lot of the time, companies forget they are dealing with human beings." ----- For full article: http://jya.com/tew.txt