More than 100,000 student records were accidentally made available online by The Princeton Review, an educational support services provider. The discovery was exposed by a competitor as it conducted competitive intelligence research.
The competing company alerted the New York Times to the problem rather than The Princeton Review. A bit of “Black PR” makes the competitive arena more interesting.
Google and Yahoo! have fostered the belief that if you can type, then you are a researcher. In my experience, the DIY researcher’s greatest failings occur in the following areas:
Most DIY searchers do not prepare for the search by collecting the synonyms and antonyms, thesauri, dictionaries, and the British and American spelling differences. They don’t take time to consider appropriate terms and phrases then make a list to work through.
Is this proof that most tax authorities are crooks?
Vanished tycoon named in tax haven inquiry
…stolen bank documents that were sold to the tax authorities by a
whistleblowerthief who worked at LGT, one of the principality’s biggest banks.Tax authorities across the world are now using the data to investigate people suspected of hiding their assets in the tax haven.
Germany’s government last week bought another set of data listing the names of 1,850 more people with bank accounts in the principality.
A partner at one the world’s biggest accountancy firms said: “By buying stolen data, tax authorities have encouraged anyone in a bank in Liechtenstein, Monaco or any other tax haven to sell private banking records for cash.
The thief, Heinrich Kieber, according to Forbes, financed a real estate deal in Spain during 1996 with “uncovered checks”. He was not charged and did not have a criminal record when he joined the bank in Liechtenstein. However, the consequences of his Spanish real estate deal followed him to Liechtenstein. In 2001, he was fined 600,000 Swiss francs ($552,000) for fraud by the Liechtenstein judicial system. To get out of this, he tried to blackmail the authorities with the stolen data. When that didn’t work-out to his satisfaction he sold the data to Germany.
I wonder if this thief and extortionist is paying taxes on his $7.5 million blood money from under his rock or wherever he is hiding. On the other hand, I am certain that the public officials who were complicit in this crime kept their jobs or were promoted.
Now that your abs have regained some strength, it’s time to move on to the three most effective ab exercises. We’ll start with the bicycle maneuver. This exercise is the most effective overall.
Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Press your lower back into the floor, and put both hands behind your head (don’t pull on your head). Bring your right elbow over to your left knee while lifting your shoulders off the floor, and then bring your left elbow over to your right knee in a twisting, bicycle pedal motion. Continue to breathe naturally. Continue in a slow and controlled manner fully extending each leg on every repetition but keep it off the floor.
I often analyse job ads when looking at a target company and one type of ad raises a red flag indicating poor management.
Whenever I see an employment ad for a person who can multitask, I know the poor soul who gets the job will have an inept and incompetent boss — a boss who does not have a broad view of his firm’s operational requirements and goals. Multitasking might be fine for computer systems, but it is a stupid concept to apply to people.
This manager does not see enough of his operation to understand what efforts need coordinating in harmony with resources at his disposal. Without a broad overview, he cannot hope to prioritize and redirect his resources according to the constraints that commitments of his resources place on operations. He just wants people to multitask!
This manager, operating with blinders on, will never identify critical resources and prioritize the rapid redeployment of key people. He will not function well in an environment where resources must be shared. He will not enjoy the success that truly maximizing the use of his resources would bring. He will just vainly look for another poor soul who can multitask better.
When I see this type of ad, I know that I have found a weakness in the opposition’s organisation.
Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is under cyber attack by the Russians. Their news output was moved to Google’s Blogspot at http://civilgeorgia.blogspot.com/ to keep the information flowing about what’s going on in Georgia. Google has the infrastructure and resources to defend against these attacks.
It seems that Georgia is cyber-locked just like a land-locked country has no access to the sea. Cyber-locked countries rely too heavily on a handful of connections through hostile countries like Russia for their network access to the outside world.
Competitive Intelligence is more than research skills. It is communication and diplomacy. It is about building mass support for what must be done. If you read Crossing the Chasm from the perspective of selling an approaching disruptive reality, then you will enhance your ability to identify those who will accept your bad news and support it.
Competitive Intelligence is also about project management. One must understand what military doctrine calls Economy of Force and Concentration of Force. In Competitive Intelligence projects, your reserves are the time buffers added to non-critical tasks to prevent impeding the critical work without adding waste. Critical Chain : A Business Novel represents a good primer to critical chain project management methodology. This methodology is particularly applicable to Competitive Intelligence projects.
The reverse crunch is the second abdominal exercise to master.
It may seem like the reverse crunch is for the lower abs but, remember, the rectus abdominis is one long muscle, so you can’t separate upper from lower and the obliques do a lot of the work in this exercise.
1. Lie on the floor and place hands on the floor or behind the head.
2. Bring the knees in to 90 degrees with the calves parallel to the floor and your feet together.
3. Contract the abs to curl the hips off the floor.
4. Lower in a slow and controlled fashion and repeat for 12 reps per set.
5. It’s a very small movement — use your abs to lift your hips rather than swinging your legs to create momentum.
This may feel almost impossible to do at first, but you will learn to contract the abs properly. Then it may feel impossible to hold it at the top and lower the hips slowly. Don’t get discouraged, being fit is about consistent effort. You must exercise in some fashion every day of your life to remain fit. Making exercise a habit makes it easier and produces greater results with fewer injuries. The week-end warrior will be the guy who suffers the injuries and delays in his progress.
Abdominal strength prevents back, groin, and leg injuries. Get your abs in shape before engaging in more strenuous activities.
The U.S. government has published its policy regarding seizing laptops and other devices capable of storing data.
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption, or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement… DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including US citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism… The policies cover ‘any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,’ including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover ‘all papers and other written documentation,’ including books, pamphlets and ‘written materials commonly referred to as “pocket trash…”
It seems the best thing is to keep encrypted files on a network drive at home, and download the needed encrypted data after crossing the border.
So your quest for fitness continues and like me, you’re lazy. That’s good, after you’ve read this you can lay down and do abdominal exercise without feeling guilty. You remember sit-ups and how much you hated doing them — me too. The reason you hated doing them was that you had to do so many to accomplish so little.
I’ve studied this problem because studying is easier than doing sit-ups. My studies have led me to some conclusions. Continue reading ‘No Gym Required: Abs Exercises’
Today marks the beginning of the third year of The Confidential Resource blog.
Chris Pierre of Evince Services Inc. in Ottawa told me about a site called loco citato that has links to several good Social Network Mapping tools.
Last year I wrote about the Tort for Negligent Investigations and how this would reach out and touch a Private Investigation firm in Canada soon.
The Ontario Court of Appeal has expanded the tort of negligent investigation to allow employees to sue private investigators hired by employers to probe suspected wrongdoing in the workplace. The unanimous ruling by Associate Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor and Justices Marc Rosenberg and Kathryn Feldman extends the newly created tort of negligent investigation to private investigators. This tort was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 2007 as applicable to police.
In Correia v. Canac Kitchens, 2008 ONCA 506 & [2008] O.J. No. 2497, the court has imposed a new duty of care regarding investigators. The plaintiff was an innocent employee mistakenly fired and arrested for theft following a private investigation launched by his employer. His name was confused with that of another employee with a similar name. The sequence of events that led to erroneous identification of Mr. Correia is summarized in the chronology in paragraph [8].
Every Private Investigator in Canada should pay close attention to this case and the circumstances that gave rise to it.
With Windows XP, to clear the page file on shutdown go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools-> Local Security Policy->Local Policies->Security Options->Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile … enable it. It is wise to enable this setting on every computer you use.
We tell people to travel with a “clean” laptop. However, Windows creates a lot of temporary files. The most damaging can be the Page file. Everything that went into virtual memory is there in a file on the hard drive. Of course you should also use a good file erasure programme before shutting off the laptop.
Starting a competitive intelligence research project, an investigation, or due diligence research usually entails a detailed look at the corporate filings, share structure, and accounts of the target or subject company.
On the island of Great Britain, there are two separate registries, one for England and Wales, and another for Scotland. Both of these are operated by Companies House. The accounts and filings for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland take the same format.
On the island of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment of the Northern Ireland Government, (DETINI) houses the corporate filings and accounts. Corporate filings in the Republic of Ireland may be obtained online from the Companies Registration Office.
On the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey the corporate filings are handled at the Jersey Financial Services Commission and the Guernsey Registry. Jersey and Guernsey are tax havens, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts.
The Isle of Man is a tax haven, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts. The Companies Registry holds corporate filings, and is part of the Financial Supervision Commission. Continue reading ‘Corporate Filing Searches on the British Islands’
