An excellent article at Knowledge Is Power about using a blog to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about competitors and manage the spin on news about its rivals while usually reporting positively about your own employer.
Another post about Black PR defines this as distinct from a disinformation campaign.
Over at the Daily Caveat, Michael Thomas criticizes the use of worn-out stereotypes of Private Investigators in a Wall Street Journal article that focuses on the use of Private Investigators by Venture Capitalists to conduct due diligence research.
I often see the following terminology misused in the press. For the Investigator, these terms have very specific meanings. The Investigator must also recognise that most laymen will misuse these terms.
A parent company controls separately incorporated firms. The controlled company is a subsidiary. A subsidiary has a parent when the controlling firm owns more than 50% of its shares.
Divisions are business names owned by a corporation. A division specialises in some product or service offered by the company that owns the business name. A corporation using a registered business name is doing business as that name, hence the term DBA (Doing Business As).
An affiliate is a corporation which is owned by more that one entity which do not individually own more that 50% each.
“Four hostile newspapers, are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Napoleon Bonaparte to his generals.
Propaganda may be defined as the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.
I’ve been reading about propaganda lately. A reviewer correctly observed that one book about the evils of propaganda stated that only conservatives engage in it, and they are always “wrong.” This was a rather comical bit of propaganda in a book warning about the dangers of propaganda. Many of the books I read contained this type of nonsense.
Today, a friend brought a National Post column to my attention. It is about a Wikipedia editor using the popular service as a platform for propaganda. The article alleges that, “By patrolling Wikipedia pages and ensuring that her spin reigns supreme over all climate change pages, she has made of Wikipedia a propaganda vehicle for global warming alarmists. But unlike government propaganda, its source is not self-evident.”
Be careful out there, and don’t believe everything you read.
In an article entitled, Cyberterrorism, Inc., we see the usual link between CI and industrial espionage as if the two are the same. Creating a link between the two is the work of feeble minds.
To gain an advantage over competitors, many corporations are hiring ex-military and government agents trained in the art of intelligence gathering techniques, according to a report from the SANS Institute, a Washington-based cybersecurity training organization.
These individuals are used to head new company divisions whose mission is to spy on competitors and obtain intelligence. Companies spend over US$2 billion annually to spy on each other, according to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.
In 1999, North American companies lost more than US$45 billion to theft of trade secrets and other valuable corporate data, according to the SANS report. “Today’s total losses are anyone’s guess,” the report continued.
CI is the act of creating Intelligence from open source data. Industrial espionage, on the other hand, usually involves the commission of criminal offences. I suspose the distinction is too complex for so-called journalists.
Chipwrapper is a Custom Google Search Engine that searches across the UK’s major national newspapers. For an excellent review of this visit Karen Blakeman’s Blog.
We monitor a wide variety of media outlets for clients. Some of these outlets are state owned propaganda outlets, some are simply moronic. Here’s an example of the nonsense we have to read and pass along to clients.
American radio icon Don Imus disgraced, fired after threat to reveal 9/11 secrets
13.04.2007 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/89728-Don_Imus-0
Hidden devices set up in the local arena, municipal building and firehall in small Ontario community
The Globe and Mail reports that the small rural Ontario municipality of Highlands East, in the Haliburton area, had installed cameras in several facilities. The article described the device thusly:
“The camera was powered up and broadcasting both audio and video, it was set up so anybody within about 300 feet who had that type of receiver could watch in there and listen with impunity.”
I think somebody in Highlands East should read Part VI of the Canadian Criminal Code. If this device captured audio then it might be considered a listening device used to illegally intercept private communications.
Smart Crook finds operator’s manual for an ATM machine on the Internet. Crook gets prepaid & untraceable debit card.
The Smart Crook finds an ATM still using the manufacturer’s default password. He then reprograms it to think it is handing out $5 bills not $20 bills. The Smart Crook takes his extra money and leaves. Nine days later, some honest person reports that she got too much money from the machine.
CNN reports the crime, now a lot of Not-So-Smart Crooks know how to do this.
