12 Corporate Espionage Tactics Used Against Leading Progressive Groups, Activists and Whistleblowers

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http://www.alternet.org/activism/corporate-espionage-against-progressive-nonprofits



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1. Posing as volunteers.

For most of the 1990s, Greenpeace was repeatedly targeted due to its campaign to phase out the use of chlorine in making plastics and paper. In 2008, investigative reporter James Ridgeway reported on a trove of documents obtained from an ex-employee of a private security firm, Becket Brown International. The papers described how BBI planted “undercover operatives” in many environmental groups, with a heavy emphasis on Greenpeace. BBI wanted everything and anything about its anti-corporate strategies.

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2. Dumpster diving.

What corporate spies could not gather by walking into meetings and offices as volunteers, they got by dumpster diving—stealing bags of trash and sifting through them. Greenpeace’s lawsuit said that BBI and others raided the dumpsters outside its Washington offices more than 120 times. What was especially notable about these raids is that a local Washington police officer was part of BBI’s team, flashing his badge to gain access to dumpsters kept behind locked fences. BBI also had Baltimore police on its payroll.

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3. Tapping phones and voicemail.

Greenpeace’s anti-racketeering suit—most of which was thrown out by a federal court—also talked about other firms spying for Dow Chemical. One was a company run by ex-National Security Agency officials, TriWest Investigations, which procured “phone call records of Greenpeace employees or contractors,” the report said, add that cellphones given to Greenpeace employees were also tapped. “BBI’s notes to its clients ‘include verbatim quotes attributed to specific Greenpeace employees.’”

4. Casing offices, stealing files.

These first three tactics—posing as volunteers, stealing trash and wiretapping—allowed a team of corporate spies, including the supposedly credible PR firm, Ketchum, to steal all kinds of documents about different Greenpeace projects. The corporate espionage report says the same tactics also were used “on behalf of Kraft,” to “provide intelligence about organizations opposed to genetically engineered food.” The report notes these tactics were not confined to Washington, but were also used against activists in Louisiana opposing petrochemical plant pollution, immigrant farm workers in Florida working for a Burger King supplier, Northern Californians opposing a new garbage dump, and nursing home activists in Maryland.

[Triana]

1. Kicking...

...just found this again on Alternet and was going to post here but see it's already here!

EVERYONE needs to read this article! THIS. IS. WAR.