Diligence: No Privacy Protection in the Workplace

Cursor has a great link to an article about Commercial Espionage:

These ex-spies apply a higher level of expertise, honed by government service, to the cruder tactics already practiced by private investigators. One such ploy is pretexting—obtaining information by pretending to be somebody else. While private detectives have long posed as freelance reporters or job recruiters to get people to talk, former agents have elevated pretexting to an art.

At Diligence, a New York private-investigation firm founded by former C.I.A. and British agents, ex-intelligence officers have taught newcomers how to construct false identities by using fake business cards, creating phony websites, and directing incoming calls to cell phones reserved for each separate identity. "You are establishing a cover, like in the C.I.A.," said a former Diligence employee, adding that there are people who know investigators only by their phony identities.

Diligence.