Inconvenient Pretext

This Chicago Tribune account of a recent corporate espionage trial illustrates a) the ridiculous lengths some companies will go to keep tabs on former employees, b) technology's inevitable starring role in any privacy suit, and and c) how much espionage can really resemble an episode of Hawaii Five-O.The basics: last month, a jury found in favor of a woman who alleged her former employer had improperly obtained her private home phone records (by calling the phone company and impersonating her), in an effort to see whether she was siphoning off clients after being fired from the job.The fancy word for this is pre-texting. Hewlett Packard got in trouble for engaging in the practice to detect leaks to the media in 2006.The whole tale is strikingly low-fi and TV-ish: threats made in the office over a impending business deal, a spy lurking in a car outside a home, and a concerned dad who fishes a key piece of evidence out of the trash.