Spooks for Hire

An excerpt from an article in The New Statesman: "The New Spies":

Unsure a potential employee is the person for the job?
Try Géos's "violence assessment and prevention" service. "Security Experts and Board-Certified Forensic Psychologists" will help keep potential troublemakers out of your company. Previous clients include the CIA, the FBI and various Fortune 500 companies.

Worried your business may be undercut?
"Commercial and competitive intelligence" services from Diligence can help. These will identify potential rivals, their respective strengths and weaknesses, their allies in commerce and government; they will assess their strategies, vet potential suppliers and "identify and counteract any rival effort to weaken [the client's] reputation".

Business at risk from radical activists?
Then you need "close protection analysis" from Diligence. A "prominent European scientific research group" suspected of animal testing used the service to provide early warning of possible attacks by animal rights activists. Diligence identified factions within the activist organisation with differing opinions about the use of violence in their campaigns. Playing on this friction, Diligence learned about upcoming attacks and warned the research group.

Concerned that your flight might not go smoothly?
Géos has an online database tracking air carriers' financial position, maintenance practices and history of accidents, as well as their pilots' "training, background and experience". Also available for helicopter services.

Need to find out who your colleagues have been emailing?
Kroll's "computer forensics" can help. They can uncover lost or hidden files, break encrypted files and "re-create events from electronic footprints". Kroll will work onsite if necessary, "even in the middle of the night, so that users are unaware" of what is happening to their computers.

Need to make a sharp exit?
Why not sign up for Géos's "emergency evacuation support" system? Dangers that you may face will be mapped by the company's "intelligence division and global monitoring programme". When security conditions "escalate to a potential crisis point", you can be removed from whatever situation you are in.