Rating: 
Summary: Decent Expose, surprising level of insider openness
Review: Barry is rather an oddball for a usually very button downed profession. He comes off as a field ops guy, not an HQ analyst like Herring. Field guys, in certain roles, can be pretty flamboyant since the sort of people they hang out with quite often are. Criminals are often sociopathic and particularly in the drug investigations that Barry used to do, flamboyant doesn't begin to describe some of those guys. They get downright bizzare. Probably Barry's drug-bust type background, and profile as a risk addicted field ops guy is why he's so willing to lay it on the line about what's really going on out there. Comes across a bit like Robert Baer, the CIA guy who has been writing those books on the middle east. It's a classic schism between the guys in the home office and the guys risking their lives out in the field. The guys risking their necks tend to get a "f*** you" attitude pretty fast toward HQ. Book is worth reading, if a bit boring in it's detail at times. Reads like an article series that didn't get published. Some reviewers have said this book is a slander suit waiting to happen. Naah. First of all, it's printed, so it's libel. Second, I'll bet good money that Barry could trot out enough evidence in court to convince a jury he was telling the truth. So nobody is going to sue. Guys like Herring and the management of SCIP know better. Barry would cut them to ribbons, and then counter sue and set himself up for life. Besides, it's much more effective in the long run to freeze the guy out of his profession, quietly. Or just ignore it completely, because it doesn't matter.
Rating: 
Summary: Spooked: Good LORD!!! This book is SCARY!
Review: I don't even know where to begin. This book is so poorly written and researched, it's almost a farce. The joke is on anyone who buys this piece of trash. (Including me...) Everyone who touched this book in production--editors, copy clerks, etc.--should be embarassed to have their names associated with such a hollow piece of work. This book is nothing more than a collection of non-sequitors about corporate daring-do. But it never delivers. It's painful to read. (I mean, come on, RUN-ON SENTENCES?????? Where were Penenberg's editors on this one?) Penenberg, supposedly a "professional reporter" practices the worst brand of "Entertainment Tonight" journalism in this book. His first aim is to tantalize and titilate with little regard for the rudiments of journalism. Apart from his abyssmal writing, Penenberg plays fast and loose with facts, making claims and mental leaps that aren't supported by his thin research. I'm so disappointed that I threw away 20-something-dollars on this book. Don't make the mistake I did.
Rating:
Summary: Has some utility, but not a significant work
Review: I don't know why this short text is in hardcover, and as mentioned in the other reviews, it is more than a bit disjointed, and suffers from some flaws in research. On the positive side, Chapters 4 & 5 are a useful description of social engineering, that can help the reader better understand how vulnerable an organization is to simple information gathering techniques. It is difficult to find material on the subject of 'Information Brokers', so this book provides a useful source on that subject, although no specific topic is covered in depth. I found Fialka's book, "War By Other Means," a more informative and interesting read. Fialka's book doesn't discuss the Avery case which comprises the greater part of "Spooked," so the books are somewhat complementary if you are looking for additional examples of industrial espionage. "Spooked" is a quick read, and outside of some structural weaknesses in its organization, it is an enjoyable enough text. It is more of a 'popular' approach to this subject, aimed at the casual reader who is more interested in titillation than in substance.
Rating:
Summary: light reading
Review: I picked up this thin hardback as a remaindered item, and it was worth what I paid for it. The book is about corporate espionage (and the field of "competitive intelligence") by a journalist and a practitioner, respectively. The bulk of the book tells the story of Victor Lee, an employee of the Avery Dennison company, who was the first person to be prosecuted under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act for selling company secrets to First Pillars, a company in his native Taiwan. The book's account of that case seems quite balanced, with due weight given to the defense (which ultimately failed, and apparently rightly so). This story is spread throughout the nine chapters (1, 3, 6, and 8 of the book's 9), in a somewhat disjointed fashion.
The book also describes the founding of the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals and the competitive intelligence group at Motorola by former CIA analyst Jan Herring, a case where Schwann's obtained competitive intelligence via legitimate means to compete with Kraft in pizza manufacturing, another chapter on legitimate intelligence gathering by Teltech to find out about nanotechnology development of plastics for Dow, and a very different chapter on eEye "Chief Hacking Officer" Marc Maiffret.
The book seems to have two voices about the ethics standards of SCIP, with co-author Barry thinking that the standards are hypocritical and rightly ignored, while it appears that Panenberg may be more sympathetic.
There doesn't seem to be much in the book in the way of conclusions drawn in the book. It could have been more useful with a summary of methods to prevent espionage, more details on principles of legitimate intelligence gathering, or at least lessons learned from specific cases.
Rating: 
Summary: Big on Headlines, Weak on Details, and Poorly Written
Review: If you ran into two guys in a bar and you all had had a few alcoholic beverages, you might hear war stories about how they had turned up people doing unseemly things. It would be fun. Take the same two guys, and have them write down a few strung-together stories in a book with little substance and style. When you read the results in the sober light of day, it's not very good. That's the feeling I got here. Mr. Penenberg is a business investigative journalist. As such, he knows how to dangle a promise. The trouble is, he doesn't seem to have the material to support his promise. The few stories about corporate intelligence gathering in this book are uninspiring in the extreme. Anyone who has worked in a company for a few months could tell better stories than these. Mr. Barry is an intelligence gathering practitioner, and he provides one interesting, cogent account of finding out about better ways to make frozen pizza crusts. It was the only story in the book that moved smoothly from promise to fulfilling the promise. The rest just seemed to ramble. The bulk of the book is about the case of a Taiwanese company caught in an FBI sting taking confidential Avery Dennison "trade secrets" from an Avery Dennison employee. You first learn how the employee came to steal from Avery Dennison. Then you find out how his employer caught on. Next, the book describes how the employee was hung out to dry so he could be bait for his illegal employer, the Taiwanese company. Following that you get the videotaped sting. The rest involves legal maneuverings through a criminal and civil law suit, the other suits filed by the Taiwanese company, and how the two companies competed with each other while this was going on. You are intended to end up disgusted with everyone, and you probably will be. A good editor could have reduced this material by over half and improved it a lot. The book constantly slams individuals and firms who perform corporate intelligence gathering, accusing them of not abiding by ethical standards. In other cases, those described look silly because they or their clients don't do well in the marketplace anyway. The book ends up describing what happened to each person in the book. With one or two exceptions, being in corporate intelligence didn't seem to pay off very well. To give you an example of the weakness about details in the book, let me describe the material about commercial spying by France. This has been alleged in the press for as long as I can remember. Magazines constantly warn you not to take laptops to France, because maids may download your files. In a book like this that makes many references to commercial spying by the French government, I expected lots of great stories that I had not heard before. I didn't find them. There were just a few allegations about who might have stolen what from whom. One thing is clear. There are people out there who like to misrepresent themselves and try to steal intellectual property and information that doesn't belong to them. And it doesn't look like it's too hard to do. Be prepared to defend yourself. This book won't tell you how to do that, though. You'll have to look elsewhere. My advice is to skip this book. After you finish reading this review, I suggest that you think about what information your organization has that would be reduced in value if held in the wrong hands. How can you change the information you develop and keep so that it will become more valuable as more people touch it, either legally or illicitly? How can you learn to move so quickly and surely that it doesn't matter what competitors know? Expand knowledge in constructive ways!
Rating:
Summary: Almost Total Waste of Time and Money
Review: In spite of the promises on the back cover, flyleaf, and publisher, this book consists of nothing more than the story of one corporate espionage case, and a decidedly low-tech one at that. Sprinkled between chapters filled with excruciatingly repetitive and frankly boring details of the Avery espionage case, are several mildly interesting profiles of so-called corporate spooks, whose techniques range from "oh, I can do all kinds of stuff, but it's so secret I can't tell you" to "I go to trade shows and ask people questions" Reading the book, one gets the impression that the author may indeed have heard all kinds of cool stuff during his research, but none of it found its way into the pages of this book. This would've made a killer magazine article, but the book's just not there.
Rating: 
Summary: Reveals Corporate Methods for Information Gathering
Review: Information gathering is a serious tool used extensively in the corporate world. Penenberg and Barry reveal techniques commonly used to ferret out information regarding corporate adversaries, be they other corporations or individuals.
Rating:
Summary: Reveals Corporate Methods for Information Gathering
Review: Information gathering is a serious tool used extensively in the corporate world. Penenberg and Barry reveal techniques commonly used to ferret out information regarding corporate adversaries, be they other corporations or individuals.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting to read, but not a 'must have'
Review: Penenberg, a writer for Time and Forbes, and Barry, the head of his own intelligence company, have written an easy-to-read, but yet disjointed book on the use of intelligence gathering techniques in modern business. The book provides ample evidence that intelligence collection on business rivals is alive and well but does not offer any solutions as to how to prevent these techniques from being used against one's own organization. Readers who want a better sense of how 'social engineering' works are better served by reading Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception." Professional competitive intelligence professionals, especially those that are members of SCIP (the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals), will learn nothing new here except to be aware of now NOT to collect intelligence. Computer hacking, information brokering and pretext are techniques that are used by companies with the "do whatever it takes to get the information" philosophy. Readers that want more detail and insight on the Avery Dennison/Four Pillars case are better served by reading "Sticky Fingers." Mark Robinson
The author of "Beyond Competitive Intelligence: The Practice of Counterintelligence and Trade Secrets Protection."
Rating:
Summary: Technically inaccurate, poorly researched, slanderous
Review: The author builds his premises on suppositions, but I see no proof of what they are trying to say. Authors allude to DeGenaro, Nolan and Herring using un-ethical means to gather information while all being very active members of SCIP. Yet I see NO proof. We call that hearsay. It is not worth anything in a court of law, a business report, or even in intelligence. This book is a slander case waiting to happen. I can't believe they named specific companies and associations and then went ahead to berate them. The chapter on Liz Lightfoot (The Librarian) shows your inability to do basic research. There is a very specific job title known as Librarian. It requires that the person with the title have a Master in Library Science, and is not bestowed on anyone with a knack for database searching. You defamed the profession on page 111 (which seems contrary since you quote Nolan, but were slamming him earlier). While in the same chapter you obviously could have used the assistance of a librarian to help you find the Occupational Outlook Handbook. My recommendation for a work of this nature, which is a fast read, interesting and practical, is Your Secrets are My Business by Kevin McKeown.
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