Cellular phones, faxes and telephone communications, both domestic and international, have been increasingly targeted for clandestine interception. Two cases of deliberate telecommunications interception for commercial gain indicate how Canadian companies can be disadvantaged by this type of activity. In the first incident, it was suspected that the host government was intercepting telephone communications between an executive abroad and his Canadian company headquarters. In this respect, Canadian executives on the phone discussing the bottom line price for a contract under negotiation with a foreign government were surprised when this figure became the immediate counter offer put forward by the host organization the following day. In another case, a Canadian business executive suspected that his telephone communications were monitored by a foreign government during contract negotiations when the exact phrasing the executive used in discussions with his Canadian office became part of the negotiation terminology the following day.
Computer systems can also be vulnerable to clandestine access.
In the case of one Canadian company, a protected computer system was compromised by a perpetrator who gained unauthorized access and intentionally tampered with existing computer codes and files. In a separate incident, a foreign government is believed to have tasked its intelligence service to gather specific information. The intelligence service in turn, contracted computer hackers to help meet the objective, in the course of which, the hackers penetrated databases of two Canadian corporations. These activities resulted in the compromise of numerous computer systems, passwords, personnel and research file of the two companies. Another avenue of clandestine access to information is the retrieval of an organization's waste material from containers located internally and externally.