SCIP is the trade association for companies that sell a service called competitive intelligence, or as it's commonly known, corporate espionage. Whether it's spying on a rival CEO or learning about a new product, businesses are looking to people like Fountain to dig up the dirt. But when you look closely, quite frankly, his eyes will scare the shit out of you. Bloodshot orange, his irises appear to be deteriorating and spreading outward. What you eat, what time, when you go to the bathroom.
Corporations have a pattern as well.
According to Fountain, companies are employing former government and military men like himself more and more to gain a competitive edge on their rivals. In fact, SCIP's membership has doubled in the last two years to over 6,000 members. But it wasn't just big business hanging out at the spy gala. In between coffee breaks and schmooze events across town at the Experience Music Project, the conference's 1,440 attendees had 82 workshops about corporate espionage and data management to choose from. One workshop, hosted by John Gilmore, an executive for satellite company Veridian Systems, explained the benefits of using satellite imagery to gain competitors' secrets.