From the latest Canadian Business: The secret shipping news: Intelligence services use import manifests to help clients identify consumer trends and keep track of rival products. Briefly, it’s often possible to learn key strategic information about a company from its shipping manifests, which can be found through US Customs declarations or companies like Import Genius, which can provide you with a searchable database for as little as $99/month.
From this, I can learn even more about the companies in question: their logistics executives are probably in their 50s or older and have no kids. Or at least they don’t follow Batman’s adventures.
I’m sure it’s come up in the comics more than once, but can I recall an episode of Batman: The Animated Series from 1993 called The Mechanic where exotic car part orders were traced to deduce who was supplying Batman with service for his Batmobile. Hell, didn’t this even come up in the Dark Knight movie where that accountant found some irregularities?
How hard is it for big companies to create shell companies that move their stuff around? I know if I had an on-site legal team, the first thing I’d do every morning would be to send them a list of company names I wanted registered for future nefarious purposes. True, if I were CEO you could deduce most of my activities by searching for companies with the words “pants” and “donkey” in their names, but I’m not CEO of anything at the moment, for reasons that escape me.
It’s settled then: big companies need to hire a comics writer if they’re serious about security. As long as it’s not a writer for Superman, that is. I mean, “wear glasses” probably isn’t the be all and end all to privacy protection.
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