The Spy's Guide: Office Espionage

By Duane Swierczynski and H. Keith Melton

In today's business world, information is everything: and no one gathers it more effectively than spies. The Spy's Guide: Office Espionage brings real spying techniques into the workplace, with the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931686602
• ISBN13: 9781931686600
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Very Useful, More Than Enough Info for Any Working Stiff

I picked up a copy of this title from a local Barnes & Noble bookstore. Oddly enough, the title was shelved in the humor section, which didn't make much sense to me as the book isn't particularly entertaining but takes a rather serious, right-to-the-point approach to the business of using questionable means to further your career. The Spy's Guide: Office Espionage will tech you how to: take an impression of a key for duplication, secure a hotel room, check your conference room for bugs, bug a conference room, reassemble shredded documents, copy documents without leaving a trace as to what copier was used, conceal objects in a bottle of water, sneak into a tradeshow without being noticed, use your cell phone to your advantage, make untraceable phone calls and faxes, keep your private conversations private and much more. As slim as this volume is, it is surprisingly through and complete. For your average working stiff, this will be more than adequate for taking your game to the next level.

Looking for an edge? This one's for you

Anybody who works in business or in an office should get this book. Even if you don't use everything in it, other people may be using the methods it contains. If you know what's goin on, you have the upper hand. There's at least 1 thing in here that everyone can use, and that 1 thing I'm sure would be worth your $10 investment.

Delightful

Melton had tongue firmly in cheek with this charming little book that reads like a how-to of tradecraft from the last 50 years. Some of the tips are clearly inappropriate in any ethical sense, others are impractical, but for the most part, they are legitimate information-gathering techniques. Armed with information, however, the book begs the question with which intelligence officers have wrestled for decades: Is all that information of any use? A delightful read.

Entertaining, educational, and disturbingly accurate

This book contains espionage techniques that has shocked a former KGB major general with its accuracy, as he'd spent twenty years trying to figure out this stuff during the Cold War. Each tactic and method--some amusing, others possibly illegal--such as how to determine leaks in your company, how to determine mail tampering, how to use cellphones as eavesdropping tools, and how to infiltrate your competitors' meetings all come with little true-life examples of similar tactics being used in the field. As with similar books like the WORST-CASE SCENARIO series, DO NO TRY THIS AT HOME, and THE ACTION HERO(INE)'S HANDBOOKs, it's all for entertainment purposes only, but it does make for excellent research material.