In France, very few CI graduates write “competitive intelligence”, “strategic intelligence” or “economic intelligence” on their resume or CV to find a job. The great majority invents all kinds of formulations around the word “information”. The CI profession is still young (not more than 15 years old here) but its police records are full. In this jungle where gray and black informations are used as weapons against adversaries, the efforts of the main CI associations (Fepie and Scip France) to stop the haemorrhage failed. For the French State, it is time to take the bull by the horns.
Desperate ills…
Here are three cases to illustrate the drifts of the profession:
1- March 13, 2008, a police superintendent, chief of the brigade of frauds on means of payment(BFMP) at the financial judicial police of Paris is arrested. During his interrogation, the policeman admits that he sold confidential informations aiming Total to a private competitive intelligence company.
2 – June 23, 2008, the court of Ain grants 30.000 euros of damages to a couple victim of spinning mill during several weeks. The judgment, for invasion of privacy, strikes an economic intelligence agency and its silent partner. In 2006, an employee of a consultancy in management resigns. Its direction then suspects him of wanting to create his own structure of consultants. The stake for the company is to preserve several important customers such as the Areva industry group. Decision is thus taken to call upon a CI agency in order to check the existence of possible fraudulent schemes.
3- October 14, 2008, the boss of Taser France is in the collimator of the Parisian police force. The manufacturer of the famous weapon which causes a neuro-muscular interruption and makes it possible to immobilize a suspect on the public highway via an electric flash is shown to have financed the espionage of Olivier Besancenot, by a competitive intelligence agency. The young spokesman of LCR had judged in 2007 that the use of Taser guns by the police force presented a risk for pubic health.
… demand desperate measures
To asepticize the sector, the French government plans three principal decisions:
1- Obligatory licence for all the CI professionals
The primary goal of the administration is to make the sorting among all the cabinets of competitive or economic intelligence in France. After that, the State will deliver a licence to those (Europeans only) whose investigation by the secret services reveals CI competences and a good morality. We’re still waiting to know if non-Europeans CI professionals will be authorized to work in France.
2- An interval to pass from a public intelligence service to a private CI company
On October 19, 2008, the French minister of home affairs, Michele Alliot-Marie (MAM), expressed her will to impose a three-years duration before a former member of a State intelligence service can carry on an activity in a private competitive intelligence agency. “Those professionals will be engaged for their competences and not for their address books”, she said.
3- A law to surround the profession
A project of regulation will be presented in the Council of Ministers at the latest at the end of December 2008. It could lead to the vote of a law in 2009. But is a law enough to change the practices of a profession? There are many precedents in France which oblige to answer: no. One of my colleagues, former policeman in Paris, asked me whether the State will engage its responsibility if an accredited CI consultant crosses the yellow line. I said: let’s consider it as a driving licence.
In conclusion
During the first French summer university of competitive intelligence (October 2 -3 2008 at the military academy of Paris), Abdelmalek Alaoui, an African CI consultant said this shining formula: “we must monitor like Chinese, analyze like French and act like Americans”. For the moment, I don’t know if Americans are a model on the matter, but my certitude is that only ethics can save CI profession in France and elsewhere in the world.
Guy Gweth
