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    Inside the secret world of the corporate spies who infiltrate protests

    Major firms hiring people from corporate security firms to monitor and infiltrate political groups that object to their commercial activitiesSurveillance firms spied on campaign groups for big companies, leak shows
    by Meirion Jones and Rob Evans Dec 12, 2017 4 minutes
    Protestors from the organisation Hands Off Iraqi Oil hold up a movable statue of US Vice-President Dick Cheney as they march past the Millenium Wheel, London, on October 11, 2008. Hands Off Iraqi Oil is a British coalition pressure group which is protesting against the recently drafted Iraqi Oil Law. The pressure group claims that the law if passed, would give foreign oil companies greater control over Iraq's oil reserves. / AFP / Getty Images

    It was perhaps not the most glamorous assignment for a spy. Toby Kendall’s mission was to dress up as a pirate, complete with eye-patch, bandana and cutlass, and infiltrate a group of protesters.

    The campaigners had organised a walking tour of London to protest outside the premises of multinational firms, objecting to what they believed was the corporate plunder of Iraq.

    To make their point in a colourful way, they wore pirates’ costumes as they banged drums on a wintry Saturday to implore the firms to get “their hands off Iraqi oil”.

    Kendall, a 23-year-old Oxford University graduate, joined the protesters as of the capital. What the protesters did not know at that time was that Kendall was a corporate infiltrator working

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