Larry Dignan at ZDnet Blogs has an excellent post this morning exposing InfoWorld contributor Randall C. Kennedy as being the CTO of Devil Mountain Software using the pseudonym Craig Barth. Among Dignan’s findings…

Devil Mountain CTO Craig Barth is InfoWorld columnist Randall C. Kennedy.

Devil Mountain’s software has potential privacy issues and the company isn’t afraid to show off that it can peek into your systems.

A high-profile customer that “Barth” uses to legitimize Devil Mountain’s software says there is no implementation of the application at the company.

Numerous disclosure issues about the relationship between Devil Mountain, Kennedy and IDG, essentially the only outlet that has quoted Barth. Note: Between Saturday and Sunday, InfoWorld pulled references to Kennedy in its blog roll and said that it no longer offers the Windows Sentinel software, which is a clone of the DMS Clarity Suite.

According to InfoWorld, Kennedy got sacked and it looks like Devil Mountain might be going down the tubes as well. How Kennedy kept the gig at InfoWorld for so long is puzzling as well. He claimed in October, “the savvy readers and unflappable editors of InfoWorld” were responsible for shaping Windows 7. What kind of an editor would let that post see the light of day?

What is more interesting is that there are probably dozens just like him at a number of well recognized publications who either have no disclosure or intentionally vague disclosures of their business relationships. Kennedy won’t be the last one to get stung by the lack of disclosure.