Wal-Mart's surveillance practice are being scrutinized since Bruce Gabbard blew the whistle on some of the company's intelligence gathering practices.
Introduction
Email and phone tapping, anti-Wal-Mart group infiltration, and personal watchdogs globe-trotting to spy on employees, were exposed as techniques of Wal-Mart’s Research, Threat, and Response Team.
Bruce Gabbard, a former employee of Wal-mart, revealed the activities of the corporate intelligence department in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in early April. Since then Wal-Mart’s Research, Threat, and Response team has itself been placed under public surveillance.
Here is a list of the events leading up to the scandal.
Intelligence Policy
In 2003, former CIA and FBI operative, Kenneth Senser, is hired by Wal-Mart to lead the internal security department.
September 2006 Gabbard begins taping conversations with New York Times reporter, Michael Barbaro, as a way to uncover a perceived information leak in the corporation.
In January, 2007, a Wal-Mart memo requests a report from the internal security department for a “potential threat assessment” of shareholders for the upcoming June 1 shareholders meeting.
Gabbard claims there was pressure from Senser to record messages and conversations in the months following.
Gabbard Fired and Information Released
In March, Bruce Gabbard is fired from Wal-Mart for tapping phone conversations between Barbaro and Wal-Mart employees.
Shareholder and Corporate Reaction
April 3, the Wall Street Journal reports an interview with Gabbard about his involvement in Wal-Mart intelligence operations.
April 9, the New York City comptroller, William C. Thompson, issues a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department demanding an investigation of Wal-Mart’s surveillance practices.
Thompson controls $400 million worth of Wal-Mart stock and believes his office to be one of the targets of surveillance. In the letter to the SEC, Thompson wrote that Wal-Mart’s surveillance techniques were “ill-considered and possibly illegal”.
Spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, Sarah Clark says, “Like most major corporations, it is our responsibility to have systems in place, including software systems, to monitor threats to our network, intellectual property and people.”
April 11, a gag order is placed on Gabbard ordering him to release “the names of all persons to whom he has transmitted, since January 15, 2007, any Wal-Mart information” to Wal-Mart attorneys.
April 21, Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart, writes publicly “Some of the most disturbing assertions” [made by Gabbard] “simply are not true.” Parts of Gabbard’s testimony are also publicly released.
Public Reaction
The Wal-Mart watch group, Wake-Up Wal-Mart, believes that it too is illegally being watched by the company. It has released a formal request for people to send letters to Congress demanding an investigation to the Wal-Mart spy scandal.
Russell Reynolds, chief executive officer of The Directorship Search Group Inc. said in an interview with the New York Times, “The idea of corporate, clandestine surveillance is repugnant, countercultural and destructive.”
Larry Ponemon, of the privacy and data protection research firm, The Ponemon Institute, said in an interview with Ecommerce magazine that “most of the surveillance tactics allegedly approved by Wal-Mart appear to be legal, including the dispatch of a spy to an anti-Wal-Mart gathering, since the meeting was public.” But also that surveilling vendors and consultants is “beyond the realm of what legitimate companies do”
SEE ALSO: History of Corporate Information Gathering
