Well, if it was good enough for HP, why not Wal-Mart? Corporate espionage is an intrinsic part of the business landscape, for better or worse. News organizations like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are obviously part of that landscape. Wal-Mart seems to be a little heavy handed in their tactics, as you would expect.
Wal-Mart Tapings Spark Probe - WSJ.com : Federal investigators are probing a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employee's electronic interception of telephone conversations and text messages of other employees and outsiders, including a New York Times Co. reporter.People familiar with the issue said the criminal probe targets an employee who was searching for the identities of those who had leaked embarrassing company memos to the newspaper and others. Wal-Mart has been the subject of articles by the Times and others for its health-care, wage and benefit policies.
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The technician, who Ms. Williams wouldn't identify further, had programmed the company's computers to search for calls originating from or directed to a Times reporter and to record those calls. A handful of other calls also were recorded, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman said. While she wouldn't name the reporter, people familiar with the issue said Times staff reporter Michael Barbaro was the primary target of the interceptions.Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. personally apologized to Janet Robinson, chief executive of the New York Times, in a telephone call yesterday. The spokeswoman also personally contacted the Times reporter to deliver the news, she said.
In a statement, the Times said: “We are troubled by what appears to be inappropriate taping of our reporter's conversations. At this point we don't know many of the key facts such as what the purpose of this taping was and the extent, if any, to which the action was authorized.”
The effort captured calls for a four-month period beginning in September and continuing until January of this year, Ms. Williams said. She added the technician used wireless equipment brought into the retailer's headquarters to capture text messages from personal digital assistants and pagers within a several mile radius of its Bentonville headquarters. She described the wireless equipment as the employee's personal gear.
Those text messages, from a variety of sources, were stored on company-owned computers and later scanned for unidentified “key words” that the employee had designated. Wal-Mart declined to identify the words.
Apple and Steve Jobs do some counter-espionage work too, but (at least seem) more deft, and aren't under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department as far as I know.
From Wired:
I was talking recently with an ex-Apple staffer who worked high up at the company for many years, often closely with CEO Steve Jobs.The programmer, who asked not to be named, was convinced the Asteroid product was invented, a figment of Jobs' imagination dreamed up to find the source of leaks -- the old “canary trap.”
It's an espionage trick used to find the source of a leak: Feed each person in the organization a slightly different piece of information, and see who sings. The name comes from the novels of Tom Clancy; British spies called the tactic a “barium meal,” after a drink given before stomach X-rays to illuminate the digestive system.
“That's how devious they are,” the programmer said. “They wouldn't do it with a real product. There's too many details and too many legitimate ways information could leak out. But with a phony product, Steve knows what information went where. The proof is that the product hasn't come out -- and still hasn't.”
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Take the iPod name. The only department in Apple that knew the name of the iPod ahead of its unveiling was the graphics department, because it designed the product packaging and advertising materials. Everyone else referred to its code name, “Dulcimer.”And then there are the rumors of hardware prototypes disguised in big polycarbonate boxes to hide their final shape. One ex-Apple executive told me that the hardware is put in big boxes to make it easy to debug, just like a Radio Shack project box. It doesn't hurt that no one can see what the final product will look like -- especially when prototypes are shipped to outside partners for testing or development -- but that's not their primary purpose.
Some of Apple's secrecy measures get a little extreme. When Jobs hired Ron Johnson from Target to head up Apple's retail effort, he asked him to use an alias for several months lest anyone get wind the Mac maker was working on retail stores. Johnson was listed on Apple's phone directory under a false name, which he used to check in to hotels.
Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, said he's not allowed to tell his wife or kids what he's working on. His teenage son, an avid iPod fan, was desperate to know what his dad was cooking up at work, but daddy had to keep his trap shut because he might get canned.
Even Jobs himself is subject to his own strictures: He took an iPod hi-fi boombox home for testing, but kept it covered with a black cloth. And he listened to it only when no one else was around.
Don't forget Microsoft's spy (allegedly) being fed archaic code by Apple.
Technorati Tags: Apple, surveillance, Wal-Mart
