Wal-Mart Has Its Lawyers Working Overtime

Two MILLION violations???? I wonder if this occurs in China,too?

Ah yes. My Jefferson Davis image logo for WalMart has such nationwide appeal and actual legal justifications.

WalMart- We don’t think of what we do as slavery of a plantation culture. But it is the next best thing!

ddrb your favorite kroger chain has numerous more violations and suits than wm does so shut your smartmouth piehole.

matt-ress: PROVE IT,WalMatt!

i dont need to prove anything besides i cant.i am a complete lying asshole.

“i am a complete lying asshole. ~m att hew vantress

This may be the first truthful and accurate thing I’ve seen vantress post.

You’re not going to get any disagreement from us, MV.

...WalMatt...

I like it, Double D, but you forgot the asssss.....asterisk! *

that is not my posting screwed you are too stupid to realize that someone is pretending to be me.you can tell me by the tone of my posts.screwed you are the biggest full of shit liar on here.all my points have merit that you can not debate.like all your favorite stores buying and importing from the same chinese slaveshops wm does.you cant answer why you are so quiet on that and why you nitpick everything wm does but have no problem with all your favorite high cost stores doing the same things.ddrb i dont have to prove shit i have my sources and know many current kroger employees,managers and numerous ex managers unlike you so i know my stuff very well thank you.

ok it was assholes like me that betrayed america and bought all that chinese stuff.i am addicted to cheap crap and demand that everyone buy it only at walmart.you may think i am an unamerican asshole but that is only part of the story.i love being poor and without benefits and just really stupid and full of shit on here.i hate quality stuff and good paying jobs because i cant get either at walmart so shut your piehole you hypocrite loser.btw did i mention i am a complete asshole?

...did i mention i am a complete asshole?

Not directly, but some of the rest of us have said it from time to time, SVD, er, I mean “m att hew"…

bbrd,

OMG, now SDV thinks he is Matt, I think those drugs he uses have given him split personalities, we’ll have to start calling him “Syble” for his multiple identities!!

...“Syble”...

You never get anything quite right, do you RDS?

In the land of the night, the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead.”—Egyptian Book of the Dead

The origin of bbrd and RDS etc…

A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room
By MICHAEL BARBARO
The New York Times

“The war room staff arrives at Wal-Mart’s headquarters, a short drive from a nearby corporate apartment where they live, by 7 every morning. The group works out of an old conference room on the second floor, christened Action Alley, the same name Wal-Mart gives to the wide, circular aisle that runs around its stores.”

Why Wal-Mart is still one down and dirty corporation

THE WAR ROOM. On the second floor of the mother ship in Bentonville, Wal-Mart executives have set up a war room, modeled on political campaigns. As in the world of roughhouse politics, the corporate war room exists to attack opponents, plant puff pieces in the media, generate fake “third party” groups that give a false sense of public support for the company, etc.

In 2005 Wal-Mart hired Edelman, a huge PR/political firm, to run the war room, and Edelman dispatched its top Washington operatives to Bentonville. Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan’s image maker, was brought in, as were former top political henchmen of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, plus George W’s 2004 political director. Staffers live in a corporate apartment near headquarters and report at 7 a.m. to the war room, known as Action Alley, where they work in tandem with Wal- Mart’s director of corporate communications, a former political strategist for the Tobacco Institute.

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/997

“Wal-Mart corporate culture is parsimonious except in the matter of executive compensation, but, according to a source, the company has been paying Edelman roughly ten million dollars annually to renovate its reputation.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/02/070402fa_fact_goldberg?currentPage=1

You don’t think real people would spend their time day after day, hour after hour, patrolling the internet praising WalMart with lies and total bullshit do you?

America hates WalMart and only goes there out of desperation and as a last resort. The anti-WalMart movement is the natural American expression that worries WalMart a great deal.

And it should.

“In terms of PR strategies, Rubel last year told BusinessWeek that the first job for companies is to monitor the blogs to see what people are saying about them. The next step is to think of damage-control strategies. And when blogs attack, he says companies have to learn to track what blogs are talking about, pinpoint influential bloggers, and figure out how to...”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15319926/

WalMart- We spent at least $10 million trying to fool Americans on the internet.

...we’ll have to start calling him “Syble” for his multiple identities!!

While we watch his head spin sooooo fast…

Message to SVD

According to the greatest newspaper in the world, The New York Times, the WM war room from 3 years ago shut-down a while back.

In other words, while you’ve been running your trap, WM got “out of the business”.

That said, what’s WMW’s excuse, these days?  I see the blog is still on life-support (with lots of help from questionable folk like yourself), cranking-out anything possible to prove their point.

Now, you wouldn’t call the NYT a liar, would you?

Thanks for the actually ‘cited’ NYT documentation bbrd, nobody at WalMart’s ‘war room’ would want to deceive the press or anybody else now would they? Besides, it is self evident that the WalMart/Edelman bullshit blogging fakes never got ‘out of the business’ at all.

I understand that you are embarrassed for lying to America and flooding the internet with fraudulent persons, fake stories, puff pieces and a false sense of public support for WalMart. You got caught. Why should anyone believe you guys ever stopped? Again it is overwhelmingly self-evident that you frauds continue to lie to the American public on behalf of WalMart.

Wal-Mart / Edelman, Part Two: Will the Real Bloggers Please Stand Up?

O’Dwyer’s has more revelations about the multifaceted fakery engaged in by Wal-Mart and its PR firm, Edelman. Edelman staffers have been posing as “grassroots” bloggers on two Wal-Mart websites, for the Working Families for Wal-Mart front group and paidcritics....

The paid bloggers are Edelman’s Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5317

WalMart- We still deceive America on the internet with our ‘war room’ fakes, frauds, shills, trolls etc etc...see all or any of the pro-WalMart drivel propaganda posted here by bbrd, RDS, ‘mary’, DAVE, m att hew vantress etc etc for WalMart public image aroma stink therapy.

I see the blog is still on life-support...

I want to thank all the “questionable folk” that took the time to post comments. As you can see we have a tendency to slip into personal attacks. You’ve only posted here once and already you’re being accused of being ‘fake’.

If you don’t care to slog through this on a regular basis, at least drop in once in awhile and give us your 2 ¢’s (before we flatline :o).

“Besides, it is self evident that the WalMart/Edelman bullshit blogging fakes never got ‘out of the business’ at all. “

Really SDV?  I love to see you any factual information to back that statement up.  I’m also really looking forward to any information you have that links me to the infamous “Walmart War Room” let alone set foot in the state of Arkansas.  I won’t hold my breath.

Those hallucinogenic drugs really have taken a toll on that brain of yours.

“Besides, it is self evident that the WalMart/Edelman bullshit blogging fakes never got ‘out of the business’ at all. “
‘mary’ trying to rescue bbrd again-

Why are you so defensive ‘mary’/bbrd about WalMart/Edelman ‘war room’ propaganda postings here at this site… especially with the hundreds of fake WalMart ass kissing internet postings you have made?

WalMart- Now go out there and lie to America!! And try not to get caught any more.

Those hallucinogenic drugs really have taken a toll on that brain of yours.

“There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.” ~ Timothy Leary

Two out of three ain’t bad! :o)

SDV,

“Again it is overwhelmingly self-evident that you frauds continue to lie to the American public on behalf of WalMart.”

Sorry, but we don’t have to LIE, the millions of Wal-Mart customers and employees can SEE for themselves ‘firsthand’, at their local Wal-Mart store and make their decisions from there!!

See, it all has to do with “perception” in different sections of the country!!  For example: To someone in the south, a house that costs $400,000.00 would be quite expensive, but to someone in California or New York that price might be average or rather low!!  Same thing with wage levels!!  It has to do with “Cost of Living” in the area!!  So, I guess someone making $35.00 an hour, would ‘perceive’ that someone else making less than that, must be getting underpaid!!

Here are some questions for you, “If Wal-Mart pays so little, how do they get people to work for them when a store first opens?” and “If Wal-Mart’s prices are not low, how do you explain the millions of people who shop there?” and “If so many people hate Wal-Mart and don’t shop there, how can they put others ‘out of business’ when they move into a town?” and “Why would people work for those wages for Years? (especially if they have to live in their cars, like you say)”!!

You are the one lying here!!

Ken,

You are right about one thing. Readers here get more than a healthy dose of red herrings and ad hominem arguments from the posts here.

In fact, I’m not sure SDV posts anything that isn’t a personal attack or an attempt to change the subject. Smart people see through it.

You Really Should Stop By More, Someone

On second thought… don’t.

“...a healthy dose of red herrings...”

You must be referring to RDS’ “contributions” to this blog.

Someone,

One can lead a horse (or, in this case, a herd of jackasses) to water, but making ‘em drink is another story…

Have not been here for a while,but see that when some one does not understand the topic they just start personal attacks when are you all going to be come adults.

The topic should be even Wal-Mart are they going to be able to sustain these multi-billion dollar law suits that they seem to me losing, and the big one has had to be heard Duke vs WalMart.

Will they have to raise prices on products are sell off, are
they going to get wise like Star Bucks they know now that every new Store they opened it took 28% away from one Store.

WallStreet: Welcome back. Hope you won’t stay away so long this time.

Smart people see through it.

What about people that think they’re smart?

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey. ~ John Ruskin

We started out as American workers. Then we became ‘consumers’. Now we’re “lawful prey”.

Ken;

[We started out as American workers. Then we became ‘consumers’]

Did you ever stop to think that without consumers, there is no need for workers?  Also, with the population growing, in order to create more jobs for workers, there is a need for more consuming, not less.  Notice, how as less people buy cars, more auto workers keep getting laid off.  If people were to STOP consuming, soon everybody would be out of work.

But, then again, I guess we could always take SanDiegoView’s advice and have the rich people support us all, until they run out of money.

Charles: I also notice that with the accelerated consumption,the importance of manufacturing increases...although you do not mention this. We do not manufacture as much as we once did -Why don’t you address that issue?You only talk about consuming,not producing.

Did you ever stop to think that without consumers, there is no need for workers?

Without workers they would be nothing to consume. I’ll make you a deal, Charles, you consume less so I can work less and we’ll both go fishing.

...with the population growing...

No limits, right, Charles? No limit to the population the planet can support. No limit to the amount of carbon we can pour into the atmosphere. No limit to ‘economic growth’.

“We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads.... It includes… the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.

And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials… the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America—except whether we are proud to be Americans” ~ Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968

Ken V: Thank you for that quote. The Free Market fans would be well served to avail themselves of these words of wisdom.

ddrb;

[I also notice that with the accelerated consumption,the importance of manufacturing increases...although you do not mention this.]

Manufacturing is increasing, just not where you would like it.  You seem to forget, that the U.S. is moving out of the Industial Age, therefore manufacturing HERE would be decreasing.

Ken;

[Without workers they would be nothing to consume. I’ll make you a deal, Charles, you consume less so I can work less and we’ll both go fishing.]

Sounds good to me.  The problem is, where will the workers get the money to pay thier bills?

[No limits, right, Charles? No limit to the population the planet can support. No limit to the amount of carbon we can pour into the atmosphere. No limit to ‘economic growth’.]

What limits?  How do you propose to STOP population growth?  Would you go for China’s method of setting limits on the number of children people can have?  How about putting a stop on medical treatments that allow people to live longer?  Under our current system, anytme people have more children than just their replacements, you are going to have population growth continue to multiply.  Things like war, disease, fatal accidents and acts of nature, somewhat help to control population growth, but, it’s not enough, people would have to take control and repeat the zero population growth system that followed the ‘baby boom’.  Unless that happens, you are right, there are NO limits and someday in the not to distant future, humans will grow themselves into extinction.

...humans will grow themselves into extinction.

I couldn’t agree more… or at least humans will grow themselves into a mass die-off. My point is hyper-consumerism adds fuel to the fire and speeds the process along, and Wal-Mart is the main proponent of hyper-consumerism.

There is a fundamental and inevitable conflict between the interests of corporations, to whom wages are a cost, and most human beings, to whom wages are a means of survival. Nowhere in this society is that conflict better illustrated than at your local Wal-Mart. Most of its employees and most of its customers depend on their paychecks to pay the bills. But to keep its shareholders in the money, the company depends on hyper-consumption.

Wal-Mart could not survive in a town with good public transportation, where families all grow their own vegetables, cut one another’s hair, sew their own clothes, and borrow and lend tools. Like all retailers, it has to move vast quantities of merchandise at an ever-increasing pace.

<a >link</a>

“ Dr. David Hopper, agricultural expert:

“The world’s food problem does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the environment. The limitations on abundance are to be found in social and political structures of nations and in the economic relations among them.  The successful husbandry of that resource depends on the will and actions of men.” Hopper pronounces “world fascism” very politely.

Francis Moore Lappe of the Institute for Food and Development Policy maintains:

“If the cause of hunger is neither scarcity of food, nor scarcity of land, we’ve come to see that it’s a scarcity of democracy. That may sound rather contrived, because in the West we tend to think of democracy as a political concept. But democracy is really a principle of accountability; in other words, those making the decisions must be accountable to those who are affected by them. Once we understand hunger as a scarcity of democracy, what we are saying is that from the village level to the level of international commerce, fewer and fewer people are making decisions, and more and more anti-democratic structures are being entrenched. This is the cause of hunger.” And, it should be repeated, the cause of overpopulation. “~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~J.Keith

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken;

[Wal-Mart could not survive in a town with good public transportation, where families all grow their own vegetables, cut one another’s hair, sew their own clothes, and borrow and lend tools]

You are probably right, but, it is hard to find hardly anybody in America who would go along with those suggestions.  Most people today, are too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses and in most cities, most people don’t even know who their neighbors are.  Americans are spoiled and would be unwilling to give up their cars for public transportation.  And cooking from scratch, is almost a lost art, pre-prepared micro-wave food and Dine Out fast food are the fare of the age.  People who think they NEED to buy Big Screen T.V.’s, boats, Sea Doo’s, snowmobiles, 4 wheelers, etc., are hardly in the mood to go back to the ‘simple life’ of ‘Little House on the Prairie’.

The problems of pollution, hyper-consumption, population, etc. are all self-correcting. The only question is who, if anyone, will still be left standing?

SDV: The New York Times was not the only venue to report on the War Room. Others include WSJ and Blogging Stocks. Here’s an example:~~~~~~~~~~"Inside the Bat Cave: Paranoid Wal-Mart’s spying scheme “.......................

Being the world’s biggest retailer doesn’t make Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. feel secure. No sir! According to the Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Wal-Mart spies on reporters, critics, stockholders and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

And you thought the US was paranoid with its Patriot Act that lets librarians track your web searches and its Total Information Awareness system. Wal-Mart makes Hewlett Packard Company, Inc. which spied on its board of directors to detect press leaks—look like a chump!

Wal-Mart’s spying operation is run by a 20-person Threat Research and Analysis Group from the Bat Cave—a separate glass-enclosed structure which its employees access by holding the palm of their hands to a biometric reader. Here are some of the choice details of Wal-Mart’s spying scheme:

Protestor infiltration. Wal-Mart hooked up a wireless microphone to a long-haired employee who infiltrated an anti-Wal-Mart group—Up Against the Wal’s—to determine if it planned protests at Wal-Mart’s annual meeting.
Vendor porn tracking. Wal-Mart used Defense Department monitoring equipment that detected the degree of flesh-tone on a viewed Internet image, and alerted monitors that a vendor sharing Wal-Mart networks was viewing pornography.
Employee spying. Wal-Mart managers receive a list of email addresses and phone numbers with which their employees have communicated, and a list of Web sites visited. Wal-Mart limits Internet access, blocking social-networking and video sites. It also views emails that employees sent to or received from private accounts such as Hotmail or Gmail whenever the employees were hooked into the Wal-Mart computer network.
Consultant monitoring. Suspecting that the leaks of confidential memos might have come from McKinsey employees who had been working on a health-care project at Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, AK headquarters at the time of a leaked memo, Wal-Mart’s security experts monitored McKinsey Internet activities.

Shareholder resolution threat assessment. The Bat Cave also conducted “potential threat assessment” of those submitting proposals to its June shareholder meeting, particularly those whose resolutions Wal-Mart was trying to block. The list included proposals from a Boerne, TX, religious group; the New York City Controller’s office; and Sydney Kay, an 85-year-old, retired science teacher who submitted a resolution requiring that board nominees own at least $5 million in Wal-Mart stock, and his 93-year-old sister Hilda Kaplis. (Kaplis sounds particularly threatening.)

Wal-Mart sounds like one sick puppy to me. I think it needs psychological counseling! Do you really want to support a company with that view of the world?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Hewlett Packard or Wal-Mart. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~WMW,April ‘07~~~Note: bbrd has made past reference to hanging about in the rafters ,watching what goes on, Isn’t that what bats do?

Employee spying. Wal-Mart managers receive a list of email addresses and phone numbers with which their employees have communicated, and a list of Web sites visited. Wal-Mart limits Internet access, blocking social-networking and video sites. It also views emails that employees sent to or received from private accounts such as Hotmail or Gmail whenever the employees were hooked into the Wal-Mart computer network.

I knew you were an older gal, but you obviously haven’t been in the typical workplace over the past 9-10 years…

There’s this little 21st century thing called the “user agreement”, which states (regardless of industry) that if you use your employer’s IT network/assets, you fully consent to be monitored.

And for the record, a lot of employers out there actively block websites such as mySpace and YouTube, among others.

WalMart Watch
Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Washington, D.C. – Wal-Mart Watch today released the following statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that Wal-Mart collected the personal vacation photos of a Wal-Mart Watch employee for surveillance purposes. The statement is attributable to Wal-Mart Watch communications director Nu Wexler:

“Wal-Mart’s actions are paranoid, childish and desperate. Spying on reporters and critics won’t repair the grave reputational issues plaguing the company. CIA and FBI agents can’t fix Wal-Mart’s health care problem, and their thug-like tactics only confirm their critics’ charges. Wal-Mart should stop playing with spy toys and take the criticism of their business model seriously. The success of the company depends on it.”~~~~~~~~~~~~WMW~~~~Evidently this went WELL beyond the scope of spying on WalMart employees using company equipment and web assets.

The Wall Street Journal story is available on their website. The full text is below:

Inside Wal-Mart’s ‘Threat Research’ Operation

By Ann Zimmerman and Gary McWilliams
April 4, 2007; Page B1

The Wal-Mart Stores Inc. worker fired last month for intercepting a reporter’s phone calls says he was part of a larger, sophisticated surveillance operation that included snooping not only on employees, but also on critics, stockholders and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

As part of the surveillance, the retailer last year had a long-haired employee infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company’s annual meeting, according to Bruce Gabbard, the fired security worker, who worked in Wal-Mart’s Threat Research and Analysis Group. The company also deployed cutting-edge monitoring systems made by a supplier to the Defense Department that allowed it to capture and record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network. The systems’ high-tech wizardry could detect the degree of flesh-tone on a viewed Internet image, and alerted monitors that a vendor sharing Wal-Mart networks was viewing pornography.

Wal-Mart has since disconnected some systems amid an internal investigation of the group’s activities earlier this year, according to an executive in the security-information industry.

The revelations by Mr. Gabbard, many of which were confirmed by other former Wal-Mart employees and security-industry professionals, provide a rare window into the retail giant’s internal operations and mindset. The company fired Mr. Gabbard, a 19-year employee, last month for unauthorized recording of calls to and from a New York Times reporter and for intercepting pager messages. Wal-Mart conducted an internal investigation of Mr. Gabbard and his group’s activities, fired his supervisor and demoted a vice president over the group as well.

Mr. Gabbard says he recorded the calls on his own because he felt pressured to stop embarrassing leaks. But he says most of his spying activities were sanctioned by superiors. “I used to joke that Wal-Mart paid me to be paranoid and they got their money’s worth,” Mr. Gabbard says.

Wal-Mart says it permitted recording employee calls “only in compelling circumstances and with written permission from the legal department.” But because pager messages were sent over a frequency that was not secure, Mr. Gabbard inadvertently intercepted pages from non-Wal-Mart employees as well. A U.S. attorney is investigating whether any laws were violated as a result of the phone and pager intercepts.

(continued)

The security operation and its surveillance technology “seems Orwellian,” says Robert K. West, founder and chief executive of Echelon One, a security research and consulting firm composed largely of former corporate chief information officers. Other activities, like infiltrating critics’ groups, went “beyond the scope of the typical information security organization,” he says.

Wal-Mart declined to give details about its surveillance activities. A company spokeswoman, Sarah Clark, characterized its security operations as normal: “Like most major corporations, it is our corporate responsibility to have systems in place, including software systems, to monitor threats to our network and our intellectual property so we can protect our sensitive business information,” she said. “It is also standard practice to provide physical and information security for our corporate events and for our board of directors and senior executives.”

According to several former Wal-Mart employees, the company’s roughly 20-person Threat Research and Analysis Group hunts computer hackers through cyberspace, trolls colleagues’ emails looking for misbehavior or proprietary-data theft and tries to plug damaging information leaks. Members work on the third floor of the Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark., technology offices. They enter a separate glass-enclosed structure by holding the palm of their hand to a biometric reader that grants them access to a dimly lit work area. Colleagues call it the “Bat Cave.”

The group “is no longer operating in the same manner that it did prior to the discovery of the unauthorized recording of telephone conversations,” said Wal-Mart’s Ms. Clark. “...We have strengthened our practices and protocols.”~~~~~~~~~WSJ/WMW

ddrb,

This is only a very small taste of the crap WalMart pulls inside the United States. Try this-

Over the past 10 years, the NLRB or its administrative law judges have determined in at least 11 cases that Wal-Mart or individual Wal-Mart stores were engaging in unfair labor practices to prevent unionization, according to the agency’s website.

An excerpt from one of the decisions against Wal-Mart gives a sense of the extent of the violations:
The Respondent, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall:
1. Cease and desist from

(c) Engaging in surveillance of the union activities of employees.

http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13796

And this little item-
According to a 2004 report in The Nation, stores even administer personality tests to applicants to screen out potential union sympathizers.

Or-

This item from the Los Angeles Business Journal by Anthony Effinger-

“Jon Lehman, a former store manager who is with the union now, said Wal-Mart has a 60-by-60 foot room at its headquarters in which two dozen people with headsets monitor calls and e-mails from stores to see whether anyone is talking about union organizing.”

Or-

“David Harrison is Wal-Mart’s first manager of “threat assessments and collection, analysis and dissemination.”
The company maintains personal data – names, addresses, social security numbers – on its 1.6 million current employees; millions of additional former employees; and 47 million members of its Sam’s Club operations. It keeps records of anyone who has tried to use fraudulent checks or filed a claim against Wall-Mart; anyone who uses a Wal-Mart’s pharmacy; as well as the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), license plate number and home address of any motorist who has had his automobile’s oil changed at a Wal-Mart, said Harrison.

http://www.gsnmagazine.com

Or-

This item appeared to illustrate some of the additional analysis WalMart does on customer profiling-

A recent New York Times story ("What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers’ Behavior”, 11/14/2004) shows this trend extending to general merchandise retailing. The article documents the massive amount of data Wal-Mart collects on customers, workers, and suppliers. This allows the company to track item sales across the country on a real-time basis, to perform analyses of data, in-store inventory, and so on. It can measure the effect on sales of minor changes in price and it can see how well a promotional campaign or new product does hour by hour. It gives the company an in-depth understanding of customer shopping patterns. It also uses the data to discipline suppliers whose truck arrive even an hour late to a store or whose sales on specific items does not meet targets.

Pretty impressive and pretty scary, depending on your point of view, and certainly one of the big reasons for Wal-Mart’s success. The company is getting more and more detailed profiles of its customers and their behavior. Easily available data means they can match credit card numbers and other information to determine where each customer’s lives, the value of their house, their income bracket, the car they drive, their family status, and so on. From your purchases they can know what size pants you wear, what books you read and DVDs you watch, how much junk food you buy, and, if you use their in-store drugstores, what medicines you take. This same intelligence gathering is catching on at other major retailers, from supermarkets like Safeway, to general merchandisers like Target, to electronics retailers like Best Buy, Pretty chilling.

http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2004/11/27.html

WalMart- We share our infomation with insurance companies and the Department of Defense about your meds and if your kids are shopping here as economic conscription targets for the military. Data on fired employees now eligible for military recruitment.

Fired Wal-Mart worker claims surveillance ops: report
Wed Apr 4, 2007 12:44am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Wal-Mart Stores Inc. worker fired last month for intercepting a reporter’s phone calls says he was part of a larger, sophisticated surveillance operation that included snooping not only on employees, but also on critics, stockholders and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., The Wall Street Journal reported.

As part of the surveillance, the retailer last year had a long-haired employee infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company’s annual meeting, according to Bruce Gabbard, the fired security worker, the Journal said.

The company also deployed cutting-edge monitoring systems made by a supplier to the Defense Department that allowed it to capture and record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network, the Journal said.

“When Wal-Mart fired me and went public with it, I felt it was character assassination. They were trying to make me look like I was a whack job and they were taking the moral high ground,” Mr. Gabbard says.

Wal-Mart’s union-backed critics, whom Gabbard identified as among the surveillance targets, accused the retailer of being “paranoid, childish and desperate.”

On Friday, Wal-Mart sued Mr. Gabbard, accusing him of leaking trade secrets in articles published in The Wall Street Journal. The suit in Benton County circuit court said Mr. Gabbard possessed “highly confidential information about Wal-Mart’s strategic planning,” an apparent reference to Project Red. A judge granted a temporary restraining order barring Mr. Gabbard from disclosing confidential information.

Mr. Gabbard, a 44-year-old Marine Corps veteran and former reserve deputy sheriff, spent 19 years at Wal-Mart, the last few in the Threat Research and Assessment Group. The team hunted computer hackers outside the company and regularly searched emails and monitored phones looking for misbehavior or leaks. It worked in a highly secure area nicknamed the Bat Cave.

“In a recent email, Mr. Gabbard said he was “going underground” as a result of the furor created by that article.”

-------------------------------

Total information awareness (TIA) for business applications. They profile you as a consumer of goods and services. They sell that information to insurance companies etc etc and share information with many government agencies such as Dept. of Labor, Dept. of Commerce, Dept. of Defense, FBI etc etc. They do extensive analysis of demographics and cultural attitudes and propagandize according to a suckers identification software program basically to southerners now. People who are morally aware of WalMart’s business practices don’t shop there. The rest are easy prey.

Remember the Julie Roehm e-mail wiretapping/surveillance jawhile back by WalMart on her outside of their system. They knew about her private e-mails outside of the WalMart servers.

“Wal-Mart’s evidence included a personal e-mail between the two co-workers that Roehm claims was exchanged outside of the company’s e-mail servers. In general, e-mails exchanged over office computers are considered company property, but those sent through employees’ personal computers are deemed private.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2851118&page=1

An employer may not, however, monitor communications of a purely personal nature. See, e.g., Deal v. Spears, 980 F.2d
1153 (8th Cir. 1992)

The wiretapping surveillance of Michael Barbaro of the New York Times by WalMart was not about theft or national security. This was illegal political wiretapping in violation of , 18 U.S.C. § 2510-2520.

Limitations on Electronic Surveillance

Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended by the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 U.S.C. § 2510-2520, commonly referred to as the Federal Wiretapping Act, generally prohibits the interception, disclosure or intentional use of wire, oral or electronic communications, including those which occur in the workplace. A wire communication or the attempted interception of same, is one that carries a person’s oral communication over a wire cable or like facility such as a phone call. The definition of a wire communication includes the “electronic storage of such communication.” See 18 U.S.C.§2510(1).

An “oral communication” is an oral communication made in circumstances indicating the individual uttering the communication expected it would be private. See 18 U.S.C. § 2510(2). Private conversations between two individuals are “oral communications.” See Dorris v. Absher, 959 F. Supp. 813 (M.D. Tenn. 1997), rev’d on other grounds, 1999 WL 349955 (6th Cir., June 2,1999)(employees of county office had reasonable expectation of privacy in conversations taperecorded by office director in the office, and therefore such conversations were “oral communications” entitled to protection under federal wiretapping statute).

The Act provides a civil cause of action to anyone whose communications are unlawfully intercepted. See 18 U.S.C. § 2520. Successful plaintiffs may recover actual or statutory damages($10,000 or $100 a day for each day of violation, whichever is greater), punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. The Act also makes the unlawful interception of an oral, wire, or electronic communication, or the attempted interception of same, a crime punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.

WalMart- We shot ourselves in the morality long ago. We are desperate to appear ethical to anyone still foolish enough to believe our reputation is recoverable. We indeed continue to show the clear evidence of being ‘love of money’ psychopaths, “paranoid, childish and desperate.”

SDV:Have you had the time to give a cursory review to “The Changing Images of Man"-SRI(Stanford Research Institute)?BTW, your articles posted here are quite intruiging-thank you.

ddrb,

I apologize for the repeat of the 4/4/2007 item. There is additional material included on Bruce Gabbard and his response to WalMart arrogance and denials when they fired him, accused him and then censored him.

ddrb,

I have a copy at 283 pages and have not had the time yet. Economic Man: Servant to Industrial Metaphors looks to be an interesting chapter. The entire paper actually. Your materials are proving a great addition to my reading. Any idea where Ken got the RFK quote on the sterility of economic numbers?

SDV: From RDS? Just kidding. Sorry,I don’t. But I’d like to know,too! Ken,can you elucidate for us? (Thanking you in advance.) BTW,SDV, one word -Tavistock.