Spying at Wal-Mart: Human nature run amuck?

07.03.2007
Yesterday, several news outlets released stories regarding the termination of a Wal-Mart "systems technician" related to inappropriate monitoring of communications.

Because I used to work in Wal-Mart's IT Security department, news of the phone-taping/eavesdropping scandal reached me just minutes before the story broke. I remember thinking, "this simply can't be happening."

Let me back up for a minute. I worked in Wal-Mart's IT Security team for a number of years and am familiar with the people at the center of this story. To me, Wal-Mart is not a faceless behemoth company. Rather, it is all about faces and relationships. You know -- good people just trying to do their jobs. I think that in many ways, Wal-Mart gets a bum rap and that the public assumes that Wal-Mart is run by a horde of evil drones seeking world domination. This eavesdropping situation will, no doubt, be used to set forth or reinforce such ideas.

So, this is my attempt to make sense of what may have happened. You should note, however, that I have not spoken to anyone at Wal-Mart regarding this. The ideas set forth here are purely based on my perspective as someone who used to work in Wal-Mart's security group and with the people involved.

Human nature run amuck?

As I said earlier, I am reasonably sure that there is no Dr. Evil at work here. Instead, I believe that this incident is a case of human nature running amuck -- a legitimate investigation that got out of hand.