TIPSHEET: Think that conversation from your office phone is private? Think again

Vanderbilt professor says Wal-Mart case calls attention to employer’s right to eavesdrop on employee calls.

News reports that a Wal-Mart employee taped telephone conversations between a New York Times reporter and other Wal-Mart employees brings to light the practice of corporations who require employees to consent to company surveillance of calls made through company systems and equipment. Wal-Mart officials have said the employee in the recently reported case was not authorized to make the recordings and added that company policy restricts monitoring of employee communications to instances in which fraud or criminal activity is suspected. However, that policy is not a requirement. “We know from recent surveys by groups such as the American Management Association and others that many firms do routinely monitor employee communications that employees might think is private, without cause of suspicion,” says Bruce Barry, professor of management and sociology. “This means workers, especially in the private sector, work under the threat that their expressive activity is being watched, which has the effect of chilling free expression that might have nothing to do with the corporation, or that might involve whistleblowing regarding corporate misbehavior.”

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Empresa USA espía las comunicaciones de mexicanos (Spanish)

Intercepción de comunicación se podrá realizar si policia de USA o PGR lo ordenan. (AP)

5/3/2007 | EFE

El diario ‘El Centro’, que salió a circulación, denunció que una empresa de USA está supuestamente autorizada para intervenir todo tipo de comunicaciones que se efectúen en la red de telefonía de México.

El rotativo asegura que la compañía estadounidense Verint Technology Inc. tiene un contrato para escuchar conversaciones, leer correos electrónicos, navegar páginas de internet e intervenir llamadas de celular en cualquier parte de México si la policía federal de USA (FBI, en inglés) o a la Procuraduría General de la República de México (PGR) lo ordenan.El nuevo rotativo reproduce el anuncio del ganador de una licitación de ‘Intercepción de comunicaciones en México’ publicada en un sitio de internet del Departamento de Estado de USA y que fue adjudicada a Verint Technology.

Según el diario esta firma realizará sus actividades desde la sede de la Subprocuraduría de Investigaciones Especializadas en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), que depende de la PGR (fiscalía), desde el barrio capitalino de Guerrero.

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State Department funds Mexican wiretap system

By JACOB GOODWIN

With the help of the U.S. Government and a U.S.-based technology company, the Government of Mexico plans to install a communications interception system that would enable its federal investigations agency to monitor and record any landline, cellular or voice over IP telephone call made anywhere in Mexico, in an effort to thwart narcotics trafficking and terrorism.

On February 23, the U.S. State Department awarded a contract worth nearly $3 million to Verint Technology, Inc., of Melville, NY, to install the multi-faceted interception system for Mexico’s Agencia Federal de Investigacions, or AFI, which will include a monitoring center located at AFI’s headquarters in Mexico City.

“The telephone intercept system shall provide real-time interception, monitoring, and recording of phone calls made through TSPs [telephone service providers] and selected from a database of target phone numbers,” explained a statement of work posted online by the State Department’s bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs in late 2005, when this plan was first unveiled.

The database of targeted phone numbers will be able to accommodate as many as 8 million sessions, said the solicitation. It will allow AFI operators to monitor up to 60 calls plus four fax transmissions simultaneously.

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