I just got an email from Wal-Mart Watch about WM’s spying and surveillance operations. This is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable! Read the email below:

Dear Friend,

Be careful where you post your vacation photos. They might end up in Wal-Mart’s hands.

Last year I took a vacation from my job at Wal-Mart Watch, and when I got home, I privately posted my photos online for family members to see. Later, a Wal-Mart technician collected my personal vacation photos in an effort to identify me during a trip to Bentonville, Arkansas.

Spooky, huh? There’s a lot more to this story. Click here to take our quiz and learn more about Wal-Mart’s spy operation:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/quiz

A recent series of stories in the Wall Street Journal uncovered a covert security division within Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters called “Threat Research.”  This team, which works out of a secret “dimly lit area,” conducts surveillance on Wal-Mart employees, consultants, reporters and critics. People like you and me.

This isn’t the plot of a spy movie — this is real life. And while many large companies have internal security operations designed to root out fraud and theft, security experts agree that Wal-Mart’s “Threat Research” goes well beyond the scope of typical security. One expert even called it “Orwellian.”

Why is Wal-Mart, which faces grave reputational problems, hiring former CIA and FBI agents to deal with these issues? We’re offering legitimate, substantive feedback on how to make Wal-Mart a better corporate citizen, and they respond by spying on us?

To learn all the details, click here and take our quiz:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/quiz

The fact is, former CIA and FBI agents are not going to fix Wal-Mart’s public relations problems. Neither will the millions of dollars that Wal-Mart spends each month on fancy PR consultants.

If Wal-Mart wants to protect its image, it should spend its money on higher wages and affordable health care for its employees — not on elaborate acts of espionage. That’s what Wal-Mart Watch is fighting for, and what Wal-Mart is going through such great lengths to prevent.

Find out more about Wal-Mart’s misguided priorities:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/quiz

I don’t know what my vacation photos have to do with Wal-Mart’s security, but the fact that they snatched them shows just how far they’ll go to silence their critics.

Sincerely,

Nu Wexler