WaPost: Wal-Mart Fires Worker Over Eavesdropping

This is off The Washington Post:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. today acknowledged that a systems technician recorded phone conversations without authorization between members of the company's public relations team and a reporter for The New York Times during a four-month period.

In addition, the nation's largest retailer said the technician intercepted text messages and pages, including communication that did not involve Wal-Mart associates.

Wal-Mart said it fired the technician today and has taken disciplinary action against two managers in response. It has notified the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, whose office said last week it would investigate the incidents. The company notified the newspaper earlier today.

The phone conversations were taped between September and January and were brought to light after a complaint from a Wal-Mart employee, the company said. It began an internal investigation on Jan. 11.

Wal-Mart said this afternoon that it does not condone the technician's actions and said they violated company policy.

"The company believes that these pager intercepts and the recordings of these telephone calls were wrong and has taken a number of actions to further strengthen our policies and controls," said Mona Williams, vice president of corporate communications.

There are a couple of things that worry me here on this story. First, it is the technician that was fired for this eavesdropping. Was the technician working on his own, or was he working under orders from a Wal-Mart manager? Because while the technician was fired for recording these conversations, only a "disciplinary action" was taken against two managers in this case. It makes me wonder whether the technician became the scapegoat to blame this eavesdropping mess on, and keep Wal-Mart management clean. The second thing that worries me is who else was being recorded between the Wal-Mart public relations team and journalists? If a couple of Wal-Mart managers and a technician was willing to secretly record the conversations of one NY Times reporter, then why not secretly record the conversations of other reporters? How many other public relations teams in big corporations are also involved in such activities?

Update: The New York Times reports that the technician was operating on his own in recording these phone calls, as according to Mona Williams, vice president of corporate communications.