From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Tue Jun 8 15:27:48 2010 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2010 12:27:48 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Grassroots groups aren't the only ones fighting Wal-Mart Message-ID: <5E034128-9B40-4789-8C69-FB80C7BB5EF1@countercorp.org> Rival Chains Secretly Fund Opposition to Wal-Mart By Ann Zimmerman (Wall Street Journal, June 7) ?Robert Brownson long believed that his proposed development in Mundelein, Ill., with a 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, was being held hostage by nearby homeowners. He had seen them protesting at city hall, and they had filed a lawsuit to stop the project. What he didn't know was that the locals were getting a lot of help. A grocery chain with nine stores in the area had hired Saint Consulting Group to secretly run the anti-development campaign. Saint is a specialist at fighting proposed Wal-Marts, using tactics it describes as "black arts." As Wal-Mart has grown into the largest grocery seller in the U.S., similar battles have played out in hundreds of towns like Mundelein. Local activists and union groups have been the public face of much of the resistance. But in scores of cases, large supermarket chains including Supervalu, Safeway, and Ahold NV have retained Saint Consulting to block Wal-Mart, according to hundreds of pages of Saint documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and interviews with former employees. Saint has jokingly called its staff the "Wal-Mart killers." P. Michael Saint, the company's founder, declines to discuss specific clients or campaigns. When read a partial list of the company's supermarket clients, he responds that "if those names are true, I would say I was proud that some of the largest, most sophisticated companies were so pleased with our success and discretion that they hired us over the years." Supermarkets that have funded campaigns to stop Wal-Mart are concerned about having to match the retailing giant's low prices, lest they lose marketshare. Although they have managed to stop some projects, they haven't put much of a dent in Wal-Mart's growth in the U.S., where it has more than 2,700 supercenters -- large stores that sell groceries and general merchandise. Last year, 51% of Wal-Mart's $258 billion in U.S. revenue came from grocery sales. A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to comment on activities Saint has undertaken on behalf of its competitors. In many cases, the pitched battles have more than doubled the amount of time it takes Wal-Mart to open a store, says a person close to the company. And the fights generate negative publicity for the retailer. In Mundelein, a town of 35,000 about 20 miles northwest of Chicago, it was Supervalu, a national grocer based in Minnesota, that hired Saint to work behind the scenes, according to Saint documents. Supervalu's objective was to block Wal-Mart from competing with its nine Jewel-Osco supermarkets located within three to ten miles of the proposed shopping center, the documents indicate. City officials say the effort stalled the development for three years and cost Mundelein millions in lost property and sales taxes. Brownson, who has developed shopping centers in 15 states over 25 years, says he learned about Saint's involvement only recently when someone phoned him and spilled the news. "A huge national company conducts a dirty tricks campaign for its own goals, and a city and a developer become collateral damage," he complains. Supervalu didn't return calls for comment. Saint declines to discuss the situation in Mundelein. In general, he says, "developers always say the world is coming to an end because the project that would have made them millions wasn't approved." Saint, a former newspaper reporter and political press secretary, founded his firm 26 years ago. It specializes in using political-campaign tactics -- petition drives, phone banks, websites -- to build support for or against controversial projects, from oil refineries and shopping centers to quarries and landfills. Over the years, it has conducted about 1,500 campaigns in 44 states. Saint says about 500 have involved trying to block a development, and most of those have been clandestine. For the typical anti-Wal-Mart assignment, a Saint manager will drop into town using an assumed name to create or take control of local opposition, according to former Saint employees. They flood local politicians with calls, using multiple phones to make it appear that the calls are coming from different people, the former employees say. They hire lawyers and traffic experts to help derail the project or stall it as long as possible, in hopes that the developer will pull the plug or Wal-Mart will find another location. "Usually, clients in defense campaigns do not want their identities disclosed because it opens them up to adverse publicity and the potential for lawsuits," Mr. Saint wrote in a book published by his firm. Saint says he "encouraged" his employees not to use their real names in campaigns in order to protect the client's identity, and "to protect our employees, who have been followed, threatened and harassed by the opposition." Safeway, a national chain based in Pleasanton, Calif., retained Saint to thwart Wal-Mart Supercenters in more than 30 towns in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii in recent years, according to a Saint project list and interviews with former employees. Former Saint employees say much of the work consisted of training Safeway's unionized workers to fight land-use battles, including how to speak at public hearings. Former Saint workers say the union sometimes pays a portion of Saint's fees. "The work we've funded Saint to do to preserve our marketshare and our jobs is within our First Amendment rights," says Jill Cashen, spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Safeway declined to comment. In Pennsylvania, Saint's work roster in August 2007 listed 53 projects, almost all directed at stopping Wal-Mart on behalf of client Giant Food Stores, owned by Amsterdam-based supermarket company Ahold. Saint documents from 2007 say it had lost one battle in Pennsylvania, defeated 13 projects, and delayed the remaining ones from four months to four years. In 2005, Giant Foods hired Saint to stop a proposed Wal-Mart in North Cornwall, Pa., a town of 6,000, a Saint report indicates. Saint planned to charge Giant $7,500 to $10,000 a month for legal services, mailings, phone banks, and 60 hours a month of Saint staff time, according to a preliminary budget. Locally, there was strong opposition from a citizens group that wanted to preserve the proposed site as farmland and was concerned about traffic. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart received conditional approval. Before construction began, the opponents filed suit with support from Saint, claiming that when the land was re-zoned for commercial use three years earlier, neighbors had not been properly notified. One member of the citizens group, Kip Kelly, says a woman he assumed was from a labor group or anti-Wal-Mart coalition had offered to fund the effort. Former Saint employees say the woman was a Saint operative and that Giant was paying the group's legal bills through Saint. Tracy Cadzow, the lawyer who represented the group, says she had no idea that the grocer was behind the effort. "This is new information to me," she says. As the suit dragged on, Giant abruptly changed its game plan, according to two former Saint employees. Giant had decided it wanted to erect a supermarket directly across from the Wal-Mart location, according to former Saint workers and Saint documents. Giant needed Saint to switch sides in the political battle over commercial zoning, the former employees say. Saint workers were directed to withdraw support for the anti-Wal-Mart group, called Citizens for Responsible Growth, according to the former Saint workers. "We had to kill a community group we started, and I was told to stop paying the attorney," says a former Saint employee. Town officials re-approved commercial zoning for the land, this time giving proper notification to homeowners, which rendered the lawsuit moot. Giant and its parent company, Ahold, did not return calls seeking comment. Asked about the situation, Saint said his company is an advocate for its clients, but doesn't determine overall strategy. "If it's legal to perform a service, we'll do it," he said. Saint says there is nothing illegal about a company trying to derail a competitor's project. Companies have legal protection under the First Amendment for using a government or legal process to thwart competition, even if they do so secretly, he says. The protection is known as the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which grew out of several U.S. Supreme Court cases. Some legal experts say that, under the doctrine, a company has to reasonably expect it can win a lawsuit or a zoning battle -- it cannot just use the process to interfere with a competitor's business. "If a company routinely files suits and does it to delay a competitor, there is a 'pattern [and practice]' exception to the Supreme Court decisions," says Timothy Muris, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and a law professor at George Mason University. "If a competitor in this instance is spending millions [of dollars] to repeatedly sue," Muris says, "it is hard to believe they are doing so because they care about zoning." Former Saint employees say that the goal of many legal or political challenges was merely to delay projects. "That may be the result," responds Saint. "But our goal is always to kill Wal-Mart." In Mundelein, where Supervalu wanted to protect its Jewel-Osco stores from Wal-Mart, Saint first focused on a vote on the 100-acre development by the city's Plan Commission, scheduled for May 2007, Saint documents indicate. Saint's Chicago-based regional director, Jay Vincent, who drives a Honda CRV with the license plates BLKOPS 1, assigned the job to a project manager, Saint documents indicate. That manager, who is a baseball fan, borrowed an alias for each of his assignments from a major leaguer. For the Mundelein job, he took the name of a former catcher for the Minnesota Twins, Greg Olson. "For this project, delay is a substantial weapon," the project manager wrote in a report. He sent a flyer to neighbors of the proposed development that outlined purported evils of a neighborhood Wal-Mart, including increased police calls and more traffic. The flyer listed his alias and an email address, according to several residents. Tom Budwick, a retired crane operator in Mundelein, responded. The project manager told him that a Wal-Mart built behind his own parents' home had prevented them from selling it and having a comfortable retirement, Budwick recalls. Several former colleagues of the baseball-loving project manager say he frequently told that story, which is false, in connection with Wal-Mart projects. Budwick says the project manager told him that the fight in Mundelein would be lengthy and expensive, but it would cost the residents nothing because he was involved in politics and had sympathetic donors willing to fund their campaign. "I didn't know where the money was coming from, and I didn't want to know," says John Abraham, a landscape-company owner whose large home abuts the development site. The project manager arranged for a lawyer, William Graft, who had experience fighting land-use battles, to represent neighbors who opposed the development, according to Saint documents. Although the public hearing on the development was packed with opponents, according to city trustee Ed Sullivan, the city's board of trustees approved the project in July 2007. Graft then filed suit on behalf of four local residents with properties adjacent to the proposed development, appealing the board's decision and claiming their rights had been violated. He sent monthly bills ranging from $20,000 to $55,000 to the project manager, who forwarded them to Saint, according to copies of the bills viewed by the Journal. Graft confirms that Saint paid those bills. The suit remained in court for two and a half years until March 26 of this year, when a judge ruled in favor of the city, saying its decision to approve the development was not "capricious, irrational, or arbitrary." The development is still in limbo. The plaintiffs have asked the judge to reconsider his decision. The developer, Brownson, says he and his partners have spent more than $3 million on legal fees, expert testimony, and other expenses. He lost almost all the tenants he had lined up three years ago, including Kohl's and Petsmart, according to documents he provided the city. All except Wal-Mart. City Administrator John Labaido says the village and school district have lost an estimated $6 million a year in sales t and property-tax revenue. "It is disheartening to hear that a corporate competitor was behind this whole thing," Labaido says. From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Wed Jun 9 06:26:00 2010 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2010 03:26:00 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Oil leak was no accident: BP a 'recurring environmental criminal' Message-ID: Reports at BP Over Years Find History of Problems By Abrahm Lustgarten and Ryan Knutson (Washington Post, June 8) -- A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior British Petroleum (BP) managers that the oil company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules, and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways. The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections to reduce production costs. Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by a non-profit journalism project called ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations -- from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them. Tony Hayward has committed himself to reform since becoming BP's chief executive in 2007. Under him, the company has worked to implement an operating safety system to create "responsible operations at every BP operation," said Toby Odone, a company spokesman. BP has used the system at 80 percent of its operations and expects to bring it to the rest by the end of the year, Odone said. He said the notion that BP has ongoing problems addressing worker concerns is "essentially groundless." Because of its string of accidents before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, BP faced a possible ban on its federal contracting and on new U.S. drilling leases, several senior former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials told ProPublica. That inquiry has taken on new significance in light of the oil spill in the Gulf. One key question the EPA will consider is whether the company's leadership can be trusted and whether BP's culture can change. The reports detailing the firm's Alaska investigations -- conducted by outside lawyers and an internal BP committee in 2001, 2004, and 2007 -- were provided to ProPublica by a person close to the company who thinks it has not done enough to fix its shortcomings. A 2001 report noted that BP had neglected key equipment needed for an emergency shut-down, including safety shut-off valves and gas and fire detectors similar to those that could have helped prevent the fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf. A 2004 inquiry found a pattern of the company intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns. It said managers shaved maintenance costs by using aging equipment for as long as possible. Accidents resulted, including the 200,000-gallon Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill in 2006 -- the largest spill on Alaska's North Slope -- which was blamed on a corroded pipeline. Similar problems surfaced at BP facilities in California and Texas. California officials alleged in 2002 that the company had falsified inspections of fuel tanks at a Los Angeles area refinery, and that more than 80 percent of the facilities didn't meet requirements to maintain storage tanks without leaks or damage. Inspectors had to get a warrant before BP allowed them to check the tanks. The company eventually settled a lawsuit brought by the South Coast Air Quality Management District for more than $100 million. Three years later, a Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 people. An investigation found that a warning system failed, and independent experts found that "significant process safety issues exist at all five U.S. refineries, not just Texas City." BP spokesman Odone said that after the accident, the company adopted a plan to update its safety systems worldwide. But last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined the firm $87 million for not improving safety at that same Texas plant. 'Environmental criminal' BP has had more high-profile accidents than any other company in recent years. And now, with the disaster in the gulf, independent experts say the pervasiveness of the company's problems, in multiple locales and different types of facilities, is striking. "They are a recurring environmental criminal, and they do not follow U.S. health, safety, and environmental policy," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer who led its BP investigations. Since the late 1960s, the company has pulled oil from under Alaska, usually without problems. But when it pleaded guilty in 1999 to illegal dumping at an off-shore drilling field there, it drew fresh scrutiny and set off a cycle of attempted -- and seemingly failed -- reforms that continued over the next decade. To avoid having its Alaska division debarred -- the official term for a contract cancellation with the federal government -- the firm agreed to a five-year probationary plan with the EPA. Under the terms of the agreement, BP would reorganize its environmental management, establish protections for employees who speak out about safety issues, and change its approach to risk and regulatory compliance. Less than a year later, employees complained to an independent arbitrator that the company was letting equipment and critical safety systems languish at its Greater Prudhoe Bay drilling field. BP hired a panel of independent experts to investigate. The panel identified systemic problems in maintenance and inspections -- the operations that keep the drilling in Prudhoe Bay running safely -- and warned BP that it faced a "fundamental culture of mistrust" by its workers. "There is a disconnect between management's stated commitment to safety, and the perception of that commitment" among workers, the experts said in their 2001 report. The report said that "unacceptable" maintenance backlogs ballooned as BP tried to sustain North Slope profits despite declining production. The consultants concluded that the company had neglected to clean and check valves, shut-down mechanisms, and detection devices essential to preventing explosions. In May 2002 -- less than seven months later -- Alaska state regulators warned BP that it had failed to maintain its pipelines. Alaska struggled for two years to make the firm comply with state laws, and clear the pipeline of sedimentation that could interfere with leak detection. Soon after, BP hired another team of outside investigators to look into worker complaints on the North Slope. The resulting 2004 study by the law firm Vinson & Elkins warned that pipeline corrosion endangered operations. It also offered a harsh assessment of BP's management of employee concerns. According to the report, workers accused the company of falsifying inspection data. The report quoted an employee who said employees felt forced to skip key diagnostics, including pressure testing, pipeline cleaning, and corrosion checks. The report said that Richard Woollam, the manager in charge of corrosion safety in Alaska at the time, had "an aggressive management style" and subverted inspectors' tendency to report problems. "Pressure on contractor management to hit performance metrics (e.g., fewer OSHA recordables) creates an environment where fear of retaliation and intimidation did occur," it said. Woollam was soon transferred. More accidents Two years later, in March 2006, disaster struck. More than 200,000 gallons of oil spilled from a corroded hole in the Prudhoe Bay pipeline. Inspectors found that several miles of the steel pipe had corroded to dangerously thin levels. When Congress held hearings later that year, Woollam pleaded the Fifth Amendment. He now works in BP's Houston headquarters. Reached at his Texas home last week, he referred questions to the BP media office, which declined to comment. In August 2006, just five months after the Prudhoe Bay spill, a pipeline safety technician for a BP contractor in Alaska discovered a two-inch snaggle-toothed crack in the steel skin of an oil transit line. Nearby, contractors ground down metal welds, sending sparks across the work site. Technician Stuart Sneed feared that the sparks could ignite stray gases, or that the work could worsen the crack, so he ordered the contractors to stop working. "Any inspector knows a crack in a service pipe is to be considered dangerous and treated with serious attention," he told ProPublica. Sneed said he thought the Prudhoe Bay disaster had made BP management more amenable to listening to worker concerns about safety. The company had replaced its chief executive for North America with Robert Malone, who focused on reforming BP's culture in Alaska. But instead of receiving compliments for his prudence, Sneed -- who had also complained that week that pipeline inspectors were faking their reports -- was scolded by his supervisor, who hadn't inspected the crack but believed it was superficial, according to a report from BP's internal employer arbitrators. The next day, the report said, that supervisor criticized Sneed at a staff briefing, then solicited complaints from colleagues that could be used to justify Sneed's firing. Two weeks later, Sneed was gone. During the investigation, BP inspectors substantiated Sneed's concerns about the cracked pipe. The arbiter also confirmed Sneed's account of what happened when he reported the problem. His dispute with the company is unresolved. The following year saw another BP shake-up. The company had replaced its chief executive of Alaskan operations with Doug Suttles -- who is now in charge of off-shore operations and clean-up of the Gulf disaster. In May 2007, it also named Hayward its new global chief executive. But worker harassment claims continued in Alaska and elsewhere, and more problems with the Alaska pipeline systems emerged. In September 2008, a section of a gas line on the slope blew apart. A 28-foot-long section of steel -- the length of three pickup trucks -- flew nearly 1,000 feet through the air before landing on the Alaskan tundra. Sneed had raised concerns about the integrity of segments of the gas line system. Three more accidents rocked the same system of pipelines and gas compressor stations in 2009, including a near-catastrophic explosion. According to a letter that members of Congress sent to BP executives, obtained by ProPublica, the near-miss resulted from malfunctioning safety and back-up equipment. Odone said that BP is continuing to roll out a company-wide operating management system to help track and implement maintenance. He said the company reduced corrosion and erosion-related leaks in Alaska by 42 percent between 2006 and 2009. Non-compliance As BP battled through the decade to avoid accidents in Alaska, another facility operating under a different business unit, BP West Coast Products, had similar problems. For years, the subsidiary that refined and stored crude oil was allowed to inspect its own facilities for compliance with emission laws under the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the agency that regulates air quality in Los Angeles. In 2002, inspectors with the management district thought BP's inspection results looked too good to be true. Between 1999 and 2002, BP's Carson Refinery had nearly perfect compliance, reporting no tank problems and making virtually no repairs. The district suspected that BP was falsifying its inspection reports, and fabricating its compliance. According to Joseph Panasiti, a lawyer for the management district, the agency had to get a search warrant to conduct inspections required by state law. When the regulators finally got in, they found equipment in a disturbing state of disrepair. According to a lawsuit the management district later filed against BP, inspectors discovered that some tanker seals had extensive tears, tank roofs had pervasive leaks, and there were enough major defects to lead to thousands of violations. "They had been sending us reports that showed 99 percent compliance, and we found about 80 percent non-compliance," Panasiti said. The district sued BP for $319 million. After lengthy litigation, the firm agreed to pay more than $100 million without admitting guilt. Colin Reid, the plant's operations manager, was later promoted to a vice president position in the United Kingdom. He recently left BP and did not respond to requests for comment. Allegations that BP or its contractors falsified safety and inspection reports are a recurring theme. Similar allegations were attributed to workers in 2001 and 2004 internal reports on Alaska, but the internal auditors did not confirm that fraud had occurred. Among the safety equipment that BP was criticized for not having in place in its Alaska facilities, according to its own 2001 operational integrity report, were gas and fire detection sensors and emergency shut-off valves. Now investigators are learning that similar sensors and their shut-off systems were not operating in the engine room of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf. In testimony before a Deepwater Horizon joint investigation panel in New Orleans last month, Deepwater mechanic Douglas Brown said that the back-stop mechanism that should have prevented the engines from running wild apparently failed -- and so did the air-intake valves that were supposed to close if gas entered the engine room. He said the engine room wasn't equipped with a gas alarm system that could have shut off the power. Minutes later, the rig exploded in a ball of fire, killing 11 workers before sinking to the seafloor, where it left a gaping well pipe that continues to gush oil and gas. From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Thu Jun 10 15:00:45 2010 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:00:45 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] McDonald's gets boarded up on 'Sesame Street' Message-ID: <5DD912A1-0CC4-4362-B7C8-959A61C1949B@countercorp.org> McDonald's Quietly Closes Up Shop on 'Sesame Street' By Jonathan Berr (Daily Finance, March 23) -- Big Bird isn't grabbing burgers anymore at the McDonald's on the street where the sun always shines. For the first time in about seven years, McDonald's is no longer a corporate sponsor of the venerable Sesame Street, a relationship that activists have long derided given the program's commitment to promoting healthy eating as childhood obesity rates soar. The burger chain's messages stopped appearing in January, in a move that apparently attracted little publicity at the time. McDonald's was until then a welcome partner. In press material promoting Sesame Street's 40th season, which began in November, McDonald's waxed poetic about its positive impact on America's youth. "An important part of McDonald's rich history is their commitment to the education of children. In step with their efforts of bringing a sense of joy and imagination to life, McDonald's feels that there are few things as special as the curiosity, happiness and wonderment of a child," the Illinois-based company says. "Strict Guidelines" Are in Force Like all shows on Public Broadcasting System (PBS), Sesame Street publicly acknowledges its corporate underwriters, a practice that has grown more aggressive for years, much to the chagrin of those who worry that the messages are little more than thinly disguised commercials. Sesame Street, which recently announced it was developing a bilingual nutrition program, denies that its relationship with McDonald's was improper. A McDonald's spokeswoman could not be immediately be reached. "As you may know, PBS is non-commercial, and all corporate underwriters on public television must adhere to strict guidelines provided by PBS in order for their messages to air. As such, the McDonald's sponsorship messages did not show product, announce promotions, or contain any call to action, nor do any of our Sesame Street characters appear in them," says Beatrice Chow, a spokeswoman for Sesame Workshop, the program's non-profit producer, in an e-mail to Daily Finance. Though Chow says the decision was mutual, Margot Wootan, director of nutrition policy of the Center for Science and the Public Interest, says executives at Sesame told her it was their idea. Wootan says the move is long overdue. "I was glad to see Sesame part ways with McDonald's," she says, adding that while the fast-food chain has agreed to only promote healthy food to children "the overwhelming choices on the kid's menu are not so healthy." Easily Influenced McDonald's Happy Meals have long been the bane of activists for their high calorie content and their endless commercial tie-ins with products aimed at children. The problem is that kids are susceptible to this type of persuasion. Recent research also has indicated that pre-school children, even if they don't know how to read, are more aware of brands than experts had realized. Indeed, internal Sesame Workshop research found that kids will eat healthy fare with their favorite characters such as Elmo and Cookie Monster on it. They'll also do the same for unhealthy food, says Jennifer Kotler, director of research at Sesame Workshop. Hain Celestial Group sells a line of Sesame-branded organic food under the Earth's Best brand that features the show's characters. Earth's Best remains an on-air sponsor of the beloved children's show. Sesame Workshop says it's worried about childhood obesity as well. First Lady Michelle Obama appeared on Sesame Street in November as part of her crusade to get kids to eat healthier and be more active. Even Cookie Monster tells youngsters that cookies are a "sometime food." The non-profit argues that it's imperative for kids to develop good eating habits when they're young. "By the time a child is between two and four years old, [their] eating habits are largely shaped," Sesame Workshop says on its website. " If [he or she] reaches the age of five without learning about healthy eating, the chances of developing poor nutritional habits and attitudes are significantly increased." From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Fri Jun 11 04:18:31 2010 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:18:31 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Privacy group accuses Google of intentionally gathering private data Message-ID: <84B6B5DE-07D9-409B-AF93-442FB94E8100@countercorp.org> Google Accused of Criminal Intent Over StreetView Data (BBC, June 9) -- Google is "almost certain" to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to the London-based non-profit group Privacy International (PI). The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project. [The company claims it accidentally downloaded small amounts of traffic from people's home networks while gathering location information for its street-mapping service, due to some computer code that was unintentionally left in a computer program.] Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake. But PI is convinced the audit proves "criminal intent". "The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (personal data) of communications, and systematically wrote this data to hard drives," said PI in a statement. "This is equivalent to placing a [wire] tap and a [tape] recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorization," the statement said. This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added. Scotland Yard "The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute," said Simon Davies, head of PI. In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office has said it is reviewing the audit, but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter. PI, however, does intend to take the case to the police. "I don't see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard," said Davies. The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected. It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over. The Australian police have also been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy. 'Systematic failure' According to Google, the code that allowed data to be collected was part of an experimental wi-fi project undertaken by an unnamed engineer to improve location-based services, and was never intended to be incorporated in the software for StreetView. "As we have said before, this was a mistake," said a Google spokesman. "The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store [personal] data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns." "This was a failure of communication between and within teams," he added. But PI disputes this explanation. "The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn't add up," said Davies. "This is complex code, and it must have been given a budget and been overseen [by more senior people at the company]. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked." "It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management, and of duty of care," he added. From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Sat Jun 12 05:26:02 2010 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:26:02 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Roberts Court not neutral on corporate-related cases Message-ID: <423E47A2-EED2-4331-877F-75F4A901EB0D@countercorp.org> Balls, Strikes, and the Roberts Court By Kevin Drum (Mother Jones, June 11) -- During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in 2005, future Chief Justice John Roberts assured senators that his job as a judge was merely "to call balls and strikes." It was a familiar, homey allusion, deliberately designed to suggest that ideology didn't ? or anyway, shouldn't ? play a role in deciding cases. He would be interpreting the plain meaning of the law, not making up his own. But as fond as conservatives are of this kind of imagery, it's mostly a myth. Recently the Constitutional Accountability Center took a look at Supreme Court rulings during the Roberts era -- but instead of looking at hot button social issues, they looked at the kinds of rulings that, although they get less attention, actually take up the bulk of the court's time: those involving business and corporate law. The results were pretty startling. A good guidepost to these rulings is the position taken by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which bills itself as the "voice of business." Roberts' record? In the past five years he's sided with the Chamber 70% of the time. In close cases he's sided with the Chamber a stunning 90% of the time. As an umpire, it turns out that if you're filing a case against the business community, Roberts has declared a strike zone only a few inches wide. And Roberts isn't alone. Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia also sided with the Chamber of Commerce over 70% of the time. (Alito sided with the Chamber a stunning 100% of the time in close cases.) Clarence Thomas took their side 68% of the time. And "centrist" Anthony Kennedy? He clocked in around 66%. The kinds of regulatory issues involved in these cases are, in the long run, more important than all but the most explosive cases in the culture war. They include cases such as Citizens United, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums in political campaigns; Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which effectively eliminated the right to sue for race or gender pay discrimination; and Exxon v. Baker, which slashed the damage award in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case by 80%. And those are only the big ones. You can add in hundreds of other, smaller cases that have slowly but steadily chipped away at the right to hold corporations accountable over the past three decades. And what about liberals on the court? Well, Souter and Breyer sided with the Chamber of Commerce nearly half the time, and even Stevens and Ginsburg favored business interests more than a third of the time. The lesson here is that, contrary to what conservatives want everyone to think, they don't just "call balls and strikes" or "rely on the plain meaning of the Constitution." Ideology matters. In fact, when it comes to business issues, conservative judges make far more fervent ideologues than liberals. Caveat emptor.