Do You Want Spies With That?

While the Patriot Act has raised fears about the U.S. government spying on ordinary citizens, the growing threat to civil liberties posed by corporate spying has received much less attention.

During the late 1990s a private security firm spied on Greenpeace and other environmental groups, examining activists' telephone records and even sending undercover agents to infiltrate the groups, according to an article in Mother Jones. In 2006 Hewlett-Packard was caught spying on journalists. Last year Wal-Mart apologized for improperly recording conversations with a New York Times reporter.

And now it turns out that Burger King, home of the Whopper, hired a private security firm to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a group of idealistic college students trying to improve the lives of migrants in Florida.