The Atlantic

CSI: Walmart

Some of the best digital-forensics labs don't belong to the police—they're run by banks, tech companies, and retailers.
Source: Jim Urquhart / Reuters

A highly secured digital-forensics laboratory sits tucked inside an enormous complex of low, boxy buildings in Bentonville, Arkansas. To get in, analysts have to scan their hands and enter a unique password. Inside, they comb through video-surveillance records and spirit data out of devices that have seen better days, like a hard drive that had been crushed with a hammer and dropped from a third-story window.

Despite the sensitive

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic4 min read
When Private Equity Comes for a Public Good
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In some states, public funds are being poured into t
The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking

Related Books & Audiobooks