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HP Spying Incident Included Journalists
rufey writes "It is now being reported that the HP boardroom spying incident that occurred earlier this year also involved obtaining phone records of journalists from at least two news outlets. Journalists from CNET and the Wall Street Journal had their phone records obtained through a method called 'pretexting' to see who, if any, of the HP board members the journalists may have been in contact with."
Pretext is to lie as campaign contribution is to bribe.
I'm sorry, but the confidentiality of the media is a cornerstone of media.
Won't someone think of the CEOs. Who cares.
God spoke to me.
Pissing off the media is a great way to hurt your PR. I can't imagine CNet having anything good to say about HP for a while.
The board of directors of a public company authorized this? I bet they all get barred by the SEC from serving anywhere. Watch and see, this is going to be a HUGE scandal.
This hits privacy and First Amendment issues to their core.
This is a legal matter and PJ has had her own share of similar hijinx in relation to her reporting on the SCO debacle.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
. . . and call this practice what it really is, identity fraud.
Or would I have to imply I am a particular John Smith, to be committing identity theft?
It's just basic account privacy measures. Un-***ing-believable.
From HP's timed "expiration" of ink cartridges to this, it's become quite obvious that this organization has the same sort of ethical standards as Sony, Enron, etc... What's particularly sad is that they were, at least at one time, a real innovative and pioneering company. I studied some of their software engineering practices while pursuing a CS degree, and they were quite impressive. Nowadays, they're on my "Boycott and tell others why to avoid" list.
HP Chairwoman "Send in the shadowrunners"
I just can't be bothered.
But did they really need this series of events to come to that point? HP hasn't done anything positive over the past decade. Their printer and calculator divisions, once industry leaders, have been reduced to nothing but a bunch of shit flinging monkeys. They've effectively killed both the Alpha and PA-RISC architectures. They've let OpenVMS stagnate. They never got around to doing anything useful with HP-UX nor Tru64 Unix. The Itanium was a rather spectacular failure. Their high-end workstations are pretty bland these days. Their consumer desktops are even worse.
I'm trying to think of one good thing any news outlet could say about HP, even without all this nonsense. Frankly, I can't find anything. HP had become the laughing stock of the computer industry, even before all of this had come out.
The Smoking Gun
Interesting reading...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I mean, they're trying to stop damaging information from leaking into the wrong hands by phone tapping without asking for authority.
I heard this is all the rage in America at the moment!
This space for rent
No charges, yet...
In other words, if someone claiming to be reporter Joe Blow somehow gets Joe Blow's records... how do you pin it on Private Eye S. Bullets (s for sweating)?
Unless Mr. Bullets left a paper trail...
Think of the reverse situation; Joe Blow leaks his own info to PI Bullets... then claims he was "identity thefted"... what a great way to leak a leak and still maintain "confidential source" credibility!
I have no idea what I am talking about here.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"The Washington Post" reports, " California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said yesterday that 'people in high positions" at Hewlett-Packard "could be involved in illegal activity.' 'Do we think a crime occurred?' Lockyer said. 'Yes.' But he said the attorney general's office was still trying to figure out 'who did what, when.' "
According to a report by the "San Francisco Chronicle", Patricia Dunn (the chair of the HP board of directors) ordered the execution of the criminal act.
Give Lockyer's position on this matter, the attorney general will certainly pursue a criminal case against Dunn. She may spend some time in prison since the issue at hand is a criminal matter, not a civil one.
spying on your own people is one thing but spy on people outside the company and uh ohhhhh, you're in extra trouble! That must be the policy because it sort of fits with how they don't catch more crap about having all HP computers come preinstalled with mal/ad/bad/annoy/bloat/painintheass-ware. Now if they made a deal with Microsoft to put it in a windows update so they could annoy non-HP customers, uh ohhhhhhhh!
P.S. hmmm...why no uh oh for AOL and their crap software?
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
From the Wikipedia article:
Seriously though -- suits don't go to jail. It's so fantastically rare as to border on mythical. Not quite as rare as politicians going to jail, but still pretty rare. America is a nation where you are judged by what you have. A top executive has a great deal of wealth, and so the burden of proof for any criminal proceeding against him or her will be set so high that a successful prosecution is impossible. Meanwhile a 12 year old kid from the ghetto will get the needle based on hearsay and the fact that he once listened to a Marilyn Manson CD.
In this one particular case, we might actually see a bit of justice; as more and more bad ink (hahaha!) comes out on HP, the market will likely take note, at least short term... Already in the last two days, HPQ has lost a point, almost all losses coming from news circulating after-hours (ie, people like us on slashdot raising a fuss). Give it one more trading day with (I'd guess) a 2% stock price drop, then a weekend for the non tech-savvy investors to hear what a naughty child the company has been, and I bet by bell close monday, their stock will have dipped under $28, meaning their overcompensated board members will loose lots on their current net worth (YAY!) and lots of uninvolved investors and employees will take smaller, but more painful hits to their portfolios (boo.) Collateral damage aside, I hope HP gets thrown to the ropes; they haven't been a good tech company since sometime in the 90's.
Advertising is a poor, failing, ghost of an attempt at the power of honest word of mouth. -Locution Commando
This case has very little to do with PJ and SCO at all. In fact, nothing at all. There have never been any similar allegations with respect to SCO.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
A thought just occured to me:
This kind of uproar over phone fraud is just the sort of thing needed to force general opinion - and political opinion - towards a re-assertment and re-assesment of privacy rights in the United States.
Just watching my newsfeeds, as every 20 seconds a new opinion article berating the utter stupidity and thickheadedness of Dunn is circulated, gives me hope.
Whereas govt. wiretapping on its own has (obviously) brought out much emotion and little reason from (the higher levels of) both sides, this behavoir of HP (and you can bet they are not the only company that will get mud in the face over this practice - Line up, fortune 500's) is likely to bring out the *best of America, for the best of purposes:
Issue Hot Potato+BlameGame=positive steps for privacy.
For example: A red state senator now has a pretext for not being stupid about phone tapping (some of you will no doubt cynically refute this, but I say watch and see how political rhetoric shifts between now and November - the Repubs need language to grasp for the middle)
*most erratic-mob-reactionary-unthought out-groupthinking-headless-behemoth to ever form on this planet.
Advertising is a poor, failing, ghost of an attempt at the power of honest word of mouth. -Locution Commando
I'll allow that it's conceivable that HP might have had some contractual or moral right to snoop on their board members.
But snooping on people not directly involved with HP? No way. I don't care who they were, journalists or customers... that's beyond the pale. That's the sort of thing we [used to] make our government get a warrant for. If HP wanted that information, they should have gone to court to get it.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Nice to see that HP General Counsel Charles N. Charnas is able to juggle the demands of Patriciagate SEC filings as well as SEC filings for HP execs' personal stock sales, including a 250,000 share dump ($9+ million) this week by an EVP and a 100,000 share dump ($3.6+ million) late last week by HP's CFO.
I wonder what they got on me? I know they looked, but I don't know to what extent. Time to call the Attorney General and see if they can help. That said, I work for a UK company, so there are all sorts of European privacy laws that come into efffect.
1 1451 2251 231
If they were looking into people laying into HP during that time, I am sure things like this got me in their sights.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
This is going to get mighty interesting, I am sure we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It must be nice to know that all the board minutes are transcribed and kept. Anyone want to put money on Dunn eating some of her words in court?
-Charlie
If an investigation proves that HP's Chair approved of this activity I think that we're going to see jail time for Dunn, et al.
Just my prediction (although I ain' Cringely or nothing)
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
My guess is we'll see her step down before Halloween ... and good chance in the next week or two.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
that's some pretty hysterical hyperbole (hyperbolic hysteria?) you got there there
first of all, the rich getting better treatment than the poor is not an american phenomenon, it's a human phenomenon. it's true in every country, in every time period. why are you singling the usa out for accountability for what every country is guilty of?
secondly, your attitude is all wrong. you have a tone of resignation to what you say. what you say IS true about the rich getting away with murder (literally, look at oj simpson) due to their greater resources. but that should piss you off, make you angry
if you're simply resigned to this as a fact of life, then you are complicit with the crime. that's what cynicism is: acceptance of what should not be acceptable. so don't get cynical and negative. that's common and lazy and useless. get angry and keep a positive attitude. then you make a difference. but if you're going to be cynical about it, you might as well say nothing at all if you have no intention of fighting injustice (which is what cynical resignation is: retiring from the fight)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
These companies are simply following the leader and doing the Dubya dance.
... these are meaningless terms. Even lawful and unlawful loses flavor in the absence of consequences.
Right, wrong.. moral, ethical
Control, power and profit is all that matters and achieve it any way you can.
Hell, they don't even try to cover the skullduggery up anymore.
Winners and losers baby. Winners and losers.
I thought the LACK of confidentiality for the rest of us was the cornerstone of the media. Silly me.
"Pretexting" is just a pretext?
It is legal to spy, as long as you don't get caught. If you do get caught and you have enough money it's still legal.
The corporate overlords and the government are the same, they are people. It's simply, spying is legal as long as you don't get caught. It's always been happening, and with technology it's just easier, but just assume that you are being spied on by everyone and always have been.
Tell me why anyone would be prosecuted for spying when the patriot act eliminates privacy? This means that spying is now officially legal.
Corporate spying has been going on forever anyway, now with the patriot act in place, it can happen legally. There is no way to prosecute this because the patriot act makes it legal. If you prosecute it will only strengthen the power of the patriot act.
I'm not a lawyer, but as I see it, what stops them from using the patriot act in their defense?
Technological spying has always been legal because most of the time when people spy in this sorta way, they never get caught. What? You think it's different when internet hackers spy on corporations, but when corporations spy on you, suddenly it's supposed to be different?
HP is a technology company, you better believe the have the most sophisticated spy technology. Corporate spying is legal when it's on individuals who cannot defend themselves. It's only illegal if HP decided to spy on AOL or some other corporation then it's illegal. Individuals do not have any rights, only corporations have rights. If you disagree then go read the patriot act, corporations are persons now, and people are atoms in big structures. A corporation see's it's atoms as all being the same at best and at worst sees you as an evil leeching consumer worthy only of a pack of cigarettes.
The simply fact is, it's good for our economy. Learn to profit from this, and make a career in business intelligence, and develop the new generation of spy technology. It's not going to stop so profit from it.
As a rhetorical question, if journalists were renamed terrorists, would the patriot act actually legalize this sort of spying?
It's not that the act of spying was illegal, it's how they choose to do it. If they would have first called the reporters terrorists, it would have been legal.
In specific, there are issues related to the patriot act, there are also issues related to the first amendment, and the rights of a corporation. Corporations are legally persons, if this is the case, consider how this would play out in court. If persons have the ability to do spying when authorized through government agencies, how do we know HP was not authorized to do this?
Now, if the feds don't jump into the mix, then the case won't be so complicated, but if you get the federal government into the mix I don't know where it will lead, but it will be something big.
This ain't "big brother" watching you. This is a case of corporate espionage and what one corporate executive had to do to stop it. Phones were not tapped nor offices bugged. She hired a "private dick" to do the tracing. It does raise an interresting question about corporate officers who betray their fiduciary responsability to the shareholders and company employees. But the juvenile attitude of "taking the man down" seems to blind most folks on the web and in the press.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Folks, there are hundreds of countries and thousands of foreign companies operating in the United States of America. Not all of them are as contrained by American laws as most American corps are. They conduct espionage with covert or overt state sponsorship.
With politics beign such a high stakes game and digging the dirt on the opponant and negative attack campaigns being so effective, are we really sure such tactics are not being used by the candidates? How many campaign managers say to their investigators "Do whatever it takes to find the dirt. Just make sure it cant be traced back to me." Neither the parties nor the candidates will explicitly authorize such operations, preserving the deniability. But tacit understanding is that, those underlings who took the risk and delivered the goods will move up in the good books of the parties.
It is almost certain underlings of parties (both Democrats and Republicans) do it. Foreign govts do it. Foreign corps do it. Private companies do it. So dont spend all your indignation on HP. Reserve some for future use.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Even if you get caught, its a simple business transaction weighing dollars gained against a little bad press and reputation. Purely consumer companies know that people have short memories, right?
After all, she's a suit too... Just not a management one in a company.
Suits go to jail when it suits the powers that be or when it will take the
pollitical heat off their backs.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Passwords aren't too helpful. They don't stand up to well to, "I'm sorry, but I've forgotten my password." They you just default back to the old personal info questions.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Sure, Dunn may have "sanctioned" illegal acts, but to what extent? And what can be proved? If she hired a private dick and said, "I need to know which board members are leaking info to reporters. Your job is to find out," I'm not sure she would be guilty of any crime. It's not like she told the PI to use pretexting or any other illegal means, if that is what she said. And even if she did ask specifically for cellphone records, did she say to use pretexting to get them?
And more importantly, can you prove that beyond a reasonable doubt?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Crap,
I am in the market for both a laptop and desktop, probably Core2duos both.
Not HP now.
Hello Dell and Toshiba.
I vote wit da feet!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
how about if somebody searches out all of your life, SSN down to "call me before tuesday" notes from the grade-school principal, and posts it?
spying is not legal on US citizens, it's in the constitution. due process of law requires convincing a judge to authorize a search warrant.
any other use is unconstitutional, illegal, fattening, and divides by zero.
HP, its directors, the so-called "reputable" search firm, and all participants in these sordid enterprises need to be prosecuted. otherwise, the law is void in california. and an enterprising lawyer could in fact use that to challenge any other "de jure" law in the state, saying if you can't enforce constitutional protections, you have set a precedent that you have no right to enforce laws against (dwi, controlled substance sales, capital fraud, vote theft, spitting on the sidewalk, pick your own.)
dead.
freakin.
wrong.
I'm totally boycotting HP and its brands. they're already chap-7 and liquidated for me. screw our dictatorial rat-bastard overlords.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Pretexting" is such a cute corporate noun-verbing euphemism.
So, you are saying, that as long as someone is pissed off, the laws (like those against false personation and identity theft) shouldn't apply to them?
No, I can't agree that you get a free pass to do something that is criminal because you're upset that something was done to you that is not criminal.
If you're a disgruntled HP shareholder who's concerned about the bad publicity this whole this is creating, you can contact HP's Board of Directors through their website and share you're concerns.
. html
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/bod/index
From what I understand, the phone company also now allows you to have a "password" that they will ask you for over the phone.
A few years ago someone (nka "pretexter") called the telco and changed my phone number and made it unlisted. Since I still had dial tone and wasn't expecting calls I didn't notice until the service change confirmation arrived in the mail a week later.
Of all oodles of data the telco collects (e.g. ANI) all they could determine was which call taker entered the order, and he couldn't remember the details of that specific call. So they let me put a password on the account. They still ask me for it when I make changes, but I don't how far they'll go to enforce it.
The phone company isn't the villain here.
I disagree. Just that they aren't the only villian.
HP board is going to have a damage-control emergency meeting this weekend.
k /
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14734193/site/newswee
probably to find out who leaked the SEC filing to the wire services. but it should be to divulge the votes of all the board members and all notes and communications related to the matter on a special web site, and Katie bar the door.
otherwise, when you look up "The HP Way" in the dictionary, you are going to see booking pictures alongside the definition.
the difference is going to be how many booking pictures appear next to the entry, and how long the perpwalk lasts on national TV when it's broadcast live.
I went looking for a 117S7 bulb a little while ago, and they are all so embarassed that they are hiding. if you don't get it, look up the schematic for HP product #1.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"As a cynic, my personal problem is that the amount of wrongs I see are overwhelming, and it's hard to maintain an active philosophy of striving against wrong when it's everywhere you look, and so much of it is beyond the ability of one person (or even thousands of people) to change."
that's a useless observation
because there is nothing but the efforts of people at affecting change
so to look at the task before them, and lament it is difficult is
1. obvious
2. pointless
of course the effort is hard. duh. but is there any other way? no. so what's the point is pointing out the obvious? have you made the task easier? have you pointed out a better way to do the task? have you pointed out a better task to do?
no, to all of the questions
therefore, your cynicism is useless, a waste of your time, and a waste of my time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
your trying to look at the british class system as something that mitigates essential human nature
essential human nature trumps cultural convention
go anywhere in the world, and you'll find that human nature is pretty much the same
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Then let's just toss that shiny POS word aside and call this what it was:
Private investigators pretended to have police or governmental authority when
requesting these records. That is impersonating an officer, forgery,
or any of a dozen century-old laws being violated.
Given that the word pretexting is being used to embellish manifestly-illegal
actions (nobody lies about who they are if they have legal grounds for obtaining
records) into a less damaging name, it seems to me that pretexting is like GNU...
it's recursive.
Secondly, I am cynical AND angry. I'm angry because it's wrong, and cynical because I have no power to change any aspect of it. This situation has existed throughout all of Human history in every society that has ever existed. I am not a lawyer, nor am I a judge, so I have no influence on the interpretation of law. I'm not an uneducated jobless bigot from a rural area, so I'll never be on a jury. I don't have enough money to lobby anyone about anything. I live in a region with well-established voting proclivities, so I receive absolutely no say in any political matter whatsoever. The only chance I have of enacting change is to make other people aware of the problem, which is exactly what I'm doing. Meanwhile, what YOU are doing -- criticizing others for seeming too cynical -- is exactly the opposite of helpful. It encourages people to stay silent, when discussion and complaint is one of the only tools available to them, no matter how feeble a tool it actually is (mass-media having made public discourse nearly irrelevant).
So how long did she spend in jail? How many times longer would her sentence have been if she had been poor and stolen the same amount in, say, cars? If I tried to steal a mere $100,000 in cars I'd probably spend decades in prison. Martha Stuart is a perfect example of what a joke the justice system is when it comes to dealing with the wealthy and powerful.
Wow, using single biggest financial scandal in American history as an example. Very scientific. And even then, only nineteen people ever saw the inside of a courtroom as defendants. And of the only two people to receive serious sentences, one died WHILE ON VACATION. What kind of barbarous nation lets a man who helped to drag down the entire global economy go on vacation? It'll be fun to see, five years from now, what kind of sentences actually get served.
you're angry and involved, so i have no problem with you, i in fact support your efforts
...actually, i do have one more problem with you:
so the only problem here is your use of the word cynical
my criticism of cynicism is dead on, your use of the word is off
"Meanwhile a 12 year old kid from the ghetto will get the needle based on hearsay and the fact that he once listened to a Marilyn Manson CD"
that's just hysteria and hyperbole
so please, get angry, but get angry at actual factual occurences, so that your anger is effective. if you get angry based on ghosts in your mind of hyperbole about people getting the death sentence for listening to marilyn manson, you're not effective or useful to anything you say that you care about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The comment on the twelve year old certainly qualifies as hyperbole. But calling it hysteria is itself hyperbole. Hysteria involves actually acting hysterically. Granted, it's entirely possible that I'm running around and screaming my head off right now ... but it's not likely, as those behaviours tend to inhibit proper typing.
Nevertheless, people in the lower case frequently are convicted and given very harsh sentences based on evidence that is incredibly flimsy. Owning a Marilyn Manson CD or listening to Korn or anything else that causes one to fail to fit into the community will often increase the chances of an accused being found guilty. I presume you're already aware of this though, since you referred to my comment as "hyperbole" rather than, say, "delusion" or "nonsense".
hmm, did you reply to the wrong post or am I missing something here..
I don't see me claiming anywhere that the USA is special in any way.
belt sanders MUST have cords. otherwise, how are you going to conduct belt sander races and get a fair start?
http://www.nebsra.org/press.htm
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?