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."

Comments

Check out PJ's coverage at Groklaw

[rjamestaylor]

Be sure to follow Groklaw's coverage of the HP 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.

Justice?

[Locution Commando]

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.

Re:Pretexting Ease

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, the idea of this is that I call up the phone company and pretend to be you. Since you gave your employer bunches of confidential information as part of the hiring process, and your employer gave it to me, I'm sure that I can probably respond to any question that the phone company might use.

From what I understand, the phone company also now allows you to have a "password" that they will ask you for over the phone.

The phone company isn't the villain here.

HP General Counsel Tending to Execs' Stock Sales

[theodp]

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.

Re:ummm...

[SillyNickName4me]

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?

I believe there are at least 3 reasons for this:

1. This particular incident took place in the USA, so GP is not singling out the USA so much as commenting on the incident and the circumstances that allowed for it.

2. Right or wrong of an action does not depend on what others do, it depends on your action. In other words, pointing at others and saying "they are wrong as well/worse then me" etc is simply no excuse.

3. The USA claims to provide justice for all those within its borders, it is not strange that others hold them to those claims.

The remainder of your post I fully agree with.

Fiduciary Responsability

[N8F8]

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.

Re:ummm...

[Red Flayer]

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.

While most of your post is spot on, I have to disagree with this statement. Cynicism doesn't imply a lazy tolerance of what is bad. Cynicism is the belief that people are motivated by selfish reasons, coupled with a willingness to observe this in life. Historically, cynics are resonsible for pointing out the truth, even when it is negative (see Diogenes).

Apathy is acceptance of what should not be acceptable. It's possible to be an apathetic cynic; is also possible to be a passionate cynic who takes action to right the wrongs seen.

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.