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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"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.
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
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
SCO digs into PJ's personal life in an attempt to intimidate her coverage of their public actions. That's pretty damn well related.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.
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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
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
"Pretexting" is just a pretext?
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?
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.
"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