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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.
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.
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:
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
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
Police can't hire private citizens to do those tasks that the laws prohibit law-enforcement from performing. If they do they become agents of the police and are subject to the same laws. This is longstanding in case law. If anything the question, for me, would be whether this makes those third parties agents of HP, and thus makes HP liable, and whether Patricia Dunn can be held criminally liable for their criminal acts.
Hell, Martha Stewart simply lied and went to jail. Patricia Dunn sanctioned these criminal acts. Even if her involvement was implicit she's still criminally liable because she knew they would not be able to gain access to this information without resorting to criminal activities.
She is a criminal now employed by the corporate foundations. Forever we'll remember HP as a criminal organization instead of the company that was founded for the employees.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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?