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HP Witch Hunt Also Targeted Reporter's Father
theodp writes "Patriciagate gets even stranger. In a twist that indicates the extent of HP's investigation, the CA Attorney General's office said HP's investigators also targeted the personal phone records of CNET reporter Stephen Shankland's father, Thomas, a semi-retired physicist in New Mexico. The scandal prompts CNNMoney to ask Chairwoman Patricia Dunn: Are you lying or incompetent? An emergency HP Board meeting is scheduled for Sunday."
Why does this always seem to be asked as an either-or question? Judging from experience, all too often, the two seem to go hand-in-hand.
And I agree with the other OP's here, lying and incompetent go hand in hand, apparently she's both. I mean, I give her credit for fighting off breast cancer and melanoma, that's impressive, but her running of the HP board, uh, isn't.
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Well, what I'm trying to say is that she witnessed bad things happening to HP and so did something probably equally as bad for sake of HP. She might have viewed this as 'justice' or whatever. Not entirely true. How do we know that we have all the details to this whole story? Perhaps everyone there watched her assume the moral high ground and gave it to her? I mean, it sure was nice of her not to outright fire the leak. Maybe everyone (except the computer founder that quit) acknowledged that the strategy Patricia was correct in taking that strategy to find and silence the leak. Maybe some of them were completely happy that they only had to sacrifice that to find out who was leaking information? Perhaps this invasion of privacy is the norm in corporate America, you just have to accept it once you get to that point -- I'm not sure, that seems to be a completely different culture than what I'm used to. Everyone's pretty cutthroat anyway.
I'm not trying to defend her actions at all, just trying to give you the story from her perspective. I'm sure it's already been said that she didn't act in any inappropriate way compared to some of our political figureheads we have today and have had historically. You can call her Machiavelli but you can't call her stupid, she's still has a job!
My work here is dung.
Where I work, in a technical field, the old HP had a long history of excellence. Our test equipment was mostly HP, and we liked it. Then it went down hill. I'm curious if the products went downhill first or the quality of their management did. I'd have to guess that management did. Sad that they are still sliding down that slope. When the masters, Hewlett and Packard, had control things were superb but once they left and the investors took over everything turned into crap. Looks to me like this is the way of great companies though. I remember what happened to Northrop, Douglas, Hughes, and other old biggies and have to wonder if when the spirit that guided them to greatness is gone, can any maintain the excellence they had once that inspiration is gone. A formerly great company like HP acting as desperately as this tends to make me think that it cannot be done.
However, the crime was still committed by me, not by the non-physical entity called "my employer", so i should still be the one who takes the punishment. Obviously my employer should also not be allowed to profit from this (or there remains the option of just sacrificing people for corporate gain), but unless the perpetrators and their accomplices are held personally responsible (to the point of going to jail) then there seems little incentive not to break the law.
It seems clear in many cases (including this one) that senior management is implicated in such law breaking. Fine, so maybe someone "misinterprets" your instructions and breaks the law in your name without your knowledge, but deliberately ignoring that fact when it becomes obvious what has happened does not make you innocent. Senior management must be held accountable for this kind of crap. If its your responsiblilty to run the company, then you also have a duty to know what is going on. And if there is a strong chance you'll go to jail if you don't, then turning a blind eye might suddenly look a rather less attractive option.
Well, its an 'OR' question as opposed to a 'XOR' question...
___OR__
0 | 0 = 0
0 | 1 = 1
1 | 1 = 1
1 | 1 = 1
__XOR__
0 | 0 = 0
0 | 1 = 1
1 | 1 = 1
1 | 1 = 0
HP's "reputation" was damage by leaking "the truth", more specifically I think Intel (not the general consumer) were pretty annoyed with that leak.
It seems it has further been damaged by "the truth".
They didn't learn last time. Theses boardroom idlers think they are very cosy where they are e.g. out of the eye of public scrutiny with their nice fat paycheques. Large corporations now have more (or at least as much) power and influence over the general population as governments do yet are unaccountable and unelected. Frankly, if it takes the press spanking these people daily to get them in line then the more the merrier.
Dunn should be fired immediately and, preferably, the police should determine if criminal charges can be brought against her.
I barely tolerate this sort of intrusive spying by government security agents. When private enterprise gets into spying on all and sundry I think maybe modern society should sit down, talk openly, figure out where we are going instead of fighting each other for every last dollar in a climate of escalating paranoia.
Whatever... I've just worked for 11 of the last 12 days - I'm fried.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Fellow shareholders,
Sadly, the board cannot be trusted with the task of cleaning it's own house, given the events that have transpired. Who knows what was said, and when? Clearly some board members are covering their tracks. This board is further damaging the HP brand. We need some serious house cleaning.
So it's time for the shareholders to do something that the board cannot do: clean itself out. Here's an idea: I say we hire a subcontractor to obtain all the phone records of all the board members and their families and friends. When we find dirt, we can wave it in front of the board members so that they will resign on their own. Otherwise we'll have to trust the board. And as you know, that's a lost cause.
It'll be interesting to see how bad, or if you'd like, how much worse, Microsoft will get now that Gates is pulling away from it.
It is reasonable to believe that many people would be unwilling to provide this scope of personal information to a government agency just to be employed. That said, there are some very seriously protected rights that every submitter of such information is entitled to as a citizen, with the US government liable for any unauthorized use of the sensitive information it requests and obtains in these sorts of background investigations.
Now consider the following creepy factors in play with HP's investigation:
1. Targets were not informed that they could be investigated prior to or during the events that led to the "pretext" investigation.
2. Outside personnel (a law firm and some unscrupulous PIs) were given the personal information of HP's own employees and journalists not employed by HP as well as the personal information for said journalists' family members!
3. All of this was motivated by a corporate information leak. No government secrets were involved, and the assertion that a competitive advantage was compromised (I am assuming such an assertion was made by Frau Patricia even though those exact words were not used) has, to date, not been proven.
4. We're already more than a few days along with this story and I haven't heard even one executive of another large firm defend any of the behavior of HP's board members or their soon-to-be co-defendants in this matter. Although the "pretexting" approach is not something pioneered by HP's clown college, they just seem like the largest name yet asociated with such an attack.
5. Hello, you run a major technology corporation with millions of customers and tens of millions of potential customers watching this entire story unfold. Think information security and privacy issues aren't a hot topic yet? Now they are!
6. Oh yeah, and your own employees are watching, too.
I could go on. Others here will make more and better observations than I.
I think it is my obligation as a US citizen and a technical professional (read: today's equivalent of a production-line blue-collar worker of the 60s and 70s) to express my abhorrence of HP's behavior in this matter and of the "pretexting" tactic that was used to invade the privacy of US citizens (and maybe some non-citizens too for that matter), all within the borders of the United States. I think any assertion on HP's part that this was justified is disgusting and wrong. Heads absolutely should roll and they should start from the very top.
I can't help wondering if the increasingly strident attitudes regarding the surreptitious gathering of citizens' personal information that are expressed by many people and agencies of the state and federal governments of the US has started to leach into the corporate mindset. Not that I thought that they were honest and fair before... just that they weren't so brazenly foolish as to risk discovery of illegal behavior sanctioned by highly placed management and their well-heeled legal advisors.
Needless to say, I will never work for HP, not after this. How the mighty have fallen. HP used to be one of my top future career destinations, based on their technical aptitude and their culture of innovation and excellence. That all must be long gone by now.
And I will definitely ask any future employer about their policies in this regard. At least I know where I stand with the DoD and my rights. These corporate goons, on the other hand, are making things up as they go. Bad... in the end the only ones who will win are the lawyers and raider traders.
much work on the investigations into all the ongoing scandels in washington(valarie plame, Sibel Edmunds, halliburton, etc).
Is that like a physicist past his half-life, only you haven't checked if he collapsed to his retired state yet?
Yes, let's get into a semantics argument. "or" as it is used in English means "xor" while "and/or" means "or". Now you know.
Do to the American version of democracy, it's unavoidable that big corporations is a partner in governing the country. At present the congress and senate has better things to do, so the country is run by the executive branch and the powers of big business. I think it's a testimony to the American journalist that they don't question the system, but adjusts its behavior but applying political accountability to corporate leadership. Why should anybody care about whether HP is an evil mastermind as long as the stock rises and the consumer is happy? Insisting on Chairwoman Patricia Dunns resignation is accepting the corporate accountability and thereby accepting that corporations should take the role of congress.
Particia Dunn is incompetent and also stupid. She should resign and criminal charges filed.
Now, I want to know, why in hell this crap started?? HP as a company went down hill since Carly's hiring. I just bought a HP printer and the ink carts are incredibly small and the casing of the printer is so flimsy. HP USED to make good printers. I ain't saying it's not working and does not have good output.....it does.....it's just I don't see it lasting as long as my Photosmart P1115 has (6 years and 2 computers....still going strong).
Gorkman
Are you being treated for your Asperger's?
Not necessarily. If somebody asked me if I had time for an appointment Wednesday or Thursday, and I said "no" because I was available on both days, that would be wierd.
I don't seem to see it mentioned in the article, but what was the context of this whole story?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Do you want tea or coffee?" "Yes."
I would like to submit an application for the position of CEO of your company. I have no experience or qualifications, but honestly how can I be any worse than Carly Fiorina or Patricia Dunn. I promise that in my time as CEO I will line my own pockets with cash from the company's coffers, "Change the company's direction and focus" several times to make it seem that I am really doing something positive for the company, and maybe even pull some sort of shady shit to make the stock price go up a little bit. I can assure you HP, I am the man for the job. If you are really stuck on the whole female executive thing (Chairwoman is not a word), I know some doctors who could totally make it happen.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Hewlett Packard mastered the art of skillful fact manipulation before they ever mastered the art of PaintJets, DeskJets and DesignJets.
Since they introduced both the laser printer (LaserJet) and thermal inkjet (ThinkJet) in 1984, they cannot blame Canon or Apple or anybody else for their own lying about printer specifications.
_XOR_ 1 | 1 != 1 1 | 1 == 0 just to point it out
Slipping shoelaces ?
>> An emergency HP Board meeting is scheduled for Sunday.
A live video feed will be available at www.hp.com/boardroom/spycam1 starting at 11:00 AM PDT.
The recent NYT/ IHT article gives a different and more detailed account of the current HP mess.
From Leak, inquiry and resignation rock a boardroom
By Damon Darlin [Miguel Helft contributing] The New York Times / September 7, 2006
Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune
>>
[....]
After Hurd succeeded Fiorina, the leaks stopped.
But in January, an article appeared on the technology news Web site CNET about a management meeting. The report described the company's strategy in dealing with the chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as possible acquisitions. It struck a nerve among the top executives not only because strategy was revealed but because leaks could open the company up to charges of securities violations because of selective disclosure of information.
Dunn, who had been named chairwoman after Fiorina's ouster, wanted to restore the trust among the board members - a trust that had been tested as the company went through three years of infighting, beginning with a proxy fight over its acquisition of Compaq Computer. Perkins, according to a top company executive, was as enthusiastic as Dunn was to catch the leaker.
[....]
Dunn, the former head of Barclay Global Investors, ordered a further investigation in January. But this time, it was turned over to the company's office of general counsel, which turned to a consulting firm with "substantial experience in conducting internal investigations," as the company described it. Hewlett-Packard has refused to name the firm, but said it had used it before.
According to a Hewlett-Packard filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the consulting firm then subcontracted the work to another group of investigators to obtain information about phone calls between Hewlett-Packard directors and outsiders.
When the investigators were done, the results were presented to the full board, which includes Hurd. The evidence pointed to George A. Keyworth II, the board's longest-serving member, with 20 years' service. H.P. said that Keyworth admitted being the source of the leak and that the board, after discussion, asked him to resign. He refused.
At that point, Perkins announced his own resignation. Both Perkins's representatives and company officials say Perkins accused Dunn of betraying him. According to Perkins's spokesman, it was because Dunn had agreed to handle the matter privately and quietly. But Viet D. Dinh, Perkins's lawyer on this matter, also said that Perkins was upset with the extent of the investigation. He was the sole member to object.
[....]
Perkins's resignation was reported by Hewlett-Packard, which gave no cause. Perkins took nearly a month off, spending most of the time on his yacht.
[From an earlier section of the article: " Perkins, who was briefly married to the best-selling author Danielle Steel and recently wrote a racy novel titled "Sex and the Single Zillionaire," did not respond to requests for comment. A representative said Perkins was in the Mediterranean on his new $100 million 287-foot yacht, the Maltese Falcon, and did not want to be disturbed." 8~D]
When he returned to Silicon Valley in June, he pressed the company to amend its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to reflect the reason for his resignation - a request it rebuffed until Wednesday - and agitated for H.P. to investigate its methods. The Wilson Sonsini firm was asked by a board committee to do the job.
What Perkins did not know at the time - indeed, H.P. said no one on the board did - was that the leak investigators had used a form of subterfuge known as "pretexting," or false pretenses, to obtain the directors' official phone records. That was revealed in an e-mail response when Perkins directly asked Larry W. Sonsini, the chairman of Wilson Sonsini, about the investigative methods.
The Wilson Sonsini investigation concluded that the use of pr
I'm very grateful for this whole hullabaloo, mostly because it taught me the word "pretexting". Can someone honestly explain to me how "pretexting" is different from "fraud" or "lying"?
You wouldn't think it to be a snorer if you were:
a.) An investor (direct or indirect through mutual funds or whatever) who had a
significant investment in HP stock
or
b.) An employee who is wondering how many orders might be either cancelled
or never obtained because customers refuse to purchase from a company perceived
to be having serious management problems
or
c.) A vendor (or employee thereof) wondering how soon/fast incoming orders will
tumble because larger HP (would-be) customers are being spooked by yet another
round of upper management instability.
or
d.) A customer or potential customer running a large enterprise that spends millions
of dollars per year from various vendors for hardware, software, integration services,
and/or field service maintenance, that your multi-billion-dollar business has to rely on.
As a retired HP employee, who was one of the many who came into work one Monday
morning to be told that we (DEC) had been bought out by Compaq over the previous
weekend (and discovered that it wasn't a joke, and that a few colleagues had had
microphones shoved in their faces on their way in to work, asking for comments),
I can tell you that this sort of misbehaviour is very effing scary, particularly
if you'd put in a few decades of work there, all for nothing.
It's a shame that Tom Perkins resigned in a huff - I was hoping that we could have
depended on him to throw yet another bitch out of the boardroom on her ass.
Monday morning will be yet another interesting start of the week for thousands of
HP employees, wondering who's going to be at the helm. The Slashdot article said there
was an emergency board meeting scheduled for Sunday, other articles indicate that there
would be a telephone board meeting over the weekend. Let's just hope that, however it
happens, that Dunn gets all done there, as they say in New Hampsha...
Hmm, it is interesting that someone on slashdot thinks truth tables are 'funny'.
Yep, I agree with parent: in formal english, 'or' alone is the non-exclusive OR (and an exclusive XOR is phrased as 'either ... or ...'.
That said, in sloppy english where the XOR is clearly implied by context, the word 'either' is often dropped. Thus the question: "Is she a lying blackhat or a truthful whitehat?" (But note that two possible replies are "She is neither," and "She is both"-- and either of these would be a denial that the implied XOR is an appropriate model of reality.) So a good practice when encountering the word 'or' is to see if inserting 'either' in front of the first clause can be done without changing the sense of the sentence.
Another thing: in typical english conversations, short-circuit evaluation of non-exclusive OR clauses is permitted. Thus with the original question "Is Patricia Dunn a liar or incompetent?" there is no need to explore whether she is incompetent if it is shown that she is a liar, and vice versa.
In this particular case, events have already demonstrated that Patricia Dunn has been so incompetent in handling this investigation that she now finds herself the cause of a major scandal that is damaging HP stockholders' interests. So whether she is also a liar is no longer an issue (wrt the scope of the article): since she is incompetent, she should do the only honorable thing left for her to do and fall on her sword.
When she is out shopping her resume around again, other potential employers might be concerned about whether she was also a liar as well as being incompetent. But that isn't in the scope of TFA.
I believe that would be a tea-coffee mix, then. Mixing all the bits of tea and all the bits of coffee.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
1 | 1 = 1
1 | 1 = 0
eh?
I think you mean
1 | 0 = 1
1 | 1 = 0
I hate to nit-pick, but your third line in each of those tables should be: 1|0=1
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
There's an incentive for the company to make crappy products - if your printer lasts for 6 years, there's not as much income as one printer every year.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
You mean interesting as in sad, right?
Cool links.
If you have HP products and are on an automatic driver update list you can hit the "unsubscribe" in the last update email - and that will log you on associated with your product or products (making you a high-value feedback / validated customer) and then you can send "real" feedback through the Contact link. Select the CEO and select business suggestions from the pulldown menu (no - you can't give your own subject). If you don't have HP products you can send low-value feedback here http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/hurd/index .html/
I cancelled all of my subscriptions and in feedback said that the actions of the Chairwoman Patricia Dunn were inconsistent with the law and good business practice and that I was not going to purchase another HP product until there were significant changes in the board and HP's business practices. I also gave them my name, address, phone and fax of my law firm. I can be validated and want to be counted as one very outraged customer / shareholder.
I have divested myself of all HP stock (200 shares were given to me when I entered college 33 years ago) - but I also hold TIAA-CREF and other funds that do not allow me to elect the stock purchases / holdings. I have sent them letters asking that they express grave concern about HP's management.
Frankly, since the takeover I have been unhappy with the quality of the products and I have Laserjet 500s still doing solid work after nearly 20 years. The last HP printers I bought for the firm were 4100N's with the postscript option and three tray feeds. Nothing has been as solid as the older printers.
Send the company a major message that this kind of management stupidity will result in massive loss of business.
This is the time for the "Slashdot effect" to make a difference.
Somebody tell me that the bitch Carley Fiorina is behind this!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
it is just PLAIN OLD NOT RIGHT to spy on people in this country. every member of the board and HP staff who were in on this fiasco must go, publicly, noisily, NOW.
or HP must go away.
if the first doesn't happen, the market will make the second happen.
ball's in your court....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
SQL: San Carlos, CA. Walking distance from Oracle headquarters.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
But why would they do that?
Take NBC, for instance. They're owned by General Electric, a fairly major weapons manufacturer It's not in NBC's best interest to perform true, journalistic investigations into the various issues surrounding the Iraq war. They'll put on a half-assed effort to make it look like they're journalists. But they won't ask the difficult questions, and won't report on the situations and people that would show the War on Terror to be the scam that it is.
In fact, it's in their best interest to promote such activities. The more weaponry that is used in Iraq and Afghanistan (and perhaps Iran, in the near future), the more GE profits. The various NBC news programs are able to increase their viewership by covering, in a very sanitized way, these wars.
Then there is FOX. Their unwillingness to act as competent journalists would appear to be due to ideological, religious and political reasons. War in the Middle East appeals to the apocalyptic views of many fundamentalist and extremist Christians, who happen to make up a very large portion of the southeastern and central American populations. News Corp.'s most effective way to get viewers is to appeal to their sense of Biblical nonsense. Doing so is completely contradictory to true journalistic practices, however.
That would be "tea and coffee."
Saying yes when offered a choice only means that you want one of the options... Further questioning ("Well, which one do you want?") is required to determine which of those options you want.
Did you, by any chance, work for Intel around about the time of the first Pentium release?
I have a list of about 7 or 8 airport codes that are also recognizable as tech acronyms... However Slashdot only allows me 3 for space constraints...
No sig for the moment.
Yes, let's get into a semantics argument. "or" as it is used in English means "xor" while "and/or" means "or". Now you know.
Incorrect. English "or" frequently means "xor", but not always. Consider: "Do you have a dime or two nickles?" Your answer can be "yes" if you have a dime, two nickles, or a dime and two nickles. Or: "Do you want something to eat or drink?" You can say "yes" if you want something to eat, or if you want something to drink, or if you want both.
__XOR__ 0 | 0 = 0 0 | 1 = 1 1 | 1 = 1 1 | 1 = 0
Are you lying incompetent?
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Has anyone noticed that groklaw has been down (from australia anyway) for at least 12 hours ?
Saying yes when offered a choice only means that you want one of the options... Further questioning ("Well, which one do you want?") is required to determine which of those options you want.
Yes, this is true. But the person who does this, when it's obvious that one is being offered a choice between the two, is just being a wiseass.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
First Fiorina, now this.
If I was an employee at HP, I would be searching dice.com right now, because this distraction is obviously going to mire ongoing project work within the company. Too bad the competition with the 10,000 laid off Intel employees is going to pose a bit of a competition for EEs and PMs working at the company.
Perhaps it's time to wipe off the board and start over--or take the company private so that it doesn't have to worry so much with the intense SEC and Wall Street scrutiny. It's not like HP share price is ever going to go back into the stratosphere. Most of I/T, thanks to the outsourcing phenomenon, is on a path to the lowest common economic denominator, with cost-control ruling the day over developing new markets and innovative products.
There is no market HP is engaged in where it is not one of a multitude of players in an oligopoly. This situation leaves HP with a lock-in on narrow or diminishing margins. It's time to reinvent the company... again.
In this case, Ms. Dunn may have had a moral duty to stop the leaking of proprietary HP information.
That is a meaningless statement. WTF is "proprietary HP information"? Without specifics we can't say who's wrong. If the leak was about Fiona's $21,000,000 severance package, the leaker followed their moral judgement to inform stockholders against the will of a corrupt board. Lying to get phone records to punish a whistle blower is both immoral and against the law. When the AG gets finished with this case, we will know just how corrupt the board was. Kudos to the member who resigned.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I love how the media hates it when someone else obtains information under "false pretenses" or illegally and yet they do it all the time and call it tough journalism. They'll pretend they're children to trap child predators (I'm not defending child predators...), they take classified information from informants, I expect they do some of the same things that happened during this investigation.
That doesn't make HP right, but the media is certainly hypocritical.
No, they didn't "waive", or even wave their dubiously legal actions about.
t ml
HP hid quite a lot. They consulted lawyers becuse they doubted the legality of their actions. They then did their best to hide their actions, despite claiming they were mostly legal - check their more recent SEC filings.
The board member who was chair of the *governance* committee resigned over HPs actions, and HP did not report anything other than his resignation - despite their legal obligations, and despite his requests - so he reported it himself.
Check out his letters here:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0905061hp1.h
not pretty
Let's see, we've got large segments of the press and investment community calling for Patricia Dunn's head, the California AG's investigating HP, and an emergency HP board meeting taking place tomorrow and we have you telling us that pretexting is legal and there's no big deal, that all HP's trouble is due to a Slashdot witch hunt. Why don't you tell the HP Board of Directors that this is all much ado about nothing?
As for HP's reputation getting trashed, that's simply due to people having been around long enough to have seen in person the decline in quality of HP equipment and some of us who worked in HP back when working for HP was something to be proud of. I used to own a HP Laserjet Series II. . . I've seen the flimsy plastic junk HP calls printers these days, and decided to buy a Canon iP3000 which is running from Linux right now. Dunn's latest stupidity is just icing on the cake.
Tech Public Policy stuff
...tomorrow's board meeting. Would love to know what goes down.
None of this liberal 'think about her feelings, criminals have rights too' bullshit here. The article was totally on target.
We shall see who is convicted, right now it's just an embarrassingly well documented accusation that the AG and most sensible people believe. It's only on conviction, when guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt, that your rights end and only in a manner prescribed by law. That said, shame on Forbes.
You can go to the MBA porn glossy, Forbes, where Tom Van Ripper writes an unabashed defense of witch hunt. Without really naming the content of the "leaks" or debating the morals of bringing information to the public, he cries and calls for more "oversight" and "information security." They even go so far as to blame the victim for "an atmosphere of distrust". It's a sickening endorsement of all the wrong kind of behavior.
The whole affair stinks like punishment of a whistle blower. That's unambiguously immoral and illegal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ironic, considering that your post is nothing but moronic blathering, misinformation, and wild speculation.
I think you meant: ___OR__ 0 | 0 = 0 0 | 1 = 1 1 | 0 = 1 1 | 1 = 1 __XOR__ 0 | 0 = 0 0 | 1 = 1 1 | 0 = 1 1 | 1 = 0
Wouldn't that be only the elements common to tea and coffee?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
He said 'ass burger' Huh huhuhuh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about this, from a CNET interview with the Calif. AG Bill Lockyer:
"Q: What is covered under California law with regard to pretexting?
Lockyer: There are two relevant statutes that may provide for criminal liability to someone who does pretexting. There's an identity theft statute, and there's a law that was designed to mostly address computer hackers, but it's getting information illegally from someone's computer system. Essentially it's pretending you're some other person to get a business that has a lot of personal information about a customer, to get that information disclosed by pretending you're that customer.
This practice is not illegal under federal law with respect to telephone records, correct? But from what I understand, that's not the case in California.
Lockyer: Yes, we have a stronger California law than the federal statute."
(probably this section)
Sooo, the AG believes that the pretexting, while not specifically addressed by statue, may fall under these other state laws. That'll be fun to watch in court, if it ever gets there.
Then there's the matter of the all-but-fraadulent SEC report on Perkin's resignation. HP just left out one or two minor details - such as the reason for his departure. Details that are *required* in an 8-K. All they said was:
"On May 18, 2006, Thomas J. Perkins announced his resignation as a director of Hewlett-Packard Company ("HP"), effective immediately. The text of HP's press release relating to Mr. Perkins' resignation is filed with this report as Exhibit 99.1." (link)
That's all.
So HP's in a bit of a fix with the State of CA, *and* with the SEC. Not to mention their customers, who've noticed the decline in product and support quality over the last decade. Sad really - they used to be great.
Oh, and one other thing. If Patricia Dunn weighs the same as a duck, then she *is* a witch, and the hunt was justified. You all know what to do.... :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a quality-vs-quantity issue. In the normal course of things, they're not going to go after a small-scale violator. They don't have the resources, and most people don't really care about some faceless data broker getting their hand slapped.
But, this case is extremely high-profile. Add the targeting of journalists and others not even connected to the leaks, and you've got a story with some legs. That translates into attention being focused on the AG, and *that* will tend to push them into prosecuting. Someone - probably at the PI outfit.
I think "unlikely" is going to become "probably" in this case. Abd it needs to be - to warn off other companies that want to do the same thing.
In an earlier age, a CEO in Dunn's place would accept responsibility for the unethical behavior of their subordinates (especially since she was the instigator of such behavior). But we've grown beyond that - it's everyone for themselves these days.
If Patricia Dunn was responsible for what happened (IF SHE KNEW ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OR NOT), then she should take the fall. That's what it means to be an executive, you are responsible for what happens as a result of your actions. Or at least what it *used* to mean. I guess these days, being an executive means making money and not being responsible for anything.
Whoever ordered the investigations is responsible. Pretty simple I think!
I'm amused by the amount of journalistic talent being devoted to explanations of "pretexting" - as if readers don't know "lying" when they see it. :-)
I called it "ruse calling" when I was in the executive search business.
No, but I deeply regretted the grandparent post, the very moment I hit submit. It is time to Pretend This Never Happened.