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."

Comments

Lying or incompetent?

[NJVil]

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.

Re:Lying or incompetent?

[fm6]

Yes, people who lie and people who are incompetent are often the same people. But so what? The dichotomy is not between two kinds of people, but between two motivations.

For example (any similarities with a certain world leader are strictcly coincidental!): suppose I'm a police chief and I announce that I'm going to devote most of the resources of my department to busting a certain criminal mastermind because I believe him to be behind most of the crime in my city. So I take the dude down,and it turns out that he was small potatoes, and getting him off the street accomplished very little — indeed the other criminals had a field day while I was chasing him. Some people claim that my whole crusade has some private motivation, such as concealling my own corruption.

Now, maybe I'm an incompetent police chief and maybe I'm dishonest. I could even be both. But that doesn't explain my motivation. Did I honestly believe the guy was as big a criminal as I thought he was or not? Did I lie about this particular thing or was I misinformed about this particular thing? That's a real dichotomy.

Kudos to CNN on this

[jeffs72]

I'm impressed to see such a harsh but true write up on CNN about this. None of this liberal 'think about her feelings, criminals have rights too' bullshit here. The article was totally on target.

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.

Re:Kudos to CNN on this

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this liberal 'think about her feelings, criminals have rights too' bullshit here.

Since we're talking about big business and spying, I think the word is "conservative". The touchy feely liberal stuff usually only applies to shit-poor petty theft criminals, not to meglamaniacs.

Patricia & the Moral High Grounds

[eldavojohn]

HP's reputation has suffered far more from this mess than it ever could have from 'leaked information' - I don't care how sensitive it was (baring forced anal probes of random citizens).

Well, she did something that a lot of people with a lot of power have historically done. She assumed the moral high ground. In our society, it's illegal to murder people. Well, unless you're in Texas or Virginia where they appearantly take it upon themselves to murder someone as a penalty of justice. Kind of ironic that if someone commits a crime, we as a society take it upon ourselves to then commit what would normally be considered a great crime unto them.

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.

The other members of the board that did not resign in protest bear some of the responsibility as well.

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!

Re:Patricia & the Moral High Grounds

[cunina]

Kind of ironic that if someone commits a crime, we as a society take it upon ourselves to then commit what would normally be considered a great crime unto them.

That's not ironic. We as a society regularly accord the government rights and duties that are denied to an individual - if we didn't, there would be little point of having a government. I think we can all agree that kidnapping someone and keeping them in your basement is bad, but nobody should be surprised when we punish the perpetrator by essentially doing the same thing to him.

Re:Patricia & the Moral High Grounds

[Rich0]

Well, she did something that a lot of people with a lot of power have historically done. She assumed the moral high ground. In our society, it's illegal to murder people. Well, unless you're in Texas or Virginia where they appearantly take it upon themselves to murder someone as a penalty of justice. Kind of ironic that if someone commits a crime, we as a society take it upon ourselves to then commit what would normally be considered a great crime unto them.

Uh, without going into a dive into the morality of the death penalty, you do realize that it isn't just a few people in power who are enforcing it, but rather the democratically-established laws of the government? There is in fact a difference between the chair of the board of some company "assuming the high ground" and the voters of a nation writing laws. Sure, just because it is law doesn't make it right, but the people of a nation have a far greater moral authority than individuals acting in their own capacity or as heads of businesses.

If the phone records had been retrieved under warrant as part of a criminal investigation (into something other than exercise-of-free-speech) nobody would be complaining about it - this is a normal function of government. The issue is that some private citizen decided to exercise power in violation of the law in order to make money.

Now, the morality of capital punishment is obviously a controversial one, but you can't equate the actions of government endorsed by the voters with the actions of a lone person. It doesn't make it right, but the fact is that the voters of the states you mention do in fact support capital punishment - which makes your analogy flawed.

Re:Patricia & the Moral High Grounds

[Scarblac]

The other members of the board that did not resign in protest bear some of the responsibility as well.

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?

That they didn't stop it, and apparently thought it was acceptable, is exactly why they bear part of the responsibility.

Remember, they didn't just spy on and illegally obtain phone records of the board members, but also on at least 10 reports, and at least one father of a reporter. It's not up to the board to pardon that.

Re:Patricia & the Moral High Grounds

[timeOday]

I think we can all agree that kidnapping someone and keeping them in your basement is bad, but nobody should be surprised when we punish the perpetrator by essentially doing the same thing to him.

One big difference is that the government doesn't just "kidnap" people all the sudden and hide them away without telling anybody where they are, there's due process and the accused can defend themselves against the accusations. Um, I mean, unless the President doesn't feel like it.

Consider the following creepy factors

[d0ktorbuzz0]

I am a US citizen working in the defense industry. The work I do requires that I provide a large amount of very personal information to the US DoD. They ask for and get the names of family members, friends, past coworkers, etc. as well as sworn testimony regarding any criminal activity, chemical dependency, and on and on.

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.

Re:Consider the following creepy factors

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that this is the same HP that outsourced management of the former
DEC's pension fund to Fidelity, who then allowed its idiotic newbie "fund
managers" to frolic around Silicon Valley with the entire pension fund
database on their laptops, which were then stolen out of their company car
when they stopped for a latte' on their way to giving a demo to HP...

It seems adamantly clear that the upper management of HP doesn't care about
privacy.

Maybe they'll get the hint when their key employees leave for more lucrative
jobs elsewhere, when their key enterprise customers cancel orders and migrate
to Sun or IBM, when their suppliers start demanding more cash up front for fear
they'll never get paid because of a cash crunch, when the US DOD cancels orders and
precludes HP from bidding on others for failure to meet the most basic
security requirements, when stockholders start storming the gates, ...

And remember, stockholders, when the next ballot for directors comes out, to
read the instructions very carefully. Withholding a vote from a nominee has
very strong ramifications, too...

A write-in campaign for Tom Perkins would be interesting, too...

Re:Nature of Big Business Today?

[pipingguy]

Where I work, in a technical field, the old HP had a long history of excellence.

The HP RPN calculators were top of the line and loved by engineers, but I guess that wasn't good enough for the "new" HP. Shame on you, HP management for marginalizing and abandoning true fans.

I'm not smart enough to know how the 11c buttons actually worked (tactile feedback), but, man that was a great customer experience. I recently ripped-out my employer-provided genuine Microsoft keyboard and went back to a lame old "crappy" one. Why? The new one decided that it knew better than me. When I wanted to capture a screen it would argue. Sorry, I want control when I type commandsdsjfuudsfv

Re:Lying or incompetent? It is an OR

[khallow]

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.

Re:Nature of Big Business Today?

[TheWoozle]

This is exactly what happens when MBAs are allowed to run things. When will management learn that they are not there to tell people how to do things, they are there to serve the people who actually make/do the things that earn the corporation money.

Middle management in corporations concentrates on the process because they don't understand or know how to improve the people. They don't know how to tell a good engineer from a bad one. They certainly don't understand how to facilitate and develop the abilities of the engineers. They want the higher-ups to notice them, so they go about changing the only thing they can: the process.

And the CEOs don't want to recognize that it's the good people who make the company successful, because that would threaten both their sense of power/control and their ego. [sarcasm]Workers should realize that they are interchangeable parts, and that it's the all-mighty CEO and his super-duper management process that are responsible for the success of the company.[/sarcasm]

After all, how else are the CEOs going to land their next gig when things go tits-up?

(Isn't it always strange how, when things go well the CEO takes all the credit, but when things go wrong it has nothing to do with them?)

Hypocritical media

[Ingolfke]

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.