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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."
I would agree. I see 'lots' (a few percent) of people in jobs for which they are not competent. Typically those people lie and cheat (and (\@#$ the boss) to stay there. This particular example however is very extreme = and reminds me of what Sony did with the root kits. I still don't trust Sony - If HP thinks that this sort of action is OK, I will now worry about what HP will do to its end products. What sort of spyware are they going to put in their printer drivers....
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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.
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.
much work on the investigations into all the ongoing scandels in washington(valarie plame, Sibel Edmunds, halliburton, etc).
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.