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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
There are plenty of questions that will be asked.
The director that resigned (Perkins), didn't resign because of pretexting, but because the chairman unilaterally ordered an investigation of the board of directors, and only informed the directors when the "leak" was found. As head of the Nominating and Governance committee, he was, or felt he was, the one responsible for the Governance of the board.
That the other directors didn't resign doesn't say anything about their position on the matter, especially since they did not have Perkins' unique position.
The "pretexting" allegation came after Perkins resigned, and hired counsel to investigate the investigation. Perkins informed HP counsel, and they didn't act.
Dunn's now made the dumb-ass mistake of calling this a personal issue, a power struggle between Perkins and herself. Undoubtedly it is, but that doesn't make the matter any less severe. In a power struggle, when one side strikes publicly, you have to respond to the public, not to the person.
Did the other directors let Dunn take the "High Ground"? No -- they didn't follow her advice and remove the leak. So what does that give us? One alleged leaker, Dunn with an investigation on it, and now the Directors find they've been the victims of fraud, along with a bunch of reporters and a geophysicist.
She still has a job until tomorrow. Directors are directors because they're insulated from management. Management spied on the directors, without their consent, at the unilateral behest of Patricia Dunn. Patricia Dunn tried to use the results of this espionage to alter the composition of the board of directors. Nobody contests these facts. During the investigation, someone may have "exceeded the bounds of legality" without their superiors' knowledge or authorization, but their results were used, and were used unquestionably.
You can't tolerate that in a boardroom.
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.
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.
Are you being treated for your Asperger's?
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.