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Congress Asks HP for Information
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! is reporting that HP has been asked by Congress to turn over records related to the internal investigation of possible illegal media leaks. This request came as a part of the continuing look by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee into 'pretexting.' From the article: 'The Federal Communications Commission has also taken interest in HP, asking AT&T Inc. last week how the company's private investigators managed to obtain the private phone records of board members and journalists. Following the investigation, board member George Keyworth II was identified as the source of the leak, and HP responded by barring him from seeking re-election.'"
...how they can be so effective in catching leakers. Thank you, thank you I will be here all week.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Dunn's been a director since '98, even before Fiorina was around.
"Congress Asks HP for Information"...but, we can't forget the lesser part of the story. They also asked: "Our printer lights are flashing and the motor is whirring and it won't take in any paper, what do we do?"
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
Anyone else looking forward to seeing what kind of monstrous legislation we get in answer to this problem? Whatever it is, I sure hope it includes funding for an escalator to nowhere.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
It would be nice if congress would go after the white house. I find it amazing that they would get involved with a private business, but allow a president to ignore our rights.
When congress "asks" individuals or business for anything--records, testimony, etc, is it compulsory? In other words, are you mandated by law to obey them as though it were a court order?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I agree. I'm sure Dunn would be more than happy to take responsibility for any good news to come out of HP. Why won't she take responsibility for the bad acts that resulted from an investigation she, by all accounts, ordered and oversaw?
Silicon Valley has gotten rotten. Dunn's refusal to take responsibility is a textbook example.
The Federal Communications Commission has also taken interest in HP, asking AT&T Inc. last week how the company's private investigators managed to obtain the private phone records of board members and journalists.
Well, a likely candidate is something like Jigsaw. Capitalism at its finest.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Why is congress getting involved? Isn't this area sufficiently covered by state and federal law that they can leave it up to an Attorney General somewhere?
I suspect grandstanding. Get the parade grounds ready because the marching band is coming!
The government doesn't like competition- its the NSAs job to illegally spy on people!
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I worked at HP in 1988-1989. I wont bother to look up his name, but some business-school schmuck was ruining the "HP Way". No more weekly donuts. No more team-spirit.
David Packard apparently was very concerned. He came out of retirement for a while to run the company. Everything got good again, fast.
Some other examples: Bill Gates, Sony's dead founder/CEO, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs. Like them or hate them, they leave a mark. Once their gone, multi-billion-dollar corporations can fade into irrelevance. We simply haven't found a way to identify these guys and put them in the top jobs. Unless they build the company themselves, they never get there.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Hooray for outsourcing!
/* No Comment */
The House Committee's Letter to HP (PDF).
I can't believe you're attributing the obviously criminal acts of this woman to sexism on the part of the board. Yes, women can commit crimes, too. What she's done amounts to simple hacking via social engineering. Last time I checked, it was illegal, too. Forget resignation, Dunn needs to get an attorney, because she's looking at jail time if this plays all the way out.
"The Federal Communications Commission has also taken interest in HP, asking AT&T Inc. last week how the company's private investigators managed to obtain the private phone records of board members and journalists."
Isn't this the same AT&T that's all too willing to sell the government private phone records without anything as silly as a warrant?
How are they going to answer? "Why, the same way you did, of course."
Kick up a big dust storm to get eyes off political issues that matter.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I am not suggesting that we should have 2 standards of punishment: one for powerful (usually quite rich) people and one for less powerful (usually less rich) people. Rather, I am suggesting that whenever the law grants a judge or a prosecutor wide discretion in meting a punishment, they should aggressively pursue and severely punish powerful people.
The rationale is that the crimes of powerful people are much more likely to hurt -- or even kill -- people. If a messed-up dude from the ghetto steals a high-end Acura that is worth 3x of his annual salary, then he is injuring principally the owner of the car. On the other hand, if a conniving money manager steals 3x of his annual salary ($300,000) from a mutual fund that he is managing, then he is hurting a large number of people on a large scale ($900,000). We are talking abou completely different orders of magnitude.
Sometimes, the justice system works in the way that I have suggested. For example, a special government-appointed prosecutor filed charges against both Scooter Libby and Bill Clinton for merely lying. The prosecutor acted appropriately.
However, usually, the justice system fails. It often severely punishes (by assigning prison time) the hapless criminal from the ghetto but barely slaps the wrist of the conniving money manager. We know the "deal". Most money managers who have been caught stealing from investors typically settle for both a relatively (i.e., relative to the manager's net worth) small financial penalty and signed statement that explicitly does not admit wrongdoing. The statement typically has the clause, "neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing".
The big question in the HP scandal is whether the justice system will slap Patricia Dunn (the chairperson of the HP board) on the wrist. Is there any chance that the justice system will actually punish her at the level of severity often meted to hapless criminals caught in the ghetto?
You're kidding, right? At times, I think a woman could kill an entire family and devour their hearts, and SOMEONE would find a way to blame it on male chauvinism.
That's why My regime would require Samurai honor code for public servants and top level corporate executives. If you screw up in a big way and bring dishonor to your office you'd have to commit seppuku. Steal billions of dollars, forcing employees of your company to work as Wal-Mart greeters until they die? Seppuku. Screw up the evacuation of a major city after a major disaster? Seppuku. Get caught funding an undeclared war in South America? Seppuku. And don't think MY regime wouldn't catch people, either! My regime would have informants EVERYWHERE!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The real questions Congress should be asking:
Regarding the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent and the entire front company that she worked for. Their area of expertise was of course weapons of mass destruction.
IIRC disclosure of the identity of covert agents is a federal felony.
Congress should demand to see the after action reports on how many assets were comprised (people killed) as a direct result of this.
Who will guard the guards?
It is little US-centric things like this that point to the lack of real customer sensitivity or innovation in large corporations. Or is it a backhanded compliment: Europeans are sufficiently intelligent to change the defaults, but Americans aren't? No, I don't believe that either. It is pure laziness on HP't part.
Pining for the fjords
In Scandinavia (for sure in Finland, I think so in Sweden) fines are set according to your income.
Remember that high level Nokia manager who was fined 10s thousands of Euros for speeding? I don't really think that there's a double standard here, but in the case that actual jail terms differ between rich and not so rich there is, of course.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Yes, that is why China kills its most corrupt mayors. Unfortunately people are people. And due to the Peter Principle (and other principles on that page) it is likely that incompetent people will rise to a managerial role, which means that a screw-up is a screw-up regardless of how much money he is screwing up. Beyond a certain amount it's just numbers anyway. If you want to punish someone who is incompetent, punish the guy who hired them.
White collar crime however stems from imperfect people, full of characteristics that enabled them to get to the top, being either malicious, or else walking the grey line so close to the edge that they inevitably step over it. It is like the saying that you get the kind of leaders you ask for.
Either way, it seems to me that such characters will do so for the maximum amount of money they can access and think is safe, so it does not make sense to keep upping the ante the more powerful a person is; the psychology does not change. It probably won't have much of an effect, they just have to catch more people is all, and also change the psychological requirements of people being hired.
If a trader in a securities firm loses a billion dollars, the firm has to pay it. Such insurance fund does not exist in the case of an Enron and maybe they need to start buying some. In the case of HP, it may be illegal in terms of corporate spying but it is not on a par with say rape or murder.
If congress just said pretexting is illegal (which it looks like they may do) then maybe only criminals will do it, but certainly it won't be ordered by the head of the corporation. You want to add a prison sentence to catch people lower down, not the people on top, hence your argument is actually upside-down. Or do you think just the president should go to prison, and not the people who actually did it professionally?
Sometimes I get the feeling that although they have a female face at the top of HP (previously Fiona, now Dunn), that the board members are little more than an old-boys-club which would rather see a man leading the venerable HP than some uppity broad.
Let's do a simple logic exercise OK?
If the board members wanted a man to run the company they would not have voted to have either Fiona or Dunn to run the company in the first place.
The board seems to be going out of their way to make Dunn feel unwanted, so far even as to break the law to do so.
Telling reporters what is going on in board meetings is not illegal. Keep in mind that HP has NOT been doing well, and the board member leaking things probably wants things to change for the better because he/she believes that Dunn (or others) are fucking up BAD.
What Dunn did is like hiring a hitman. She KNEW that there was no legal way to obtain the information, so she hired PI's to do her (illegal) dirty work for her. The evidence to back that up is that she provided confidential personel records with social security numbers and who knows what else which makes it easy to perform identity theft.
I note with some amusement that the Yahoo story says "possibly illegal probe of media leaks" and the Slashdot story emphasizes "internal investigation of possible illegal media leaks". Is there a hidden agenda here?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Interesting, I always thought everyone uses letter size.
Thank you for enlightening me. Now I'm going to need to decide which country (or countries) are backwards on this front.
(And don't tell me just because everyone else does, the US is backwards. That would be non sequiter. I'll probably find that anyway.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.