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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."
"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!
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.
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!
If it's a formal asking, yes. They're called Congressional subpoenas. Failure to due so can result in contempt of Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress
No, but Congress does have subpeona power, which WOULD be compulsory and be a bad way to start the meeting. So usually folks go along with requests from Congress and use relationships with friendly congressmen to try and limit topics covered or questions away from the more embarrassing stuff.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
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."
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?
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?
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.