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.'"

Comments

They want to know..

[novus ordo]

...how they can be so effective in catching leakers. Thank you, thank you I will be here all week.

Congress Asks HP for Information?

[Desolator144]

"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?"

Re:Congress Asks HP for Information?

[plover]

"PC Load Letter?" What the fsck?

What about existing law?

[cryfreedomlove]

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!

Re:What about existing law?

[Brett Buck]

> 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.

        A chance to grill one of the those terrible corporate executive fat cats, possibly on TV? Two months before a mid-term election? I just can't see the connection...

          Brett

Re:A question for the lawyers

[antonlacon]

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

Competition

[AuMatar]

The government doesn't like competition- its the NSAs job to illegally spy on people!

This exemplifies importance of individuals

[smilindog2000]

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.

Re:This exemplifies importance of individuals

[kfg]

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.

My own experience as a director is that these people, for the most part, are quite easily identified by boards and rejected, often quite adamantly, by them.

Big business now runs on the concept of replacable mediocrity, extending right up to the level of the company president. A good, strong leader is hard to replace and thus leaves a hole behind when he/she leaves (noticable publicly by the dramatic dip in the stock price). They create a corporate culture that is very much centered around their personality (see Microsoft) so that even the public views the leader and the company as one and the same.

This is anethma to the corporate board. What they're looking for is the effective dullard. The sort of person who can work the system well enough to get a degree in history from an Ivy League school, but remain ignorant of history in practice, because they never actually understood the material they were studying. The sort of person with strong, but simple ideas who will be intellectually content with just keeping the gears of the system turning smoothly.

The schools currently pump this sort of person out by the container full, so if you lose one you can just go grab yourself another and the boat (and the stock prices) doesn't rock much in the process.

I haven't sat on a board for years now and the last time I was effectively ousted, from a company I cofounded (to continue a preexisting sole proprietorship in corporate clothing whose orginal founder had died). I rocked the boat. I made public statements that the majority of the board didn't like ( I never "leaked." I always talked directly to the press for attribution). I created discord without anything productive coming out of it because I was out of line with the majority view.

And in a sense the board was right to get rid of me, I didn't belong there. The company has grown smoothly and continues to thrive and grow under distinctly mediocre, largely invisible, but nominally effective, leadership, which has changed hands a few times without much of anyone even noticing that it was going on.

Shooting stars need not apply.

KFG

The House Committee's Letter to HP

[theodp]

The House Committee's Letter to HP (PDF).

Some nerve

[Guppy06]

"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."

We want to know what the punishment is.

[reporter]

In an ideal society, crimes committed by very powerful people should result in very severe penalties. Crimes committed by less powerful people should result in less severe penalties. Here, one form of power is money.

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?

Re:We want to know what the punishment is.

[Pantero Blanco]

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."

That sounds like two standards to me...

Re:White house

[Wavicle]

I find it amazing that they would get involved with a private business, but allow a president to ignore our rights.

We have a republican president and a republican-controlled congress. Don't think for a moment that if we had a democrat president and democrat-controlled congress we wouldn't have the exact same problem. Partisan politics means protecting your party even in cases of egregious wrong. American politics needs a serious dose of proportional representation. But that would require democrat and republican politicians to agree to change the system. Somehow, I don't think that's gonna happen. They both play the gerrymandering game - they're both fairly corrupt.

Yep!

[Greyfox]

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!