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

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?"

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: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