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HP's Dunn Stepping Down
XJHardware writes "Yahoo news is reporting that Patricia Dunn is stepping down from the chair of HP." From the article: "Hurd will retain his existing positions as chief executive and president and Dunn will remain as a director after she relinquishes the chair on Jan. 18. 'I am taking action to ensure that inappropriate investigative techniques will not be employed again. They have no place in HP,' Hurd said in a statement. Dunn apologized for the techniques used in the company's probe, which included 'pretexting' in which private investigators impersonated board members and journalists to acquire their phone records."
This really isn't a surprise if HP wanted to hold together as a company. This damage may be deeper than you think as their Head of Global Operations, Giles Bouchard is leaving by October 31st. It doesn't indicate what his reasons are but he's been working there for two years, why now? Will we see others follow or will Dunn's resignation stop others from jumping ship?
My work here is dung.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But in my day we called it 'lying'.
So calling the phone company and pretending to be somebody else to get their records is called Pretexting??? I kinda thought that was called fraud. As for Dunn stepping down, the buck stops here, and if she can't keep control of her ship, then she would step down. Of course, it's probably a case of Nixonitis, i.e. everybody does it, but HP got caught.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
I left HP, Boise during the disaster that was Carly.
Her "I-came-up-from-the-mailroom" speech was enough to make most in the Departmental LaserJet Division to wretch. But, at least she didn't go all Richard Nixon on everyone and send out eaves-dropping goon squads.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
When you hit the cover of Newsweek as a shining example of corporate misbehaviour, it's safe to say your days are numbered.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Why is it that I get a visit from the police when I do some good ole' social engineering and get caught? And this woman gets a seat as a director?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I guess you can say his time at HP is... DUNN for! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... sigh.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
At least she did the right thing there.
I don't know if it was a King Richard II thing ("Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?") or if it was a cold-blooded decision ("Commander, tear this ship apart, and bring me the passengers... ahem, I mean, dig up anything and everything you can on whoever seems a likely target."), but either way there was no way that HP could have kept any customer or shareholder faith with her remaining at the helm.
What I find interesting is that the Justice department is checking this "pretexting" business out. Are they interested in prosecuting it... or duplicating it?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
The CEO is now the chairman of the board. While
Hurd was probably exasperated, and rightly felt
he had to take the reigns to prevent further
damage to his company, the post-Enron concept
of an independent board has just taken a big
step backward. In the long run this is bad
for shareholders (not just HP shareholders).
Dunn: "Now, just give me my 'agreed-upon compensation that will pay the salary for 100 people over a lifetime' and I'll be gone."
crushing a woman simply because she is powerful. Well, and amoral. Illegal, too.
Anyway, it's just the establishment putting someone down just because they are female and criminal.
She's not the CEO. She's the chairman. Hurd is the CEO. At HP the responsibilites for those two offices are divided.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Perkins quit when he heard about the spying and lying. He held his fire, then he outed Dunn and the board. The company was supposed to disclose why Hackborn quit when he did. And the board should have disclosed the investigation started by Dunn as well as the results of the investigation.
I agree that the rest of the board, including Hackborn, has some responsibility. But how to get rid of them? I usually withhold my votes, but the big institutions usually vote for the boards.
Best regards.
As a former employee of HP, I must agree. Today's HP is a far cry from the ethical 'roots in the garage' company I once used to be proud of. They fire workers who get anything done and keep the filth - it must be stinking up there now. I am watching with tears in my eyes, as Hurd and his band are tearing up the legacy of Bill and Dave. Bill and Dave must be rolling in their graves. May their souls rest in peace. HP still has some great engineers, but it wont be long before they all get booted out. From a company of engineers in overalls building amazing products, its turning into a place with PHBs in suits. RIP HP. scardicat
Enough of this "pretexting" mumbo jumbo. It's "lying", fraud. Just because an exec does it doesn't require a euphamism to protect them from punishment like a mere human would get. They're not royalty who must be referred to with a "royal we" or "your highness". Their problems aren't "issues".
They're criminals. If anything, their crimes are worse, because they have more power and do more damage, while requiring more trust.
--
make install -not war
I find out that people won't calling what they did by the proper name:
LYING
Pretexting? It sounds so much nicer, like what a kid would do to talk to their friends on a cell phone. And I blame the press for buying into it and reporting it rather than saying "Patricia Dunn lied to the phone company to fraudulently obtain phone records".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Good point. If the company supplied the SSN's of the board members to the investigators, I'd expect some criminal action against the company.
Best regards.
So maybe now GNU/Hurd will finally be Dunn...
Y
Whoever said that was a fool, not a wise man. Capitalism has never been anything to do with right, wrong, good or evil, it's about self interest. It's human nature and will happen no matter what type of society we have. What do you propose as an alternative?
Deleted
I know just what you mean. I remember years ago when the HP Field Service guys would come out, it was like a visit from the Federal Marshals they were so not fucking around. Those guys could glance at a hex error code on an LCD and tell you (from memory) that SIMM #5 had failed, or tell you that CPU #3 had failed by the taste of the dust on top of the cabinet. Then they'd go out to their trunk and get a new CPU card for your T500 or 847 or whatever because they remembered which model you had and brought one along "just in case"...
Those days started to die with Lou Platt; Carly killed and buried them; the current crop of clowns are just dancing on their grave.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A corporate officer? Going to jail? What are you, some kind of communist?
Look what happened the last time we put a corporate officer in jail, he had a heart attack. Your jealousy of the rich & powerful is overwhelmingly hateful in its magnitude.
Won't somebody think of the CEOs, oh the horror of it all!!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
close, the idiotic federal government apparently thought it needed an important sounding new word
There ought to be a law... There is!
Pretexting: Your Personal Information Revealed
When you think of your own personal assets, chances are your home, car, and savings and investments come to mind. But what about your Social Security number (SSN), telephone records and your bank and credit card account numbers? To people known as "pretexters," that information is a personal asset, too.
Pretexting is the practice of getting your personal information under false pretenses. Pretexters sell your information to people who may use it to get credit in your name, steal your assets, or to investigate or sue you. Pretexting is against the law.
How Pretexting Works
Pretexters use a variety of tactics to get your personal information. For example, a pretexter may call, claim he's from a survey firm, and ask you a few questions. When the pretexter has the information he wants, he uses it to call your financial institution. He pretends to be you or someone with authorized access to your account. He might claim that he's forgotten his checkbook and needs information about his account. In this way, the pretexter may be able to obtain personal information about you such as your SSN, bank and credit card account numbers, information in your credit report, and the existence and size of your savings and investment portfolios.
Keep in mind that some information about you may be a matter of public record, such as whether you own a home, pay your real estate taxes, or have ever filed for bankruptcy. It is not pretexting for another person to collect this kind of information.
There Ought to Be a Law -- There Is
Under federal law -- the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act -- it's illegal for anyone to:
* use false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or documents to get customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution.
* use forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents to get customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution.
* ask another person to get someone else's customer information using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or using false, fictitious or fraudulent documents or forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents.
The Federal Trade Commission Act also generally prohibits pretexting for sensitive consumer information.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
At least the slimy mofo George Keyworth who was blabbing to the press got his name slimed.
I'd love to know just what he "leaked" and why you hate him for doing it. The nearest I can tell from reading the Wikipedia, the "leak" was about Fiorina's $42,000,000 severance package which has two HP investors suing HP for violating their own payment caps. If that's all there is, Keyworth is a whistle blower. If you know something, I'd love to hear it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If only I had points...
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
The problem is that you mentioned capitalism, as though you were saying something distinctive about it, or that different economic systems might not have powerful people who think they can get away with being assholes.
Imagine if I went to the zoo and dropped 16-ton weights on all the animals. They all died. Then I said, "The problem with parrots is that they fail to resist a 16-ton weight." It sounds like I'm talking about parrots, but parrots actually have nothing to do with it. The real issue is the 16-ton weight.
Instead of "the ills of capitalism" it would have been more precise and less silly to say something along the lines of "the ills of human nature" or "some people are such assholes" or "power corrupts".
Some of the ills of capitalism is that people are mortal, there is evil in the world, and we still don't have "Mr. Fusion" under the hoods of all our cars. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Estate tax is a good place to start, but I'm an old school anarchist of the Proudhon variety, and I believe that property is theft. Not personal property, but natural resources. There is no justification for fencing off land and taking away other people's freedom to use it. You have to have labored over something before you have a right to call it your own, and you have to own something before you have a right to keep others from using it. Therefore, no one has any justification in holding natural resources as their own.
I have not come up with the perfect solution to this dilemma. As Proudhon also, less famously said, property is also the only real protection against tyranny and is inherently anarchistic because it respects no king or lord. I feel their are two choices, Proudhon's idea of communal control of resources or some form of distributarianism. In communal control there is the plus that the process of deciding on how to use resources is democratic, but without a strong constitution and a system of checks and balances this can lead to a tyranny of the majority. With distributarianism, everyone owns their little portion of the means of production, but who arbitrates this ownership, and how do we ensure that the means are distribuited equitably.
There are many problems with the free market as a system of arbitration. It requires perfect information on the part of all actors to work efficiently. It can not correctly value the costs and benefits of externalities. It does not operate efficiently where the marginal cost of entry into markets is very high (commonly known as a monopoly.) It has no negative feedback cycle to prevent a runaway accumulation of wealth by a few people. The more wealth one has, the easier it is to make more by using your wealth to game the system and ensure their isn't a level playing field. The free market can not think ahead and come up with solutions. It can only say what isn't working, not what might work better, and if what might work better is locked out due to any of the previously mentioned root causes of market failure, we will be stuck with what we have.
We have a system that expects and rewards selfishness. So much so that even though the majority of people have been shown in modern economic experiments to favor fairness and reciprocity over personal gain, they will act selfishly rather than cooperatively because that is what the system rewards. In fact, the system gives free reign to screw over the naturally cooperative (and this is a large part of the reason behind my "bad luck." I'm too nice and too trusting, and I am not willing to sell out that part of myself just to get ahead.)
Remember, your friends, relatives and acquantences are not a random sample of the population. You have probably not met the legions of people for whom the system has not worked, despite their best efforts, so it is no stretch for you to think of those people in the abstract sense, and to believe that they had all the opportunities that you did. It's just easier to think that they are where they are because they are lazy than to feel like you have to change the whole system.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton