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HP Spying More Elaborate Than Reported
theodp writes "The NY Times reports the secret investigation of news leaks at HP was more elaborate than previously reported. In addition to illicitly gathering private phone records almost from the start, detectives reportedly followed and videotaped some directors and journalists, were given photos of reporters to help identify them, and tried to plant surveillance software on a CNET reporter's computer. HP also fessed up to spying on its own spokesman, whose personal phone records were taken."
This just in, Patricia Dunn has been discovered to be more evil than Hitler and Stalin ... combined.
More at eleven.
I certainly didn't vote for them in 2004.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
So did HP take a secret contract from the Bush Administration to become a covert version of the FBI/CIA/NSA without any government oversight? News at 11!
The interesting question is, will anyone care enough about this to stop doing business with HP? Will any major corporate clients reject these practices and refuse to deal with a company that engages in them?
I'm guessing not.
There will be a few people punished in a very public fashion, while behind the scenes this sort of behavior becomes commonplace.
Maybe it's just Monday Morning talking here, but I hope I'm wrong.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It occurs to me that this is probably a fairly common practice among companies of a certain size, to get a better handle on the sort of press they're getting. HP's just the one unlucky enough to have gotten caught this time.
Before this "even worse news" about the extent of the spying, HP's board should have forced Dunn to resign immediately from the board. Instead, they allowed her to continue as chairwoman until January and to continue as a director after that. I predict that the board will now force her immediate resignation, but will they also strip her of her directorship? What about severance? They should take it all, retroactively. IANAL, but I'll bet that's legal, somehow.
I've seen countless stories about this in various media outlets, and I seem to be missing the point or something. Everyone seems so shocked, and outraged by this as if it's not common place in "Corporate America". I shocked that a company actually got caught, and more so the over the top reaction of the media.
The sad part is the monitoring of a few board members is, and likely will continue to get more coverage/outrage than the Bush administration doing this to the whole country.
I am from Italy. My parents were young adults during the brief time Mussolini was in power. While many Italians dislike discussing that time period, my parents were always willing to inform people of it, in the hopes that similar situations may be avoided in the future.
This is the sort of activity that became widespread during that period. Spying was omnipresent, be it on the street, at work, or while at restaurants. Collaboration between the elites of the business world the government allowed for this sort of privacy invasion to take hold, and further promoted it as time went on. Individual freedoms were thrown out "for the sake of the nation".
The very same appears to be happening in America and other "democratic" countries these days. On one hand, you have the government spying domestically on its own citizens (the whole NSA scandal, for instance). Security cameras are being installed all over the place, from street corners to ATMs. In some countries, the cameras apparently will have loudspeakers to direct the citizenry that are being observed. Now we find that the very same sort of actions are being taken by corporate executives. Soon enough that will translate down to regular workers. In short, it's a case of fascism much like Italy experienced in the mid-20th century.
Well, this new story has a hidden gem.
According to TFA: "People briefed on HP's review of its internal investigation say that it was authorized by Dunn, the chairwoman, and put under the supervision of Kevin Hunsaker, a senior counsel who is the company's director of ethics."
How could it be otherwise?
"...and we at Hewlett Packard also regret using false pretenses to obtain the personal phone reacords of their spokesman, one Mr..... the freaking HELL?!"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Like the subject line says.
In a related story, HP has announced that they have embarked upon a thousands of generations long breeding program, for the purpose of creating a male who can be in all places at once, to ensure their total surveillance of all things.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
One one hand, I sympathize for HP. To have a board member that fails to respect the privacy of board room material can be very hard, and the fact that he leaked that previous information was very uprofessional.
Of course, on the other hand, the way this was handled by HP was totally out of hand. Young adults walking out of business school know that to hit somebody up with a wiretap is illegal and should not be done. How is it that the chairman and the head of their Ethics group don't? So those two should definitely go away. As to anybody else remaining, it is quite hard to see what other roles were played in this. I don't think that people should take this as an indicator of what the whole company is like though.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
"HP will be changing it's slogan from 'HP: Invent' to 'HP: Indict'"
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
According to this newly disclosed recording:
Naaa!!! No American Corporation would ever spy on people in everyday business (and HR) dealings, right?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Ever install any HP printer drivers lately?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/technology/18hp. html?ei=5094&en=0af37191eea65e08&hp=&ex=1158638400 &partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
/. story says "a NY Times Article" but doesn't reference or link to the article. I wonder if thats supposed to be so that karma whores like me can post a link to the actual story?
:-) And try http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/technology/18hp. html?hp&ex=1158638400&en=0af37191eea65e08&ei=5094& partner=homepage if ya wanna see the scarey pictures of the HP execs.
I'm still new enough here to hate when the
Oh, and enjoy the link to the print version of the article without ads
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/csr/sbc brochure.pdf
This is a link to the SBC or the standards of business conduct. This was the bible of HP for many many years and it appears that although some question whether these rules are practiced at the lower levels, it appears that they are not at the higher levels either. If this was actions of any HP employee, they would be TERMINATED. This is several magnitudes more extreme of a situation.
The idea is not to operate within just the language and the loopholes, but to abide by the intent of the document which is to set the stage for proper conduct with a low threshold in cases where there is any question of being appropriate.
This saddens many HP employees who have worked hard to reinforce a positive image of the company which did operate on a much more noble level in the past.
Being one (albeit very unattractive) of the few females in an IT company, Dunn had only to walk down a row of cubicles with a sock full of paperweights before she won.
In this post 9/11 age, we cannot be too careful who learns our corporate secrets. We must have the means to detect terrorist spies from the media who would destroy our profitability and expose us to potential attacks.
So, is this a field deployment of the Carl Voth Reaper exploit? Prudent settings on email software will prevent that from working but plenty of older popular mail clients shipped with clueless defaults.
Dunn orchestrated the entire thing and it went off as scripted. Her intentions all along was to give up the Chairman position at the beginning of the year. She is seriously ill.
The sad part... she is no dummy and covered her tracks completely. The firm they hired to do the dirty work will take the fall.
The article says "detectives tried to plant software on at least one journalist's computer that would enable messages to be traced", but if you read the end, it sounds like they put a web bug (image link) in an email to see who the email was forwarded to.
While this investigation as a whole seems abhorent, a web bug seems less invasive (and probably less illegal) than the implied act of installing spyware on someone elses's computer.
Clicky, Clicky.
Had somebody in the mailroom been outed as the leaker, would we be hearing about this at all? With all the rulings that have stated employees have no reason to expect privacy when it comes to the use of company resources (phones, e-mail, Internet use), I'm sure a lower level employee would have been easily and quietly dismissed.
But since this happened to a suit... all the other suits got scared and decided to attack?
Interesting.
The interesting question is, will anyone care enough about this to stop doing business with HP?
Busines harm, in this case is counter productive. The guilty have been embarrassed and might even be punished. No one wants to be the next Newsweek posterboy of corporate corruption and the behavior will be avoided. Anyone who tries a stunt like this gains little but puts themselves at the mercy of anyone who finds credible evidence. Corporate spying is not a core part of HP's business so crushing HP will only make their competitors fewer and stronger. Having one less place for employees to run just gives those competitors more power to abuse. It's better to punish the people responsible than it is to punish the company they abused.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Otherwise we're going to have to watch this thing unfold for months. Just end it now and let's all move on.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Expect little, surpise much.
Some settling may occur during posting.
From:t .htm
0 040715-3.html
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/idthef
"Under federal criminal law, identity theft takes place when someone knowingly transfers, possesses or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, or in connection with, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable state or local law."
Bush speaks!...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/07/2
"This law also raises the standard of conduct for people who have access to personal records through their work at banks, government agencies, insurance companies, and other storehouses of financial data. The law directs the United States Sentencing Commission to make sure those convicted of abusing and stealing from their customers serve a sentence equal to their crimes." - George Bush.
Funny how they are all silent now.
...where's my mod points when I need them!
Wow, what HP's doing sounds amazingly familiar.
Here's an article on a bill immunizing the Bush Administration from prosecution for basically doing the same thing. Too bad HP can't call him up and ask to be included on the bill.
BTW, here's another article, this one by the ACLU on exactly what the Cheney-Specter bill does.
1. 2.
The sad part is the monitoring of a few board members is, and likely will continue to get more coverage/outrage than the Bush administration doing this to the whole country
Even at its worst, what is the HP scandal about? Some phone records were obtained by questionable means, to identify the source of a leak. We have seen allegations that spyware was put on some computers. Goodness gracious! How shocking! Headlines everywhere, nerds making forum posts in CAPITALS, a real fuss about this.
Meanwhile the Bush administration starts a war on false pretences, in pretty clear violation of international law, causing the deaths of approximately 20,000 people so far; causes a further 14,000 people to be imprisoned without charge for years, in violation of both international conventions and American law; and has an unknown number of people tortured, also in violation of international treaties which the United States has signed.
If people allocated their time and outrage rationally according to the importance of the issues, they'd be spending 99% of it trying to clip the wings of the Bush administration, 0.01% of it on the HP fuss, and the remaining 0.99% on other matters.
I'm a bit surprised that no one is shocked at how easy it is to obtain info from your vendors (ATT, Cingular, Verizon, etc).
This whole issue would not have occured if our privacy as consumers had appropriate protection from the vendors themselves! The whole idea of security based on the last 4 digits of your SSN and current mailing address is silly. Getting this info is trivial (ask any car salesman).
The real problem lies with the vendors themselves. And we have virtually no recourse, besides an apology.
With regards to HP, the board had an obligation to find the leak of the financial information. It's an SEC requirement, and could have led to large legal problems if not deal with. So they had to do something. The fact they employed 3rd party investigators who used then hired vedors using gray area techniques is a legit issue. Myself, I'd have requested the records directly and fired anyone who did not comply. Board members should be held to a higher standard. Hurd had directed the board to find the leak, for very valid reasons.
But as long as companies are allowed to stay in business (legally) making "contexting" type requests, and the vendors have such silly validation schemes, your private data is at risk!
That's where the furor should be focused!
Alan
Bill Clinton admits to trying Marijuana BUT he didn't inhale. Nobody asked if how many times he tried it, whether he bought any for himself and if he still used it.
Paris Hilton got caught driving drunk so her story was she didn't eat that day and had ONE drink. She registered something like
Does HP stand for Heavily Paranoid? What would Bill Hewlett and David Packard think about all of this? Its no wonder that one of the long time members of the board left after more information came out about this. Some of the actions taken by HP against its own people are crimminal. Treating your own staff like crimminals shows a profound lack of trust in people working for the company. I'm quite disgusted by it all. Where I live, an young manager of a fast food restaurant put a hidden camera in an employee washroom (with no notice). The camera was found. The police were called. The day was held in court. The manager got 6 months in jail and a $25,000 fine, and he does not work for the company anymore (and his dad owned the store he was managing plus one more store). The chain suggested that if he were to stay on, they would no longer be franchisees, and would be sued for breach of contract and corporate ethical conduct, hence, he can't even part-time at his dads store. What HP did is worse. Where are they getting these stupid ideas from: Microsoft?, Sony?, Dancing Monkey?
The interesting question is, will anyone care enough about this to stop doing business with HP? Will any major corporate clients reject these practices and refuse to deal with a company that engages in them?
I'm all for holding companies responsible for corporate misconduct. But this wasn't corporate misconduct, it was individual misconduct. The proper course of action is to take the responsible individuals to court. They should face hefty fines and jail time.
What should happen?
Spying on people is illegal; the people involved should be charged and tried criminally. If found guilty, they should go to jail.
The failure to act is not on the part of HP (they have done all they should), it's on the part of the DA.