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Calif. AG Files Felony Charges In HP Probe
PreacherTom writes, "Former Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia Dunn, along with 'ethics chief' Kevin Hunsaker and others, was indicted yesterday on four felony counts by the California Attorney General. The charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy, carry a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison and $30,000 in fines. The indictments follow on the heels of an HP investigation of internal leaks that conducted "bugged" emails to C-Net reporter Dawn Kawamoto, illicitly obtained hundreds of phone numbers, and spied on HP board members." One of the indictments was for a private investigator retained by HP. The article has links to the complaints and warrants.
These are people who pose very little physical threat to society.
I'd rather Manuel the drug dealer be behind bars than Patricia 'wiretap' Dunn.
She deserved it as much as them.
Excellent. For many corporate executive types such as Dunn and her ilk, the consequences for illegal acts are very abstract - at the very worst a resignation, cushioned by a golden parachute of stock options, pensions and benefits. It needs to be forcefully demonstrated to these people that if you commit a crime, you are by definition a criminal, and will be treated as such.
A CEO authorizes spying and she gets charged with a felony and a full blown investigation.
A CEO President is spying on innocent Americans as long as he says he thinks they're terrorists, and what happens? His sheep in congress pass a law to make it legal for him.
I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning as much as anyone. But come on, congress, senate, show some damn backbone like your colleagues did when they stood up to Nixon.
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So, if they are convicted...does that mean that pretexting is no longer "possibly" illegal, but is now a felony?
In the sense that a conviction would clarify the situation for any who have doubts, yes.
It's useful to consider that the ambiguity only arises when one tries to play games with semantics and rules rather than the 'gestalt'
Pretexting is, in fact, very much like any identity theft. That is, a pretexter gathers sufficient personal information to impersonate someone in order to get a company to do something they would normally only do for that person. That something may be transfer money from that person's account or send detailed billing information for that person's account. Either way, it is fraud. Notably, that is exactly what Dunn is charged with.
The term pretexting is really, really ridiculous.
When a pimply faced cracker does the same thing (call up people in order to gain illegal access to a system) it's called social engineering and fuck-as-hell illegal. When BigCorp does the same thing it's called "pretexting" and is considered a grey area.
Somehow this has a rancid stench of the application of newspeak in order to justify double standards.
Fucking hypocrites!
(I don't specifically mean your post, with which I disagree. I just wanted to get this off my system)
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I've found this to consistently be true:
In any decision a corporation makes, it will choose the most unethical path found acceptable to it's least ethical leader.
Some corporations have many leaders, and no strong central leader. I've found dealing with them to be miserable. For any decision to be made, it only needs to be acceptable to any one of their many leaders, thus, the whole corporation is able to justify acting like a raving-mad power-crazed lunatic. No single individual is highly unethical, just the corporation as a whole.
A board of directors typically has no strong leader, choosing instead a more democratic structure. This can lead to highly unethical behavior, as with the HP board.
I think the reason things work this way is simple. In any decision that might benefit the company, it's easier to simply stand-down and not make waves while somebody else carries out the unethical act. It's harder and more risk prone to stand in the way and demand ethical behavior. After all, corporations are about profits, and you'd be standing in the way of profits. Chances are far higher that you'll get run over than it is that people will say, "Yeah, your right. We were acting unethically, and we were wrong."
That said, I've found the vast majority of corporate board members to be amazingly ethical. After all, investors trust these guys with their money. But, it only takes one or two bad apples...
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For these people, $30k is wallet change.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Pretexting aka social engineering aka lying aka fraud should indeed be a felony.