Slashdot Mirror
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.
Manuel the drug dealer screws up the lives of a few people on his route, people who made the choice to get involved with his drugs in the first place. Patricia the ex-Chairman had the opportunity to screw up the thousands of lives involved with her megacorp, people who just want to get a day's work done and didn't sign up for the "let's screw with people's personal lives" game she seems to have been playing.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
That doesn't justify jail time.
Jail is supposedly for the rehabilitation of criminals too violent to be safe in society.
If the state were actually interested in justice, people who do things like this would simply be forced to pay significant financial restitution to those they screw over. At least make these people do something positive with their time, rather than filling another space in our already overcrowded prisons and pumping more money into the state's coffers.
Really, why does the california government deserve $30k?
She deserved it as much as them.
So, if they are convicted...does that mean that pretexting is no longer "possibly" illegal, but is now a felony?
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
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.
Frankly, if I had to choose between being punched in the face by a crackhead who wants my wallet, or watching a few thousand people lose everything they had to corporate crime, I'll take the punch. Both scenarios can be traced to the actions of one or two people deciding to do something naughty. Which is "worse?"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Let me get this straight: pretexting is currently a legal "gray area," and you're talking about people getting raped.
I'm confused. Apparently, you've taken your time to rail against government regulation by attempting to make a highly strained analogy between two entirely unrelated subjects, and the second idea you offer to prove your point - ie, that hate crime laws are only in place so that the ebil gubmint can circumvent the Constitution and place people in double jeopardy - isn't even widely held or supported.
Look. What Dunn did was either 1) illegal, or 2) should be. This isn't a question of Congressional pandering. Let me remind you that the current administration and congress hold the belief that big business = better economy. Nothing wrong with that, but it's of worth to note since you seem to additionally imply that Congress is ready to beat up on any corporation it sees, which isn't true.
Pretexting, the main legal question here, should be illegal if it's not. From what I can make of your rather bizarre argument, you seem to claim otherwise. You're wrong.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
She's Dunn.
It never gets old, does it?
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Jail should be a last resort. It makes no use of the person or their time, and does nothing to "rehabilitate" anyone.
Those enron executives still have vast knowledge on a variety of subjects, useful skills, and other things. It would have been significantly better use of their time to, say, have them go on speaking circuits at business ethics meetings, or universities, and send the vast majority of money they get from these events to the victims of their actions.
I'm not trying to argue the severity of their crimes relative to others. I'm saying using jail for anything but violent criminals is an absolute waste of resources.
"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."
HP should have accused them of being terrorists first. Then they could have had the Feds do it for them legally.
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)
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
It could also be argued that jail is punishment. Fines and jail time are common in these cases. There is also the school of thought that jailing people like this, may give the next CEO pause, if he tries the same thing.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
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...
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
For these people, $30k is wallet change.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I'm drifting off topic a bit, but your average mugger isn't a murderer, they just want to rob you and split. Any weapons are for intimidation, to force you into quickly giving up what's in your pockets. At worst you just lose your cash and cards, but even the most savvy mugger won't have much of a shot at your 401K or your kids' college funds. At best, you can possibly defend yourself, or get away. So, I feel you generally have more of a fighting chance in an encounter with a violent criminal on the street than you do against a board of directors pushing a few buttons in an illegal manner.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
be stripped of all your income and effectively be cast out on the street, or serve a few months in a penetentiary knowing that when you get out, you'll still have a home and property?
Same way every one is talking about illegal immigration, border fence and this and that. The 800 lb gorilla who is completely ignored is the employers who knowing employ illegal immigrants to cut labor costs and avoid social security taxes and workman comp.
Every one is talking about identity theft, and this and that. The 800 lb gorilla there is the credit reporting companies that steadfastly refuse to let me lock my own credit info. They lobby congress and the law winding through congress will let only the proven victims of id theft to freeze their credit reports. Sort of like people can buy locks for their barn doors only after proving that their horse is stolen.
This is going on everywhere. Dont call it pretexting. It is impersonating. Get the detectives and those who authorized this. But dont let the phone companies off the hook. They should prove that they were not criminally negligent or something. (IANAL).
Too much of lobbying by big corps. Too little protection for the common man.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think Manuel the drug dealer should be given an award by the local Chamber of Commerce for services to the free market under difficult circumstances.
I actually watched the C-SPAN hearings on replay last Saturday (stop looking at me) and they didn't use such a simple technique as an embedded gif in an HTML mail.
They used this company right here. The particular technology that they use is an embedded tracker in a PDF attachment that contains the text the victim wants to see.
This neatly gets around people with email clients that block loading of remote images, or even people who don't allow html mail. (How many people actually have Acrobat Reader blocked from internet access? Damn few I would think.)
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
"Jail is supposedly for the rehabilitation of criminals too violent to be safe in society."
No. Jail is supposed to punish criminals. Few criminals cause as much harm as the corporate buccaneers that destroy the wealth of others.
Physical harm is not the only kind of harm.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
How about if drugs were legal and could be purchased at normal prices (cocaine, $35 oz) and the only people injured were the users, as it should be.
That person shot in the head was killed by the war on drugs.
Exactly. Legalize them, regulate them, and tax the hell out of them.
1. Decreased costs to the justice system [many fewer prosecutions of illegal drugs]
2. Decreased crime [ancillary crimes related to the obtaining of illegal drugs]
3. Decreased costs for the penal system [much smaller jail population]
4. Increased government revenue [taxes on drugs]
5. Decreased tax burden on the rest of us as a result of 1-4 [OK, I give. Like that would ever happen]
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Waking up one day and finding out one's pension is gone sounds pretty violent to me.
Now multiply this by 10000.
So, who's more deserving of jailtime:
a) The guy that stole $50 at gunpoint?
b) The guy that stole 10000 pensions via accounting tricks?
It's not the violence of the crime that counts, it's the damage it has caused.
-----
As for the point about usefullness to society and rehabilitation, consider the following:
- Who's more ethically challenged - the well paid manager that knowingly steals the pensions of 10000 people or the junkie going through cold turkey that steals someone to pay for his next dose?
Could you really ever trust the manager which has stollen from thousands without need?
At least the junkie, if he can be freed from his adiction, can quite possibly turn into a productive member of society. The manager on the other hand has pretty much proven his lack the necessary ethics and morals the have any responsability whatesoever for anything belonging to other people.
People don't just learn the value of ethics when their punishment is being sent around giving lectures in universities - they (and all other potential white-collar thiefs watching) will just learn that crime pays.
---
Sending the manager to prision is not a waste of resources because:
a) Said manager has proven unsuited to take responsability on other people's things. One cannot manage anything if one cannot be trusted not to steal it. As such this person's main abilities (management) cannot be used and beyond that he's no more than an inexperience person with a high education. As such sending him to prison wastes little value.
b) To satisfy society, a punishment must be given that matches the damage caused by the crime.
c) To avoid that other ethically challanged managers commit crimes of this dimension, it must be clear that the risk*loss factor of commiting such a crime outweights the potential gains.