Slashdot Mirror
Reporter's Story — How HP Kept Tabs On Me
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "An outside lawyer working for H-P, John Schultz, yesterday told Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam how H-P's investigators collected information on her for a year, scoping out her trash and compiling a dossier on her phone calls. From Tam's article about her time spent, unwittingly, under surveillance: 'H-P's agents had my photo and reviewed videotaped footage of me, said Mr. Schultz, of the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. They conducted "surveillance" by looking for me at certain events to see if I would show up to meet an H-P director. (I didn't.) They also carried out "pre-trash inspections" at my suburban home early this year, Mr. Schultz said. ... But what was surprising were the questions Mr. Schultz left unanswered: How did H-P's agents get my phone numbers in the first place? When did they review videotaped footage of me? Did their gumshoes park their cars outside my house at night? And what the heck is pre-trash inspection?'"
(idea)
Does this qualify as stalking? Perhaps corporate stalking?
I read the article in the Journal this morning. What really pissed me off was the way that all the really uncomfortable details from powerpoint slides that HP had already turned over to Congress were excluded from the materials provided to Ms. Tam in person. For example, the fact that they not only pulled her phone records, but those of everyone she had been calling and taking calls from on her cellphone. This was while she was planning a sister's wedding.
An outside lawyer working for H-P, John Schultz, yesterday told Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam how H-P's investigators collected information on her for a year, scoping out her trash and compiling a dossier on her phone calls.
shhhhh! you're giving AT&T and the NSA ideas!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If the power of corporations continues to grow unchecked, we could come upon a time when some corporations monitor their employees 24 hours a day, in there homes, at play, wherever, and to do anything outside of the company rules would mean termination. It would be in the company's best interest to do so.
Sort of like how they can do drug testing now.
1 voice in a sea of voices
heh. "The scandal, which became public last month, has spurred the departures of three executives and three H-P directors"
Departures..? What about criminal charges??!
"According to the California attorney general, H-P's investigators also used the last four digits of my Social Security number to impersonate me in order to obtain my phone records, a technique known as "pretexting.""
OK, if I'm not mistaken it's completely illegal to impersonate someone, and also, are phone records not considered "private" information? In such a case there's not only impersonation but right-to-privacy laws that have been treaded upon...
You're fired.
Should we also have provided you with an explanation of what HP and the Wall Street Journal are? You're expected to have a certain familiarity with recent events in IT news. Just because you've been living under a rock doesn't mean the rest of us have, too.
The /. summary fails to mention the fact that the whole reason this person was being "snooped" upon is because HP was trying to figure out who was leaking information to the press.
This is true, but what affect does that really have on the fact that the privacy of this person was violated because of some maniacal CEO felt slighted.
If the people that did this (including the private investigators) don't rot in jail, we need to worry about our own privacy... not only would it be OK for the government to violate our privacy, but that would open the doors to corporations doing the same thing.
IMHO this is just as disconcerting, if not more so than what AT&T and the NSA are doing...
Trust me, I don't agree with what HP did at all - it completely pisses me off and disgusts me (as unsurprising as it is). It's just that I had to read the summary like three times to understand what they were trying to explain. heh
<sarcasm>Yes, because illegal and immoral activities are perfectly fine when you're trying to find out whether someone is talking to the press about company secrets. Surely by now you know that company privacy is FAR more important than personal privacy.</sarcasm>
The story was about the lengths that investigators went to, and the types of "attack" made, and the types of information gathered on this person; the summary appears to support that.
BTW I notice that in the interests of your privacy you haven't given out your personal address, phone number (home and mobile/cell), email address, mother's maiden name, social security number, educational and employment history and phone records for the last 12 months. Maybe you should go ahead and post those up on your website.
Wait ... you expected privacy? WTF?
I think it's reasonable to expect the summary to be written in such a manner that people who are not familiar with the "background" at least get even a slight synopsis of prior events as a refresher or introduction - this is a pretty standard deal for journalism of any type.
I thought that trash at the curb was considered as being out in public view. Someone can drive by and throw your trash into their truck for further inspection. After all, you were going to throw it away and it was going to end up in a landfill or incinerator.
Ah, here you go.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I did not say this somehow justified what HP did - it definitely does not. However, from reading just the summary, I was confused as hell as to WHY this person was being snooped upon, you know? What happened? Was she releasing secret information? Was she a former employee that was snooped upon during employment at HP? It's a pretty relevant & key piece of information to just entirely leave out.
It's all about context. This is one case where I believe if you don't know the context, you have been under a rock. Journalists always piss me off by assuming that everyone has NO context and waste my time summarizing crap I and any half aware person should know already.
Oh wait...
My source of news is Slashdot, my friends, and the 5 little "Technology" news headlines in my Yahoo Mail inbox, so, there you have it. Sorry for not keeping tabs on electronics hardware manufacturers and journalists.
Email(HP): Urgent! (Pui-Wing Tam your 4 days late on your period! Thought you would like to know!) Pui-Wing Tam: WTF!
Always shred your documents heading for the trash. Not only will this protect you from corporate snoops, but also identity thieves and nosy neighbors!
When investigative journalists do this, they win a Pulitzer Prize. When someone investigates a journalist, the media screams to high heaven.
I love the double standard that journalists employ.
Your friends might not be much help, but if you actually have been paying attention just to slashdot then you already know that the government is up HP's ass with a flashlight over the fact that they were spying on employees and contractors left and right, having them followed, going over their phone records, et cetera.
I'd bet good money that Yahoo's tech news that they show you in your mail interface has been saying things about it, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
AFAIK, trash isn't yours once it is on the curb.
At least as far as the Government is concerned.
(IE they don't need a warrant)
I really don't know what law you'd be charged under for taking/stealing someone's garbage.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Name one instance of illegal tatics used by a reporter leading to a Pulitzer Prize.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
The judgement you found is now law in one state. In other jurisdictions taking someone's trash is considered theft although all it would take is one court judgement to change that.
If you google on 'trash theft' you find many many links about identity theft. That seems to be a huge problem. It seems reasonable that our legislators should explicitly make theft of trash a crime. It is something that is done with the criminal intent to steal someone's identity. The police's need for an investigative tool shouldn't cause a much worse problem.
Your claim that one of your news sources is Slashdot, but you haven't heard the background for this story?
Interesting.
Do not anger the worm.
Anyone notice the irony that the company's ethics officer is one of the primary people ordering the monitoring?
Well, perhaps it's not irony, but exemplary of how some companies conduct business. (sigh) Now I understand why most people look at me funny when I say I want to start a business.
We do.
Any surveillance operation needs computer experts. These "people" just need to find IT workers with low enough principles. Unfortunately money seems to make principles take a back seat.
Maybe we need an "Association of Principled Technologists". If we made it important enough, maybe it might encourage people away from the less wholesome facets of our trade.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
s/affect/effect
(It's rare for that mistake to be made in that direction.)
...is that this was a corporation. Governments have (and do! *cough*bush) spied on us in the past. Without getting into a more in-depth discussion, they make the laws, so they can justify it. However, when a corporation uses worse tactics, it honestly strikes fear into my heart about how far people are willing to go for the $. The things they are using I'd expect from the FBI if they suspected me of plotting to kill the President, not from leaking some stupid, non-damaging fact to the press.
More interestingly, how about the innocents? Wasn't the father or someone of one of the journalists targeted?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
This is one of those points where we don't need more legislation, we need people to educate themselves and pick up the responsibility for their own actions. It's not the government's problem if you don't shred sensitive documents, and it shouldn't be. It's not like there is a shortage of cheap paper shredding machines -- you have hands, they can do the job if you're really cheap. If I toss papers with information on my bank account out without shredding, I don't expect them to be any more secure than leaving my ATM card sitting on the sidewalk.
Laws aren't going to fix things here, they just give us a method of reacting. The old saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." still applies. Suck it up and take some responsibility for yourself, stop shovelling it off on the government.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
These are the same tacktics that Bush is pushing for. HP can argue that they were using government sanctioned methods to fight corporate espionage and financial terrorism, because that is exactly what Bush wants to be able to do to every citizen in the United States. Maybe they jumped the gun a litte, but this is exactly what Bush's anti-terrorism policies allow (Patriot Act, etc). Don't believe me? Read the bills sent to congress. Thoroughly. Of course, I only like HP for their printers. Never did like working for them, even though it was brief.
"Pretrash inspections" of her home could include (in increasing order of invasion): 1) digging through the trash can before hauling it out to the curb, 2) rifling the mailbox, and 3) breaking and entering. Short of crawling into her bed, I think that about covers it.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Certain Cities, and even a few States passed a law against dumpster diving. Which is what HP did. Most people are not aware of this law, or even if this law covers their hometown. They did this to keep people from rummaging through your trash collecting papers to commit identity theft against you. Wonder if there was such law where this lady lived?
I'm not convinced that the 'pretexting' is really the whole story.
I'm suspicious that it is a cover for what is really happening
in phone record land.
Scenario:
Telcos sells call records to company X.
Company X sells call records to whomever including the NSA.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Actually, it IS legal to go through someones trash, but ONLY if they themselves placed it immediately adjecent to the curb, or on the street. Then it is assumed that the individual has surrendered and relinquished all rights of ownership to the contents of the trash can. If the can is not placed adjecent to the curb or on the street, then you can still argure that you still have legal property rights to it. Solution: Place the can away from the curb and on private property (i.e. your side of the sidewalk) with a piece of tamper-evident tape across the opening. Anyone going through it would then be trespassing if they crossed onto your property, breaking and entering if they broke the tape seal, fraud if they obtained any information on any of the garbage, and stealing if they took anything from it. Better yet, place the can close to your house and if you catch someone rifling through the can, turn the dogs on them or detain them at gunpoint. Chances are that if they have been chewed up by dogs or nearly shot, they will probably give their career choice a second-guessing. A shot with a taser and gratuitous use of pepper spray also helps. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
By the way..... I wonder what Walter Hewlett had to say about the whole scandal when he heard about it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I'd suggest adding Groklaw. High clue content site.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I suppose you will suggest that I buy a gun and shoot anyone who comes onto my property.
I also suppose that you'll tell me that I have nothing to fear from the police if I have nothing to hide.
Laws have a purpose and that purpose is to keep society civilized. That means also keeping the police civilized. If you like the idea of taking personal responsibility for everything, how about going to live in a corrupt third world country. The laws don't protect you and there's no welfare so you're on your own. You can take all the personal responsibility you want as you slowly starve to death. The point of extreme personal responsibility is that you have to look after so many things that you soon have trouble making a living. Laws give us a reliable framework so we can run our businesses and go on living.
We should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Anyone who violates that privacy should be punished.
BTW. I do realize that too many laws do constitute as big a problem as too few.
She wrote a story in the WSJ that exposed a huge amount of dissention between HP's Board of Directors and CEO. Imagine how you would feel if someone wrote a story about a bad report card or annual review you'd gotten. One of the directors was leaking info to the press so HP began investigating who the leaker was. Neither side was in the right, and all sides should have known better. Part of the problem was business leaders were terribly mysogynistic toward the first women stars who entered the business world so those women generally overcompensated projecting their toughness and were on opposite sides in this fight so things escalated pretty quickly.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Ah ha! With domestic spying restricted even the NSA is outsourcing!
would you want your private sex life outed to the religious nuts who would burn a cross on your yard?
Well?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Burning the cross-cut pieces is OK if you've got a fireplace so you can make sure they burn adequately, but plenty of people can't do that.
Instead what works quite well is to put them in a nice, big pot with some water over low heat for a while.
It's really sad that corporations make it so easy to steal your identity that ordinary folks have to act like members of the Nixon Whitehouse (ah, the good old days when Republican presidents were embaressed to be caught spying on their political opponents).
I have to say the 'reporter' is in the right. She wrote a story based on the information she was given. You could argue that the 'leaker' was in the wrong, and I'd probably agree. But trying to blame the reporter for this is like trying to blame a rape victim for wearing a short skirt.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
the Papparazzi do that kind of stuff all the time, the big papers love to print juicy details gleaned from stolen photos, picked up extentsion phones, and the like... some how they think they're above being the TARGETS of such tactics. What HP did is mostly no different than Hard Copy or Dateline does to seedy car dealers and big company greasy CEOs. This reporter got her stories because she was willing to be a tool in a backstabbing match... funny how it comes back around to get you... if the papers don't like corporations cracking down on who talks to reporters, they need to tell the reporters to stop taking "tainted" sources as stories. I've wanted press accountability like this for a while... I bet it's realy worth that big scoop now that her records are out there for all of congress to see!!
if you catch someone rifling through the can, turn the dogs on them
"Smithers, release the hounds!"
or detain them at gunpoint.
Whoa remind me never to cut across your back yard...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We see today the rudamentary components which will become "Pre-Crime Investigation
and Prosecution."
"I did not say that!" Oh, but you "thought it!" "I think" therefore I did.
Toodles
Yeah by both sides I meant the directors and mangement. The reporter was essentially a pawn in the other's game.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Of course HP isn't sorry for what they did, they are sorry because they got caught. That's the trick in large business. Doing something illegal is ok, just don't get caught :)
1. Some forms of monitoring are actually dirt cheap.
To start with the obvious, spyware is pretty ubiquitous at some companies, and that includes company laptops. So then people take them home and use them too for IM, slashdot, VOIP, updating their "anonymous" blog, and whatnot, and you can see where that is going.
E.g., someone posted a while ago, in a thread about tele-commuting, about how he knew an employee wasn't really working at home because he looked on XBox live all the time and after a couple of weeks the employee had 5 achievements in Oblivion. (Never mind that Oblivion is a game which can be finished in a weekend if you just follow the main story, or in a week without telecommuting even if you do every single side-quest. And 5 achievements aren't really that much.) That's a form of surveillance.
Google can also be used as a cheap form of surveillance, because most people don't really try to be anonymous. Or can be identified by details they provide.
Cell phones can also be tracked, as proven by a recent article, but I didn't bookmark it. Basically a journalist used such a tracking service on his girlfriend's phone. It asked for confirmation once at the start, and from there it was basically in stealth mode. In that case it was with her knowledge, for research purposes, but you can see how that can happen without knowledge too, if you have access to a "logged-in" phone for a couple of minutes. Company cell phones are a prime example: they can be subscribed to tracking before you even get the damn thing.
2. The line of reasoning that something won't happen because it's not making any money (or preventing losses) for the company is flawed too, and assuming that humans on the whole only do perfectly rational stuff supported by solid logic and numbers. That's false. Humans do a lot more for emotional reasons than for anything even vaguely resembling cold logic supported by facts.
Some PHBs (A) have nothing better to do with their time (even doing lunch and painting powerpoint foils only takes so much time), and (B) are complete control freaks. They don't do it because it actually helps the company in any form or shape, but just to feel in control of something they actually don't really know how to manage.
Even HP's case, if you look at it, is really no more than some control-freak exercise. If you look at the "leaks" they were investigating, the grand acts of treason to the press so to speak, the mind boggles. One executive had unauthorizedly told the press that he's tired after a long board meeting. Or that HP hopes to sell more of their Opteron servers in the future. (Well, of course. Is their any company who actually hopes to sell less and lose market share?) It's benign, uninformative and bloody useless small talk, not any actual company secrets.
But someone was chuffed that a director dared talk to the press at all, even such uninformative small-talk, without their royal seal of approval. I.e., a control freak. That's really how that espionage and stalking affair got started.
3. Even when logic and facts are involved, a lot more often than not, the goals are PR, looking good, etc, not "is it making the company money." You can see it from company policies and politics to PHB's more concerned with maintaining an illusion to their superiors than with managing what they're supposed to manage. Whole man-years get spent on just seeming to do something about a problem, instead of just fixing it.
Or to take your example with drug testing, the thing is: people aren't testing only investors and board members. You know, people who could actua
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
tell me this isn't legal somehow? I just can't see how this is any different then any other use of a EULA, shrink wrap and all.
Please (wipes tear from eye) tell me why I can't do this?
thanks!~~
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
"John Schultz, yesterday told Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam how
H-P's investigators [1]collected information on her for a year"
Collected information on John Schultz? Then why "on her"? Or collected information on Pui-Wing Tam? Then I don't know what to say...
Perhaps your "all in one" printer also includes a keylogger...
"scoping out her trash"
"compiling a dossier on her phone calls".
"had my photo"
"reviewed videotaped footage of me",
"looking for me at certain events"
"pre-trash inspections"
"park their cars outside my house at night?"
Sounds like they were the target of 60 Minutes, Dateline, NYTimes, LATimes, etc. etc.
Funny how they have compunction about doing these things to people they are looking to publish a hit piece on but if someone turns the tables, they are "Shocked!"
What crap.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Move to Texas where gun laws are almost non-existant. Wait until they set foot on your property, at that point they're trespassing. Take your 12 gauge shotgun loaded with rock salt and then change their religion!
I can't stand people invading other people's privacy for a living. Sick pathetic bastards.
my 2 cents
It's not the destination that matters, but rather the journey.
A summary is actually good for historical purposes. If someone is reading this article for some research 20 years down the line, it would help to have a brief summary in the article itself to tie into the general context of the time.
Is it just me, or does HP just seem way too insecure after Fiorina's departure? Hell, even Microsoft probably didn't do this sort of investigation when the (albeit, only a small part) source code for Windows 2000 was leaked. Then again, we don't know who leaked that code, or whether microsoft had the leaker's families investigated in this sort of manner. I'm sure that if Hewlett or Packard were still alive today, they wouldn't let crap like this go down. This is the easy way out. Corporate stalking? Hell yes.
i like wrapping my CPU up in tinfoil to make it more 'efficient'.
Not at all clear. Numerous way-brighter-than-average people will not work for any place that performs drug testing. It could be argued that the invasive drug testing companies are suffering more from loss of talent than they're gaining from keeping someone who smokes weed from entering the building.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Private investigators doing illegal activities is nothing new.
I have had PI's break into my home, steal my financial records, catalog my posessions, then turn over everything to a lawyer who published everything in public court documents regarding a civil case (that I had absolutely nothing to do with) involving a family member not residing at my home...
To top it all off, the lawyer had the PI send me the bill to pay the PI!!!
It is the radical extremist PIs and Lawyers that need to be put in jail.
HP payed lawyers to review the PIs... The HP lawyers only looked out for their lawyer industry by allowing illegal activities to occur that would create many large lawsuits to help their lawyer industry at the detriment of HP, news agencies, and other innocent parties.
Put the right people in jail, the PIs and lawyers resposible.
This stuff with HP is really just minor league corporate spying. Take the undisputed champion of corporate spying, Microsoft, for example. They use a sales model that has electronic surveillance, stalking, and extortion at the very heart of the process. Sales reps bring in these supposed consultants to sales meetings onsite and elsewhere to discuss sales deals. They carry these surveillance devices and record every bit of interaction when the customer purchasing reps are not in the room or otherwise present. In the event that there is dissent in the customer's group of purchasing reps, GPS trackers are attached to the cars of these 'problem individuals'. Financial records are pulled from their banks looking for miscellaneous income sources. Medical records of the individual or family members are disclosed. Anything that could create stress and intimidation of the dissenting member of the purchasing rep. If the problem individual is a minority, hideous rumors are disseminating tainting the person as disloyal to America or even a foreign spy. So, suffice it to say that the behavior of the HP board is novice stuff compared to the everyday activities of the folks at Microsoft. Whether you are a customer not in-line with the deal proposed by MS Sales, or a departign or former employee, be careful as your life can become hell real fast.
If we really want the general public to stop and pay attention to this sort of thing all we need to do is get an organized group of people to do this all the time. I figure if we went through and photographed/photocopied all the trash coming out of reporters and public officials (especially police officers) homes and posted it on the web it might generate a little press and outrage. I bet there might be some interesting findings. Imagine a posting about Reporter X (a female) being on her period the third week of every month, because we find used kotex pads in the trash. Or how about how some public official or reporter must be sex maniac, because there are 10 used condoms in the trash each week! The idea would be to conduct the inspection for a while and then post all the results at one time with an analysis of each target such as what kind of food and things they like as well as credit card balances etc. Imagine if you had a six month trash history on most big name reporters and politicians. I bet the outrage would be huge.
Here at HP we take ourselves WAY TOO FUCKING SERIOUSLY.
One question that continually springs into my mind is how people can work in this type of environment? You put on your suit and tie, go to work at a computer company, and start spying on people??? This isn't the first story about HP performing (illegal?) survelliance either. Sounds like a really toxic, hostile, and generally insane / absurd way to sell electronics.
What type of survelliance equipment is embedded in my Laserjet 4350, or Proliant DL360. Is my integrated lights out board sending information back to HP HQ? Is my HP customer profile being looked over by men in black suits? Is someone headed over to my house right now to break my legs for posting this? Should tinfoil hats be distributed to all HP employees?
I say HELLO NURSE! That is a federal crime punishable by a large quantity of pounded-in-the-ass prison time along with monetary punishment I believe. Anyone stupid enough to go into someone else's mailbox and/or steal or reroute the mail under cover of anything less than a _federal_ investigaion is asking to get slapped down. Even if you don't destroy/remove the mail you "rifled", you still tampered with it and risk serious penalties.
I have a friend who, when he was under 18, decided to bash mailboxes with a couple of friends. Stupid, yes, because they destroyed the mailboxes and scattered the mail and - of course - they were caught and sentenced to three years probation during which they could not get into ANY trouble with the law or at school or they would get to serve some time in a juvenile detention facility. The judge informed them at the time that if they had just switched mail from box to box or something else seemingly "innocuous", they would have received as stiff a sentence. You just don't fuck with the US Mail.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Sorry for the stalking.
Signed,
Patricia Dunn
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand