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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?'"
"You watch too many movies."
:-)
You obviously have never had a heart to heart talk with someone that works in HR or a corporate investigator.
These sorts of things happen more often than most sheeple...oosp! I mean people...think. 99.99% of the time they just don't come to the surface.
Sure physical surveillance is costly, but there are large corps and services that are constantly scanning public records, private records, and running spiders on the web to mine data about their employees and the employees of their competition. Don't fool yourself. Nothing is secret any more.
X-CIA/NSA employees have to do something to earn a living once they are out
P.S. And remember to always read those information release forms you sign when starting a new job.
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.
It isn't - but people do this all the time. Mitnick's only crime was being poor in a courtroom - he couldn't afford the legal staff needed to disprove the government's largely specious claims of damages (they arbitrarily slapped an figure of some tens of millions on a handful of standard instrusion cleanups - we all know that intrusion cleanup is a pain, but even for a large company or government organisation it's measured in the thousands, not millions).
The government lost most of the rest of their case against him. His sentencing was primarily based on the damages claim. Mitnick may not have been the best guy around, but he didn't really deserve anything more than a community service sentence.