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?'"
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.
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...
<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.
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.
Actually someone can come along and inspect your trash, but in some places it becomes the property of the garbage company when you put it out on the curb and messing with it is messing with the trash company's property. Of course, in practice, they are never ever going to tell the cops they can't have your trash. To make a long story short, if you're doing something illegal, disposing of the evidence in your own trash can is fucking stupid, and any time you throw away any papers you should automatically assume that someone else will be reading them - so confetti-shred them (cross-cut) or burn them when you're done. Only large governmental agencies can afford to reassemble confetti into documents. If you burn them, make sure they've burned to the point they disintegrate - the FBI has had great success at reconstructing documents which look like they've been burned to the point of being unreadable using polymers and X-rays.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
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.
I find that shredded documents make excellent tinder for the fireplace..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shhh! Please don't spread this around
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.
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
clearly, you need to start leaving an EULA on your trash: "By reading this, you agree to an exclusive binding legal contract with [name] as to the nature of all dealing with this trash. This trash is not discarded property. This trash remains the property of [name] until such time as those individuals designated for its collection for immediate disposal remove it. At such time, ownership of this trash will transfer to the designated collecters (or their employing agency) for the explicit purpose of immediate disposal. Those found tampering with this trash will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This contract shall be construed as being formed under the law of the State of California unless otherwise prohibited by local law of competent juristiction."
That should stop the snoopers!
FGD 135
I read once [maybe here?] that there's at least one other significant population of spies who can "afford" to reassemble confetti into documents: meth addicts hoping to score info they can use to make money, like your credit card statements. Apparently some meth users were caught doing exactly this. The story goes that they have plenty of time [awake for hours on end], the energy, the willingess to commit the crime, and a tendency toward compulsive, repetitive acts [when under the influence]. Because they smoked up all the money they already had, and because you can spot them in the Jiffy Mart by the twitching, itching, scrawniness and rotted teeth, they have the *incentive* to spend hours hidden away, piecing your shredded bank statements together.
I thought it was considered private property until the sanitation workers dumped it into the truck. I'm sure I saw that on CSI or some similar TV show somewhere. Mind you, I am fairly sure that legal situations appearing on television shows do not constitute prior rulings, and presumably these rules vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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!
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!!
This trash remains the property of [name] until such time as those individuals designated for its collection for immediate disposal remove it.
No no no!!! IANAL -but-:
[name] grants the designated trash collection company license to remove the trash from the residence and dispose of it in the accustomed landfill, however this trash remains the property of [name] until such time as it is degraded and unrecognizable as the original form in whole or in part...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
Also, if you have the time and don't mind a little mess, take the shreds, put them in a metal pail and mix with some kerosene, until you have a "mush". Pour the mush into a metal form (like a pipe with a cap), and have a tamper to squeeze out the excess kerosene. Place the resulting "brick" or "log" on a metal rack (with a drip tray underneath) to "dry". Once dry, wrap in a bit of newspaper (if you will use fairly immediately) or in wax paper (if you plan to use it after a period of time). You will be left with a nice, hot burning "log" of paper, not too much unlike the "logs" you can buy at the store. Store outside on a metal rack, uncovered (but not directly exposed to the elements).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon