CNET Reporters Intend to Sue HP Over Surveillance

theodp writes "The NY Times reports that three CNET journalists whose records, as well as those of their relatives, were scrutinized by pretexting investigators working for HP intend to sue the company for invasion of privacy. HP, who paid $14.5M to settle a lawsuit filed by the CA attorney general in connection with the spying, reportedly offered each reporter $10,000, roughly enough to cover legal bills. The CNET reporters have been banned from covering HP or its see-no-evil CEO, who BTW was rewarded with $20.33M in 2006 despite skipping his reading assignments."

Comments

But HP have been spying for years

[therufus]

What about the "Backweb" software HP have been putting on their computers for the past decade? I actually questioned the product manager for HP Australia a few years back about the spyware HP ship with Pavilion and Presario home PC's and his answer was completely unsatisfactory. He said something to the effect of 'Backweb is designed to update customer's HP software remotely, including drivers, applications and other things. To my knowledge, this hasn't been implemented yet.

So the product manager of HP Australia not only doesn't know if it's been implemented yet, but he also is referring to something laying dormant for 10 years in their systems. Backweb software can potentially phone home and provide any and every detail about a customer. It's TSR, it's in memory ALL THE TIME, and hidden as a service.

It is so untrustworthy, HP themselves have renamed it in the add/remove programs as "Updates from HP" instead of backweb because customers thought it was spyware.

This latest development doesn't surprise me at all.