Journalists Sue HP For Invasion of Privacy

Stony Stevenson writes "Four journalists and one of their family members are suing Hewlett-Packard for obtaining their personal phone records. The journalists filed lawsuits in California this week, claiming that HP invaded their privacy, intentionally inflicted emotional distress, and violated California's fair business rules. HP acknowledged in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing last year that it investigated journalists in order to find out who inside the company had been leaking information to the press. The reporters' own publications have reported that HP representatives said they were disappointed the reporters did not take a settlement and decided to sue instead. The company said it plans to defend itself against the lawsuits."

Comments

HP: Don't go chasing rabbits

[Anonymous Coward]

you know you're gonna fall.

Sigh...

[Ethanol-fueled]

Nowdays, anything goes. What's next? Targetted killings?

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowdays, anything goes. What's next? Targetted killings?

Next? Obviously your education has been neglected in some areas, corporate murder has been around since before the word "corporate" was created and it still exists. If you ever find out something you could be a whistleblower over, you better make sure you CYA very well.

Re:Sigh...

[Evilest Doer]

To give you a brief introduction: here and here. To corporations, the system laws and punishments is simply another cost-benefit analysis to be factored in.

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowdays, anything goes. What's next? Targetted killings?

Next? Obviously your education has been neglected in some areas, corporate murder has been around since before the word "corporate" was created and it still exists. If you ever find out something you could be a whistleblower over, you better make sure you CYA very well. That's why we all love Coca Cola and Nestlé - they don't let petty human lives get in the way of profit :-D

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

FTSummary: "... HP representatives said they were disappointed the reporters did not take a settlement and decided to sue instead.

I'd be disappointed, too, if someone refused my settlement and took me to court where I stood a chance of losing a really big part of my ass.

Re:!!ddd

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job getting second post.

Predatory Corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm not one who usually advoates litigation, I'm glad to hear this... other corporations need to take heed that this kind of predatory "big brother" behavior is simply not okay.

Re:Predatory Corporations

[mabhatter654]

in this case HP was doing exactly what slashdotters advocate and finding the leakers themselves, not filing frivolous lawsuits against reporters. On the other hand, this may be exactly what HP needs to get these journalists dead to rights for leaking company secrets. Once they prove in court the phone records belong to reporters, then HP will be able to designate phone numbers originating from inside HP but not thru the PR office. That would prove to the court that reporters were knowingly receiving information from inside HP off the record. that is a SEC violation and illegal with big fines if you get caught. The only thing saving most reporters is that their records are "private" from the companies they leak info about. If HP was really nasty, they would get the records admitted to evidence so other companies could use the records to see if their managers were illegally leaking to reporters!!! Or the reporters could drop the lawsuit!!

HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[freedom_india]

It is high time this crap about settlements stopped.
If a natural person cannot be offered a settlement if he/she committed a crime, why should a corporation be any different?

A corporation is an extension of a natural person for separate liability.
Since it is manned by people, the natural persons responsible for committing a crime oin behalf of a corporation should be jailed.

Why should sgareholders suffer losses because some idiot CEO or criminal CFO cooked up statements or committed a crime by using Corporate Veil.

After all the corporate veil does not apply if the Govt. is owned any money. Similarly the corporate veil should not apply when shareholders and pensioners get robbed of their dividend because of settlements.

I suggest the journalists sue the CEO directly as a person who ordered a crime.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[goldspider]

I'll grant you that if you agree to eliminate "emotional distress" from the list of reasons to sue. I'm really tired of seeing that in EVERY lawsuit.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[tonywong]

Wasn't it Patricia Dunn who was the CEO at the time?

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[jellie]

What does Carly Fiorina have to do with this case? The pretexting was ordered by Patricia Dunn, who was chairman of the board. She should have to go to jail, more than anyone else.

I don't think you should sue the executives, because the company has much more money. I think it's easier to prove against a company because all you need is evidence that someone intentionally committed a crime, and not a specific person.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[the grace of R'hllor]

Normally I'd agree, but actually having your personal and private life rooted around in can make a person quite paranoid, and *can* cause emotional distress. In this case I'd call it appropriate.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[donaldm]

Err Carly has not been the CEO of HP for a few years, Mark Hurd is the current CEO.

The problem you have here is what was done not actually illegal in the eyes of the Law. Unethical yes and definitely breaching HP's own conduct of standards. This does subject the person or persons subject to disciplinary action within the organisation which can be a sever reprimand to termination of employment.

While IANL for someone in an organisation to be jailed they must break the Law and be convicted of it. It could be put forward in a court that while certain people in HP acted inappropriately the Journalists also acted inappropriately in accepting what could be construed as getting data that could be used for "insider trading" which is actually illegal.

Many large companies actually try to foster a code of ethics within the company and with their customers but it only takes one to use questionable practices to breakdown this standard and expose the company to ridicule and possible litigation. Of course there are some companies that view ethics as a sigh of weakness.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[PopeRatzo]

freedom_india, I salute you for your insightful comment.

Corporations, and the few rich men who own them, have been "having it both ways" and encroaching on the lives of the rest of us for a long time. Of course, it's the nature of corporations to do this, but every few decades, people have to take a few of these corporations (and their "few rich men") and slam them up against a wall, just to show them who's boss. (This is the Michael Ledeen theory of US foreign policy applied for the forces of good).

Here's an example of the imbalance between corporate interests and peoples' interest: Here in the US, we have a situation in our economy where lots of people are losing their homes to foreclosure. They can't pay their mortgage and the banks foreclose. Yesterday, the Federal government here in the US bailed out several huge banks because they gave out a lot of stupid adjustable rate mortgages that people can't pay, and they were about to collapse. Now, the Fed could have given help to the homeowners who are losing their homes and it would have had the same effect (plus the added benefit of letting people keep their homes) but instead, they gave money to the banks so they could make MORE bad loans (and the people still lose their homes). This is an example of the double standard for people and for corporations. Today, it's become "screw the people, let's save the corporations".

Here's why this HP privacy violation suit is important: Privacy is something that, especially in an age of instant communications and data, we have to constantly fight to keep. Privacy is so important that it can be argued people cannot be free unless they can have a Right to Privacy. Corporations (and bad governments) hate privacy, thus, they hate freedom. This is short-sighted because corporations do better in a free society, but corporations only see the very short term. HP (and anyone else who would violate privacy) has to be punished (which means, of course, the CEO or CFO or board of directors) because otherwise, we will lose our privacy, then our freedom, then our corporations would fail, and we'd be fucked.

Privacy has to be protected as vigorously as we protect our freedom. Privacy is our Freedom. The Founding Fathers didn't put "privacy" in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution because they lived on remote farms or big estates and didn't know we'd have surveillance cameras and GPSs and cellular phones and persistent databases (or George Bush, or Alberto Gonzales) and that something as fundamental as our privacy could ever be threatened. Hell, they couldn't be expected to think of everything.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Why should shareholders suffer losses because some idiot CEO or criminal CFO cooked up statements or committed a crime by using Corporate Veil.

Because they own the company, they finance the company, they benefit from a corporation's wrong-doing, and they employ the people committing. In fact, it's them who directly influence the company's actions. If they don't want financial inconvenience, they can either choose a more reputable company, or actively demand in stockholder's meetings that day-to-day profits are secondary to obeying the law, and the financial security associated with it.

Shareholders who are either care only for profits, or who take an apathetic view to the origin of their own dividends are solely responsible for the state of corporations today.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[slughead]

It is high time this crap about settlements stopped.

Well most lawsuits against IT companies are BS or unprovable anyway.

Also, there's a thing called 'limited liability' which, among other things, means nobody in the company can be sued for the company's actions. In this sue-for-all age of lawyers extorting anybody of means, the importance if limited liability seems more obvious.

Limited liability is what takes enough of the fear away from people to start their own businesses and be successful. It's a tough pill to swallow, but I think it's worth it.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[Isao]

I believe that settlments are one difference between civil and criminal lawsuits. In criminal lawsuits it might be called a plea-bargain. IANAL.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't it Patricia Dunn who was the CEO at the time?

No, she was chairman of the Board.

Mark "I do not recall" Hurd has been the CEO throughout this and also somehow managed to get himself appointed CEO when Dunn was removed, now effectively overseeing his own actions.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[freedom_india]

Limited liability means the financial liability of the company is limited to its paid up capital.
Nowhere does limited liability means i can get away with the a limited punishment if i commit a crime.

If that were the case, trial lawyers would have a field day as they defend murderers, etc. on same proposal.

Most Mom & Pop shops are not limited liability stuff.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[Myrkridian42]

If a natural person cannot be offered a settlement if he/she committed a crime, why should a corporation be any different? A corporation is an extension of a natural person for separate liability. Because a corporation can't be put in jail. So corporations pay money in fines when one commits a crime. So a financial settlement instead of court proceedings which would only end in financial penalties makes sense.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[mabhatter654]

Dunn was investigating why there was so much bad press about Fiorina.. come to find out, matters the board discussed with their chairman and agreed to keep "company secret" were showing up in the IT tabloids within days. Some board member was not going with the team and purposefully leaking bad things about Carly because they didn't like her. That considerably shortened her stay as chair and her ability to do her job because her private performance discussions were made public before she had time to adjust... that's an unconscionable breach of business ethics by the board members involved and they should not be running ANY company at this point. Dunn was doing her job to track a security leak and wound up finding it on the Board of Directors!!! She went a little overboard, but it's funny to blame them for something a teenager could do!!

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[mabhatter654]

you mean like a board member agreeing to do one thing in board session then secretly calling reporters from home behind the board's back and leaking details of their "disagreements" with there CEO? Because the vote didn't go his way in the board meeting. That kind of ethics problems?

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[donaldm]

HP has a "Standards of Business Conduct" policy (as do many companies) and the Company in general tries to take an "ethical" approach to business practice. The problem is that even though what was done was reprehensible, un-ethical and IMHO stupid there was nothing in the "policy" that actually spelled out that this was not acceptable and this is a loophole to some people who hold and abuse power.

Re:HP should be convicted and Carly jailed

[mabhatter654]

but somebody on the BOARD OF DIRECTORS was breaching their fiduciary duty of keeping company secrets first! Everybody misses that fact. Dunn was doing her job sending in the dogs to get these guys. For all the "ethics" you claim they needed, it was the board that after she presented irrefutable evidence that a board member was leaking secret meetings to the press, and after another board member in charge of "ethics" tried to cover it up... still blamed HER. Dunn paid people to do what an slashdotter would do by default. She didn't break any laws herself, but didn't exactly tell the PIs to stop when they crossed into objectionable territory. And she didn't hide for THEIR actions.. she stood her ground as president of the company trying to protect it.

put it another way, if somebody stole your laptop, and you had that program that secretly taps your video and audio to find out who stole it, you my be breaking the same privacy laws in the state the theif TAKES the notebook to for illegal spy devices!!! Will you still protect your property in this manner and post the thief to Flickr anyway? what Dunn did was trivial in the scheme of things, it wasn't a CRIMINAL case.. the rules are different. You could argue the reporters gave up their privacy by communicating with a board member under SOX and public corporation reporting laws anyway. Not to mention the stack of 2000+ cases of the FBI doing the very same thing!!! I don't see any of them going to court.

follow the leader

[thej1nx]

Makes sense. Once the government decides that individual privacy is no longer important or desirable, all in the name of making *their* job easier, why wouldn't corporates follow suite? It is after all easier to monitor journalists rather than upgrading and perfecting their own security policies.

Re:follow the leader

[Anonymous Coward]

...why wouldn't corporates follow suite? That's follow suit, cockfag.

Of course they do.

[xC0000005]

"The company said it plans to defend itself against the lawsuits."

When was the last time you saw something say "The company plans bend over and really take it from this lawsuit. Yeah, we're going to sit on our asses and get plugged." More likely, "We're going to ask you to bend over and get plugged. And by ask, we don't mean ask." Companies will defend all of their actions to the death (or the disolve, in this case). If the company had put orders in to have the journalist shot they'd still defend themselves against a lawsuit.

Personal responsibility is dead in this country.
It should be no surprise that corporate responsibility is.

Re:Of course they do.

[devilspgd]

And by attempting settlement talks first, the company essentially did offer to bend over and take it. The fact that the settlement talks didn't reach a conclusion simply indicates that HP either wouldn't bend far enough, or frequently enough.

Re:emotional distress?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. If it had been the other way around, we wouldn't have heard anything about it...

I wanted to mod you up

[aepervius]

Instead I decided to take a more philosophical approach.

Enjoy :

CEO responsabilities

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I hope it helps

[Whuffo]

I can't believe that HP would do such a stupid thing to start with. Out of all the people you could mess with in this life, pissing off a reporter has to be one of the dumbest moves you could make. Breaking the law while you're doing it doesn't make things any better at all. Multiply that by the number of reporters they messed with and it's a real problem.

So up to this point - charges were filed against HP by the government. Those charges were dropped - all HP had to do was admit wrongdoing, pay a 15 million dollar fine to the state, and agree to make some changes in the way they handle investigations. $15M sounds like a lot, but to a corporation like HP it's not such a big penalty.

The people involved were also charged - and the charges were dropped in all cases except one of the underlings at the private investigation agency - he had to do some community service. The worst actor of the lot - Patty Dunn - walked away scot free.

But what about those reporters? Beside the trauma of finding that their private records had been rummaged through secretly, they've suffered some real damage to their careers. None of them can ethically report on HP any more - and what good is a technology reporter that can't report on HP?

Not to mention the chilling effect HP's actions had on news reporters in general. Hard to get those hot tips when the people passing the information along quit doing so; if someone's tapping the reporter's phone, they'd be targeted. No thanks.

HP tried to settle with the reporters. We don't know what kind of settlement offer was made but it clearly wasn't enough to satisfy the reporters. So the reporters sue, and HP announces that they'll defend vigorously. What kind of defense can they offer, considering they admitted guilt in the state case? Another bad move by the folks at HP - now they're going to end up paying more (probably much, much more) and enjoy more negative publicity that gets generated as the cases wind their way through the legal system.

HP needs to make those reporters whole. Since HP through its illegal actions damaged their careers, they should pay the reporters at least the difference between what they would have earned and what they can earn now. That's only fair. But there's another angle to consider - punitive damages. Big punitive damages, the kind that would cause HP some financial pain and send a message to others - it's not even worth considering illegally manipulating the press. Lots of people in the news business feel this way, not just the plaintiffs in this action. And while these plaintiffs can't report on HP, There's an awful lot of reporters who saw what happened, feel that their profession has been done a great wrong, and aren't prohibited from writing about HP.

So here they go - HP gets to defend itself in multiple lawsuits and has to go in with the fact that they've already admitted guilt, preventing them from arguing much of anything other than how much they should have to pay. And while this is going on, the media will be reporting on it - the same media that HP went out of their way to alienate. The same media that HP depends on to print its press releases.

What will ultimately be the result of these suits? I don't want to guess at this point; corporations seem to be getting away with all kinds of things these days.

Re:I hope it helps

[cp.tar]

And while this is going on, the media will be reporting on it - the same media that HP went out of their way to alienate. The same media that HP depends on to print its press releases.

Well, unlike Paris Hilton, HP is a big advertiser, too: that means that yes, their press releases will still be printed. And yes, their products will still be evaluated as fairly as before (which says almost nothing), though I guess some could start criticising their huge, bulky printer drivers and accompanying software.

I do admit, a media boycott would sound nice, but it isn't going to happen. What would be even better, though, is detailed reporting on the case, with comments, analyses etc. That, however, depends on how big an advertiser HP really is in a particular paper/magazine, i.e. whether the journalists or editors are bought or scared.

The media are powerful; all that remains to be seen is whether HP managed to create themselves a powerful enemy.

What will ultimately be the result of these suits? I don't want to guess at this point; corporations seem to be getting away with all kinds of things these days.

That's why I, for one, am so glad that these journalists refused to settle. Unless you stand up to them, they'll just keep on acting as bullies.

Re:I hope it helps

[mabhatter654]

no, these reporters were caught because an HP board member was calling them with inside info about company board meetings not granted in the official SEC filings. The only mistake Dunn made was taking the investigation too far on her own. She didn't expect the board members to bust HER chops, she expected them to vote the director out of the company and report him to the SEC for securities violations. Her fault was that she should have went to the SEC when she had info on board members being off the record and let THEM pull the phone records of board members.
Much of the bad press we heard about Carly was directly because of this board member. He publicly impeded her from doing her job the way the board of HP told her to!! He didn't like her and fed the press bad things about her at every opportunity when the board didn't do what he wanted them to. Dunn caught him. This board member caused millions of dollars in damage and got away with it by putting all the attention on Dunn's one misstep and allowing a private PI firm to go a little too far.
as far as the reporters, they weren't taking anonymous tips, the board member's personal/business phone was found to be calling them directly... he wasn't even using "secure" communications. The reporters were complicit in a crime by printing information from and HP board member without express permission of HP. That is an SEC violation. Who's to say this guy wasn't feeding them bad news then playing the stocks of his company for profit? The reporters KNEW they were talking to a board member, and KNEW the discussions were not protected by any "whistle blower" rules.

Helping Corporate Officers

[_Sprocket_]

Whenever a corporation or corporate agent does something morally questionable, there's always apologists claiming it was necessary in order to show due diligence to the profitability of the company and interests of the share holders. I pitty those corporate officers who are unable to form an argument against sleezy behavior for fear of being run on a rail in to court. It must be tough for them. They should be quietly cheering this lawsuit. If successful, it'll make a great argument. When asked to something reprehensible, the cornered agent can note "look at what happened to HP - do we really want to take that kind of risk?" And voila - they're not putting morals above profit... they're being fiduciarily responsible.

Re:please mod me down

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsing all the posts made thus far, I have noticed that everyone is checking the Post Anonymously box. What's the matter? Don't want HP investigating you next?

Easy to PAY-OFF a D.A., Harder to PAY-OFF a JURY !

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy to PAY-OFF a D.A., Harder to PAY-OFF a JURY !!

Re:As it goes

[Anonymous Coward]

They went on a vacation to Disney world - they were already being watched by a corp.

Natural people get settlements, too

[faloi]

A natural person *is* offered settlements when they commit a crime. They call it a plea deal. You agree to take responsibility/blame/whatever for a crime, and the government agrees to give you a more palatable sentance.

That having been said, I agree that more *people* need to be held accountable for their actions when it's done under the guise of a corporation. I'm a little bit confused why there aren't criminal charges pending against the ex-CEO and the private investigator they hired.

Re:Natural people get settlements, too

[StrongAxe]

A natural person *is* offered settlements when they commit a crime. They call it a plea deal.

Yes, but this is very different. On the one hand, HP is offering the victims (probably) money in order to make this case go away. This is called a settlement offer.

If a natural person offers a district attorney money to make a prosecution go away, it is called a bribe.

For your analogy to be correct, it would have to be the victims who approached HP (rather than the other way around), saying something like "If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".

Re:Natural people get settlements, too

[freedom_india]

>>"If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".

Its called as extortion and is prosecuted under RICO.

Re:Natural people get settlements, too

[StrongAxe]

<<"If you admit wrongdoing and pay us $X million, we won't sue or request prosecution".

Its called as extortion and is prosecuted under RICO>

1) Offering to settle to avoid a lawsuit is common practice, and perfectly legal, if it's done in good faith. (Unlike, say, sending a postcard to everyone in town with this message and seeing who bites).
2) Even if it were extortion, RICO only applies if the same individual does it several times, demonstrating a pattern of criminal activity.

Re:Hypocrisy

[julesh]

Frankly, you're talking about a small minority of journalists, there. I highly doubt these particular journalists have ever done anything like that.

Journalists Sue HP For Invention of Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to have misread the title.

responsibility

[phread]

privacy. we all want to protect it. a reporter is given inside information about a company, and writes about it. not openly, revealing their source of information, but getting it clandestinely. the company tries to find out where they got their information, clandestinely. hmmm. nobody here is questioning the reporters morals, or even deeper, those who revealed confidential company information. there will be arguments made thats what reporters do, freedom of the press, blah blah blah. but they make their livelihood from this type of espianage. so the spies are sueing for being spied on. hypocrites.

Rip HP

[Nom du Keyboard]

Would love to see HP ripped Big Time by this. So big that no corporation will ever think of trying it again.