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UK Serious Fraud Office Probes Autonomy With ... Autonomy!

Posted by timothy on from the audacity-of-autonomy dept.

judgecorp writes "The British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is investigating whether British software firm Autonomy fiddled its accounts to inflate the price which HP paid for it to a whopping $10 billion. There's a problem though. Autonomy's Introspect software is used to trawl large data sets for information and is in use at the SFO for jobs such as this fraud investigation. It's not just ironic: the SFO says its £4.6 million contract with Autonomy could create a conflict of interest and it may have to pull out of the investigation."

34 comments

  1. Not sure if it's a conflict by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Suppose you're investigating Microsoft. Are you not allowed to use Windows, Word, Excel, Outlook?

    1. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except those are not analytics software. Autonomy's software is designed to find patterns and preforms advanced heuristics. It doesn't just store data without making judgements on it. This is a big difference as most analytics software rely on ever changing patterns and rulesets that are maintained by the manufacturer. In fact, much of this software runs on the software manufacturer's servers, making it possible and even easy for Autonomy to "adjust" unfavorable results.

    2. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or compile gcc with gcc?

    3. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Easy solution: require Autonomy to make available detailed logs of their server activity so that any fiddling can be detected. Then use Autonomy software to analyze those logs for any suspicious activity.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    4. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

      Suppose you're investigating Microsoft. Are you not allowed to use Windows, Word, Excel, Outlook?

      Of course you aren't, all such investigations are to be performed from secured GNU/Hurd workstations!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by sjames · · Score: 2

      That depends on how you use them. I'm not sure you could/should trust (for example) a MS debugger to track down an alleged dirty trick in MS code, there's too much chance it might also be hacked to not show the trick. If you just want to use office to write up a report of your findings about their business dealings, that's probably OK.

      I do think that once MS was convicted of criminal activity, government really should have stopped using their software though, for the same reason you wouldn't give Al Capone a business development grant.

    6. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Clippy: I see you're writing a lawsuit against Microsoft there...

    7. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1

      Or compile gcc with gcc?

      Not if Ken Thompson contributed to gcc, unless you've taken sufficient care.

    8. Re:Not sure if it's a conflict by Stolpskott · · Score: 1

      Funny, but even that would not work in this case. The "conflict of interest" element is not about whether Autonomy would fiddle the results, but about the fact that the investigating party (the Serious Fraud Office) already has a financial relationship with one of the parties involved in the investigation.
      That creates a situation where the SFO cannot be guaranteed to be impartial - if they investigate and find that Autonomy did not artificially and fraudulently inflate their value, then HP have the option of crying that the pre-existing relationship predisposed the SFO toward that verdict.

  2. In other words by UneducatedSixpack · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other words UK SFO has stack overflow. Recursion is a bitch.

  3. Serious Fraud Office: by Hartree · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thank heaven it's not the Frivolous and Silly Fraud Office.

    1. Re:Serious Fraud Office: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It could have been the Super Serious Fraud Office!

  4. sfo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In UK the sfo is known as serious farce office

    The SFO is notorious for bungling fraud fases

    Thuis story is typical SFO

    1. Re:sfo by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      Is hypocrisy a valid defense against fraud charges in the UK? If so, can I live there? If so, can you help me with the 6 million pounds in my bank account, as prince of the my current country?

  5. Nope. by gQuigs · · Score: 1

    Now the European Union has to move to Linux and LibreOffice. :)

    Although that doesn't even get us far enough seeing how Microsoft is a contributor to Linux.

    1. Re:Nope. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OS2 Warp and ... ... ...
      was anything ever written to run on OS2 Warp?

    2. Re:Nope. by Mike+Frett · · Score: 2

      Just Hyper-V, and only because they were forced to implement it due to business customers demand. Unless you count Skype, and that's just a program that was started by a completely different company and continued by Microsoft, which amazingly, made it a little better. I don't use the Skype now because of the whole 'Spying' issue, if you remember.

    3. Re:Nope. by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 1

      OS2 Warp and ... ... ... was anything ever written to run on OS2 Warp?

      Well, there was the AC/2 application. But it failed because it was smarter than 99.999% of actual ACs.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  6. This is just a test of real requirements by rsborg · · Score: 2

    UK Govt is now manned by a bunch of corporate whores (even more so than the last bunch) who just want to ensure that the software they're using to discover fraud can be "friendly" to those who are "on the inside".

    Last thing a corrupt government wants is any real transparency. The best is some form of translucency, like a shower door or rose-tinted glasses - so what you think you see hides what is really happening.

    ok, [/rant]

    --
    Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
    1. Re:This is just a test of real requirements by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 3, Interesting

      UK Govt is now manned by a bunch of corporate whores (even more so than the last bunch) who just want to ensure that the software they're using to discover fraud can be "friendly" to those who are "on the inside".

      Last thing a corrupt government wants is any real transparency. The best is some form of translucency, like a shower door or rose-tinted glasses - so what you think you see hides what is really happening.

      ok, [/rant]

      I didn't RTFA, but I at least read the headlines... which stated that they raised a conflict of interest flag precisely because of the potential for what you said. I just wish more government offices would be this transparent. I also hope the SFO hands this over to some other competent group rather than just dropping it because the company could fiddle with the results of their own investigation.

      Personally, I'd still like to see Autonomy's analysis of their own books -- if they find themselves guilty, it'll be hard for the company in the short term, but extremely good advertising for them in the longer term (yes, we're good enough that we can even catch our own finance and marketing departments' shenanigans and not mess with the data!)

    2. Re:This is just a test of real requirements by sa1lnr · · Score: 1

      "I also hope the SFO hands this over to some other competent group"

      You do know that the deserved old nickname for the SFO is the Serious Farce Office?

    3. Re:This is just a test of real requirements by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      "I also hope the SFO hands this over to some other competent group"

      You do know that the deserved old nickname for the SFO is the Serious Farce Office?

      Yes indeed... I see how my addition of "other" could have implications that were unintended. That said, the fact that they've at least admitted this time that they wouldn't be able to do a reliable job gives me some modicum of respect for them. Dealing with Fraud is a thankless and tricky business, as one person's serious fraud is another person's frivolous fraud....

  7. Serious Fraud Office? by wcrowe · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Good afternoon, this is the Serious Fraud Office."

    "Seriously?"

    "Seriously."

    "I'm not sure my fraud problem is that serious."

    "Ah, you're looking for the Frivolous Fraud Office. That's down the hall."

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
    1. Re:Serious Fraud Office? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In theory, minor fraud is dealt with by the police or private prosecutions. The SFO is there to investigate more complicated cases that the police are unable to without external assistance.

    2. Re:Serious Fraud Office? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      The SFO is there to investigate more complicated cases that the police are unable to without external assistance.

      Translation into normalese: SFO is there to handle cases that involve so much money that the probability of your ordinary policeman allowing his hand to get greased converges to one.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Serious Fraud Office? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not just about corruption though. We're also talking about cases that span multiple jurisdictions and financial systems - cases where specialist knowledge is required to even start investigating.

    4. Re:Serious Fraud Office? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I'm sorry, I'm looking for an argument.

  8. Glassdoor by JBMcB · · Score: 2

    Go read some of the comments about Autonomy on Glassdoor. It's simultaneously amusing and sad.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:Glassdoor by jesseck · · Score: 2

      It makes me wonder, reading some of those reviews, how HP can claim they didn't know that Autonomy wasn't worth $10 billion. The reviews go back years, and in general would convince a prospective employee to think twice.

    2. Re:Glassdoor by JBMcB · · Score: 1

      I don't know - maybe they did read those reviews and got the number down from $11 billion. Who knows what was taken into account. What really matters is what Autonomy supplied HP. If they gave them inflated sales figures, deflated costs, etc... then it's a problem for Autonomy.

      --
      My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    3. Re:Glassdoor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Given the circumstances, it's a problem for HP, not autonomy.

  9. irony by midnightramen · · Score: 1

    as a former autonomy employee who worked with the introspect product, I find this very ironic. No doubt some of the current folks that maintain the Introspect product are getting a kick of reading emails of former and perhaps even current executives.

    1. Re:irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lets index all that data and see what kind of clusters we can get....