NYT: HP Press Spying Included Tracking
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In an investigation supervised little by Hewlett-Packard, investigators may have physically followed directors and journalists, as well as attempted to place Trojans on reporters' computers to track communications.
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Hewlett-Packard settled cases with The New York Times Company and three BusinessWeek journalists Wednesday after being caught spying on reporters in 2006.The parties did not disclose the size of the settlements. HP has already paid $4.5 million in a civil-case settlement with the State of California related to the incident.The New York Times plans to donate its settlement money to charity, said Terry Gross, the attorney representing the company and the BusinessWeek reporters.HP said it was pleased to put the matter behind it and happy that the award would go partly to charity.The case followed revelations in 2006 that HP had hired investigators to try to find the source of internal company leaks to the press. The investigators, however, were found to have used fraudulent methods, known as&#160;pretexting,&#160;to obtain the reporters&#39; phone records. State and federal laws have since banned the practice.&quot;The New York Times and the BusinessWeek reporters brought this action because they believed that this type of illegal activity aimed at silencing the press should not be allowed,&quot; Gross said.The scandal shook up the executive leadership at HP, with the chairman, another board member and the company&#39;s general counsel all&#160;stepping down.HP faces other outstanding lawsuits relating to the incident.
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You'd have pretexted it HP - which faces US federal and state investigations for spying on board members and journalists - is co-sponsoring an award for "privacy innovation".â¦
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Friday's press event provided more details about HP's leak probe. But it failed to answer some key questions and raised new ones.
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By Ross Kerber and Sacha Pfeiffer, The Boston Globe  Sep. 14--California officials investigating the corporate spying issues  at Hewlett-Packard Co.
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(InfoWorld) - IT investors had a mixed bag of news to digest this week, in the wake of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s boardroom spy scandal, and Xerox Corp.'s annual pilgrimage to New York to woo the Wall Street crowd. It's a measure of HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd's success so far that the company has not been harder hit by theÂ boardroom spy scandal, in which outside investigators hired by the board used allegedly illegal means to spy on employees, board members and reporters. In order to smooth things over, Hurd will replace Dunn in January and retain his CEO title. The spying was sparked by leaks to the press, which ironically included information on discussions that led to the firing of former CEO Carly Fiorina. It's ironic because under Hurd, the company's takeover of Compaq Computer Corp. -- a controversial acquisition engineered by Fiorina -- seems to be paying off. Hurd has reorganized the company to cut costs, and HP is gaining PC market share and growing almost as fast as its archrival in that market, Dell Inc. Since HP is much larger than Dell, that growth is remarkable. Much of it is the result of reorganized company logistics, supply-chain management, inventory control, as well as a continued push on the product front. The spy scandal has not implicated Hurd, and that's a good thing. Company shares did take a hit after Tuesday's disclosure by the California state attorney general on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that he had enough evidence to charge HP officials. Still, shares (HPQ) closed Thursday at $36.25, about where they were right before the scandal broke last week. The share price is still up 3.12 percent for the month and 31.81 percent for the year. As long as Hurd is not implicated in the scandal, the company seems poised to continue its run, even if Dunn or other board members are indicted. Of the seven major brokers changing their recommendations on the company this year, all but one have been to upgrade their recommendations -- the one exception was before the scandal. Meanwhile, HP's archrival in printers, Xerox, is having a hard time gaining traction in the market. The company made its annual pitch to Wall Street last week in a series of product and services rollouts. The consensus among analysts appears to be that CEO Anne Mulcahy is making all the right moves: slimming down the company, integrating and expanding services, keeping up pressure on rivals in the small and medium-size business market, and keeping its lead on the high-end production market. But share price was not affected by her pitch to Wall Street. Shares (XRX) closed Thursday right where they were on the last day of her pitch last Friday, at $14.90. "The strategy is there, but Wall Street wants to see more growth," noted IDC analyst Keith Kmetz. Various competitors including Asian manufacturers have "nibbled away" at the low end of the market, Kmetz said, but Xerox still has a command position in the production market and is strong in the market for office color printing and multifunction devices. Only HP can claim to rival Xerox in the full scope of products and services. But growth is tepid. Xerox second quarter revenue rose to $3.98 billion from $3.92 billion last year. The message from company executives appears to that Xerox will be able to achieve growth rates experienced by HP as services grow nearer to 50 percent of company revenue. But as Mulcahy told IDG, "whether that will be in three, or five years, I can't say."
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By Jim Hopkins and Jon Swartz  Mark Hurd admits company ran  covert probes in which investigators spied on directors, journalists, others  PALO ALTO, Calif.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Extending beyond the skullduggery that pried loose people's private phone records, Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. , already in hot water for using private investigators to obtain journalists' phone records under false pretenses, may have been spying on their e-mail habits, as well. But it's possible the e-mail snooping was legal.
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Hewlett-Packard settled cases with The New York Times Company and three BusinessWeek journalists after being caught spying on reporters in 2006.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has turned over thousands of documents to a U.S. House subcommittee investigating methods the company used to find out who was leaking company information to the media, a subcommittee spokesman said Monday. "The committee did receive thousands of pages of documents from HP. Staff investigators are reviewing them now," said Terry Lane of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. HP confirmed it responded to the subcommittee's request but didn't go beyond that. "We are complying with the House Subcommittee'sÂ request for informationÂ but are not releasing the details of what's being provided for the committee's inquiry," said HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. The inquiry springs from revelations that HP hired an outside investigative firm that used questionable tactics to find theÂ source of leaks from the HP boardÂ to news media in 2005 and 2006. HP, in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Sept. 6, acknowledged that unnamed outside investigators used "pretexting," a form of subterfuge where investigators pose as someone else, to obtain personal phone records of people it was investigating. The committee is considering federal legislation to make pretexting illegal. The House panel, in a Sept. 11 letter to HP Board Chairman Patricia Dunn, asked HP to: Identify the outside investigative firms it hired; identify the people within HP who authorized, participated in or had knowledge of HP's investigation; provide copies of contracts between HP and any outside firms; disclose the identities of everyone whose phone records were procured, or were attempted to be procured; and provide other information. HP, of Palo Alto, California, has refused to identify the outside firms it hired, but various media reports have identified them as Security Outsourcing Services, of Needham, Massachusetts, and Action Research Group, of Melbourne, Florida. Although HP has claimed that its legal advisors told it that the pretexting was within the law, an HP security specialist reportedly questioned its legality earlier this year. Fred Adler, a computer-crimes specialist within HP's global security division, and a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, notified his supervisors that acquiring people's phone records under false pretenses could be against the law, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The subcommittee has invited Dunn and HP General Counsel Ann Baskins to testify at a committee hearing Sept. 28 and a committee source told the Journal they would appear. HP's Donovan would not comment. Larry Sonsini of the Palo Alto law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati was also invited to testify but it's not known if he will appear. Ronald DeLia of Security Outsourcing Solutions, also invited, hasn't replied, but the Journal quoted a committee source as saying that if DeLia were to testify he said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not testify to protect against self-incrimination.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE   Associated Press writer  SAN FRANCISCO -- Extending beyond the skullduggery that pried loose people's private phone records, Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Hewlett-PackardÂs investigation into news leaks is said to have relied on an arm of the companyÂs own security force based in Boston.
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Here's a rundown of the agencies investigating HP's methods of tracking down a "leaker" on its board.
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(InfoWorld) - In one of his first public acts to address the burgeoning Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) spy scandal, Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd plans to brief reporters Friday about the findings of an analysis conducted by the company's law firm. HP retained Morgan, Lewis & Bockius for the outside analysis of the company's actions in trying to find the source of a boardroom news leak. The scandal led toÂ the resignation of company Chairman Patricia Dunn, who will turn over that job to Hurd in January. Dunn and Hurd have said they knew about the operation, but insist they never approved of the possible illegal methods used by third-party investigators to obtain communications records of reporters and some HP employees and directors. "What began as an effort to prevent the leaks of confidential information from HP's board room ended up heading in directions that were never anticipated," Hurd said in a written statement. However, company e-mail records seem to indicate that both executives knew about the investigators' "pretexting" practices while they were going on, according toÂ recent stories in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Pretexting involves pretending to be someone to obtain their telephone records. In Friday's meeting, a representative from the law firm will share its findings, describing "exactly what took place and when," Hurd said. Dunn has also saidÂ she will share more information about the episode, promising to "set the record straight" about allegations that she oversaw the illegal operation. Morgan Lewis will also represent the company in government inquiries such as criminal investigations by the California and Massachusetts attorneys general, and by the U.S. House of Representatives. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has said that he has enough evidence to indict certain people at HP and its contractors with crimes related to their methods in obtaining private phone records of reporters, board members and other employees. Â
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Hewlett-Packard Co.  said on  Sunday that it used improper methods to access phone records of  two employees, including its own spokesman, in an internal  probe into leaks to the media.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N is   under investigation by U.S. federal prosecutors over its   inquiry into boardroom leaks to the press, authorities said on   Monday, adding to the computer maker's legal woes.