Hewlett-Packard Settles Spying Case
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Hewlett-Packard has agreed to a financial settlement with The New York Times and three Business Week magazine journalists in connection with the companyâs spying scandal.
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Hewlett-Packard Co settled claims on Wednesday with four reporters at the heart of a scandal involving claims that the world's biggest PC maker engaged in corporate espionage to plug a boardroom leak.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, a former company lawyer, and three outside investigators wereÂ charged Wednesday in CaliforniaÂ on felony charges related to the conduct of an investigationÂ to track down news leaks from the HP board that allegedly broke state law. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office said charges have also been filed against Kevin Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer at HP; Ronald L. DeLia, a Boston-area private detective; Matthew DePante, manager of Action Research Group, a Melbourne, Florida, information broker; and Bryan Wagner, a Littleton, Colorado, man who is said to have obtained private phone records while working for Action Research. TheÂ charges were announced at a press conference held Wednesday at the California Department of Justice. The charges include using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. All of the charges are felonies. "One of our state's most venerable corporate institutions lost its way as its board sought to find out who leaked confidential information to the press," said Lockyer in a statement, released Wednesday. "In this misguided effort, people inside and outside of HP violated privacy rights and broke state law." Lockyer's office has been investigating the spying allegations because HP is based in Palo Alto, California. The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been conducting separate investigations of HP. In a statement released Wednesday in advance of the Sacramento press conference, HP said it was continuing to cooperate with state and federal investigators. The private investigators hired by HP allegedly used "pretexting," pretending to be someone they are not, to obtain the telephone records of HP directors, other employees and journalists who cover the company in an attempt to find out who from the board provided information to the reporters. The scandal has attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress.Â On Sept. 28,Â Dunn told the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that she believed employees and lawyers who said that the HP's leak investigation complied with the company's standards of conduct. The subcommittee was holding hearings into the use of pretexting. The committee passed a federal ban on pretexting but the Congress adjourned before the full House or the Senate voted on the legislation. When questioned about the techniques used to track down the leaks arose in the latter part of the investigation, Dunn said, she passed concerns to company Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd. Before then, the company's lawyers had assured her the techniques were being done "legally and properly," she said. "At no time in the investigation did I authorize its methods," Dunn said. "I asked this to be done in the HP standard way." On his part, Hurd told the subcommittee that he was not aware of the details of the techniques being used. He said he did not read a report from the investigating team that detailed the use of pretexting. Ann Baskins,Â who resigned right before the subcommittee hearing as HP's senior vice president and general counsel, and Hunsaker both asserted their rights not to testify under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution during the hearing. Also taking the fifth before the subcommittee were Delia, Wagner and Action Research owner Joe DePante. Dunn faces these criminal charges at a difficult time in her personal life. Dunn, is scheduled to begin chemotherapy Friday for a recurrence of advanced ovarian cancer, according to a Wednesday report in the San Jose Mercury News. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004 and had been treated for breast cancer and melanoma dating back to 2001, the paper reported. (Stephen Lawson and Robert McMillan contributed to this story) Â
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The companies settle a lawsuit in which the software giant was accused of poaching smart-phone trade secrets.
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BRUSSELS -- The European Commission has cleared Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) to buy U.K. IT services provider Synstar PLC, the Commission announced on Friday.
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Lawsuits still pending HP has paid off some of the journalists it was accused of spying on in 2006.â¦
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A state judge in California on Thursday dismissed charges against the three remaining state criminal defendants in the Hewlett-Packard Co. spying case.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. said on Wednesday it had signed a five-year technology outsourcing agreement with Nokia worth $100 million per year, finalizing a deal first flagged in February.
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SAN FRANCISCO - In snooping on a reporter to pinpoint internal news leaks, Hewlett-Packard used high-tech tools common to spammers, phishers, retailers, suspicious employers and investigators. Those tools, including phishing-style e-mail and tracing software, underscore the growing use of electronic surveillance to monitor consumers' every digital move, computer-security experts say.
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Hewlett-Packard Co.  said  on Thursday it would pay California $14.5 million to settle a  civil case related to board-leak investigations that led to the  resignation of Chairman Patricia Dunn.
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HP to pay 14.5 million dollars to settle charges in pretexting scandal    WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co. has agreed to pay 14.5 million dollars to settle civil charges stemming from a board-leak probe, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard board members and journalists were under physical surveillance by investigators trying to find out who was providing information to reporters, and private investigators tried to put tracking software on a journalist's computer to keep tabs on e-mail, according to a New York Times report. Patricia Dunn, HP's chairman, the company's general counsel and a staff attorney oversaw the internalÂ investigation of news leaks, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources who have been briefed on HP's findings so far regarding the secret investigation. It isn't clear how much involvement in the investigation there was by Dunn and others at HP, the Times reported Monday. HP announced last week that Dunn willÂ step aside as chairmanÂ in January, although she will remain as a director. Two others also have resigned from the board in the wake of the scandal. Over the weekend, HP identified Michael Moeller, director of corporate media relations, as one of two HP employees who was targeted in the internal investigation. "Investigators' suspicions were misdirected and unfounded," Robert Sherbin, HP's vice president for external communications was quoted as telling the Times on Sunday. The internal investigation reportedly was conducted in two stages, with the first from January 2005 to August of that year, which came up with nothing to go on, and then a second phase beginning in January 2006 after the technology news site of CNET NetworksÂ posted an article about an HP senior management meeting held that month. The board first clamored for an investigation into leaks of information to journalists in January 2005 following an article in The Wall Street Journal that spoke of board discussions regarding management reorganization and changes in the responsibilities to be handled by Carly Fiorina, who was then chief executive officer and chairman. She was ousted by the board in February 2005. Within days of that board action, The New York Times published a detailed account of a directors' meeting that was crucial to her ouster. Reporters from the Times, the Journal, CNET and Business Week have been informed by the California attorney general's office that HP investigated them. California and federal authorities are investigating HP's conduct and the California attorney general has said that charges are likely. HP has admitted that its the private investigative firm it hired used "pretexting," with investigators pretending to be journalists in order to obtain their personal telephone records. Even after a summary of the internal investigation was presented to leaders at HP, in Palo Alto, California, those in charge were unaware that possibly illegal methods had been used to obtain information, the Times reported. In May, the investigation's findings were relayed to the board of directors, including the allegation that its longest-running member, George Keyworth, was the source of the leaks to journalists. He refused to resign, but Vice Chairman Thomas Perkins, an influential and important Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was incensed over the probe and quit the board. He then turned his attention to pressuring Dunn to resign. His surprising departure was announced in a mildly worded HP statement that offered no clue as to the fractious nature of what had transpired, details of which began to emerge in news accounts earlier this month.
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IN a bid to put an embarrassing leaks probe behind it, Hewlett- Packard has agreed to pay California $14.5 million (Pounds 7.4 million) to settle a civil case brought by Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
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California's Attorney General announced a $14.5 million civil settlement with Hewlett-Packard Co. this afternoon, three months after the Silicon Valley computer giant was engulfed in an ethics and spying scandal that led to criminal charges against former top executives.
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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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(110 sec.) An update on the major players in the Hewlett-Packard spying scandal.
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A former Hewlett-Packard Co. ethics director and two investigators employed by the company won dismissal of the last remaining state charges stemming from a boardroom spying scandal at the computer maker.