San Jose Mercury News, Calif., Tech Notebook Column: HP Learns Spying Isn't `Socially Responsible'
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By Dean Takahashi, Elise Ackerman and Sarah Jane Tribble, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Feb. 19--For the first time in the seven-year history of the "Top 100 Corporate Citizens" list, Hewlett-Packard didn't make it.
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(InfoWorld) - A day after Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP)Â chairman Patricia Dunn promised to step down for her role in a spy scandal, the state of California is continuing its effort to indict her and the private investigators she used. Dunn's actions were not merely unethical but actually violated the law, and the state now has enough evidence to indict people both within HP and contractors outside the company, according to Thomas Dressler, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. In her efforts to discover the source of press leaks about board deliberations,Â HP has acknowledged that Dunn hired a private investigation firmÂ to pose as the 10 suspected board members and journalists in order to convince the phone company to disclose private phone records. This is a practice known as pretexting. In an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Tuesday, Lockyer said that under California law, people involved in the probe could be charged with crimes both for falsely taking another person's identity and for accessing computer records with their personal information. Dressler confirmed Lockyer's comments. HP hired investigation firm Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc. (SOS), which shares its Boston offices with a law firm called Bonner, Kiernan, Trebach and Crociata, according toÂ a report in The New York Times that sited sources close to the case. The Times also said that the California and Massachusetts attorney generals were working together on the case. Dressler declined to confirm the name of the security firm HP hired, or whether California and Massachusetts are working together on the case. "I'm not going to deny it, but beyond what the attorney general said I'm not going to comment. It's not prudent for prosecutors to mention names before bringing charges," Dressler said. A call to SOS on Wednesday was answered by a woman who recited the name of the law firm, but denied the two businesses were connected. She declined to give her name, and said that no one was immediately available for comment. Ironically, an SOS newsletter posted on the firm's Web site warns corporate executives that their privacy is at risk since their Web surfing and e-mail records can be traced by Internet browsers and cookies. It advises clients to shield their identities by using a Web site called Anonymizer.com. Â
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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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(InfoWorld) - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer says criminal charges are "likely" in the scandal surrounding alleged spying involving the board of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), reports say. Meanwhile, HP board Chairman Patricia Dunn says she will not resign over the scandal and that she was "appalled" that contractors hired to investigate news leaks used potentially illegal methods, news reports say. The Wall Street Journal reported the HP board will hold a special meeting by phone this weekend to discuss the situation. HP is on the defensive after the disclosures this week thatÂ phone records of HP board membersÂ andÂ journalistsÂ were hacked to see who on the board discussed confidential strategy sessions with reporters earlier this year. The company disclosed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that investigators, in order to identify the leaker, had used "pretexting," a method in which false pretenses are used to gain online access to others' phone records. The investigation determined that director George Keyworth was the source for a Cnet.com story in January about HP's strategy. Keyworth was asked to resign from the board in May but refused. Board member Thomas Perkins, a renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, did resign in May in protest over concerns with the HP board's handling of investigations into leaks of confidential information. Dunn, in an interview in the Journal Friday, said that while she ordered the investigation of board news leaks, she did not know the investigators hired to conduct the probe used pretexting. "I was appalled. And I'm going to apologize," to those journalists, she told the Journal. Because she was also subject to investigation, she said she could not have known what methods the investigators used. But while she does not plan to resign, Dunn will take into consideration what the board thinks she should do. "I serve entirely at the pleasure of the board,'' Dunn told the Journal. "If they determine it no longer is in the interest of shareholders [for me to remain on the board] I will do so.'' Charges could be filed under a California law prohibiting gaining unauthorized access to computer data or under another law prohibiting identity theft through unauthorized use of personal information, published reports say. The investigation is ongoing but prosecution is likely because a crime has occurred, Lockyer told the San Jose Mercury News. A bill to specifically outlaw pretexting is on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk awaiting his signature. The governor has until the end of September to sign or veto the bill, spokesman Darrel Ng told IDG News Service. Schwarzenegger hasn't taken a position on the pretexting bill, but only because it is one of hundreds of bills passed during the recently concluded session of the California Legislature, Ng said.
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By Julie Sevrens Lyons, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Dec.
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(InfoWorld) - Last year's HP Technology Forum was chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This year, storm clouds of a different sort hang over the event. As an estimated 6,000 attendees converge on Houston for the annual Hewlett-Packard user conference, the subject on many minds is the one the company is most loathe to discuss: theÂ shakeup of HP's boardÂ and theÂ prospect of criminal chargesÂ related to a spying scandal. The California Attorney General and a Congressional committee are among the institutions probing HP's possibly illegal methods of investigating news leaks from its board. HP has until Tuesday to respond to an invitation from the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee for HP's Chairman Patricia Dunn and General Counsel Ann Baskins to testify at a Sept. 28 hearing in Washington. But at the Technology Forum, a gathering of HP user groups, partners and other vendors, HP is focusing on its business success, which is considerable. With revenue, earnings and stock price all resurgent in the last year, HP CEO Mark Hurd could rightly say, "Pay no attention to that prosecutor behind the curtain," when he delivers a keynote address on Sept. 18. In the quarter ended July 31, HP's earnings-per-share (EPS) topped analysts' estimates at $0.52 on 5 percent revenue growth to $21.9 billion, compared to the year ago quarter. Across many of its business lines, HP, of Palo Alto, California, has gained on rivals, said industry analyst Rob Enderle. HP personal computer sales have grown with its "the computer is personal again" marketing campaign, Enderle noted. IBMÂ sold its personal computer businessÂ to Lenovo Group, in 2005, and Dell has suffered negative publicity from the AugustÂ recall of 4.1 million fire-prone batteriesÂ in Dell laptops. In storage, HP closed the market share gap with EMC in second quarter numbers released Aug. 29 by research firm IDC. With EMC's 20 percent share, based on unit sales, to HP's 19.3 percent, the two are in a "statistical tie" said Brad Nisbet, an analyst with IDC. "HP has been executing well under new management," Nisbet said, referring to Hurd, CEO since March 2005. In servers, HP is a strong second to IBM, according to IDC market share numbers, but has made some errors, said Enderle. It still is using Intel's Itanium processor in its high-end Integrity servers, which rivals aren't embracing. Gartner research shows that 90 percent of the Itanium chips shipped in the first quarter of this year ran on HP servers; neither Dell nor IBM build Itanium computers. Technology Forum organizers get tight-lipped when the conversation shifts to the board scandal. "That's HP's business," said Nina Buik, vice president of Encompass, one of the HP user groups planning the event. "We're not focused on those issues unless it impacts the technology." And as long as the scandal doesn't touch Hurd personally, the customer satisfaction should be unaffected, said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of research at IDC. . "I don't think [the scandal] is a drag on the company's success," he said. "I have not found one customer who said 'I'm not going to do business, or I am concerned about doing business, with Hewlett-Packard as a result of this.'" HP Technology forum runs from Sunday to Thursday this week.
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Hurd silent on growing scandal HP's spy fiasco went from bad to catastrophic yesterday, as the company admitted to having tapped the phone logs of nine reporters.â¦
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By Scott Duke Harris, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Jun.
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Hewlett-Packard and its Watergate re-enactment now own the tech scandal headlines, but during the summer our attention focused on other alleged malfeasance, by the company with the normally shiny image, Apple.
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By Therese Poletti, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  SJ-0524-Hewlett-Packard-probe-by-SEC-is-settled   Hewlett-Packard probe by SEC is settled   Therese Poletti  San  Jose Mercury News, Calif.
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By Lee Drutman  BERKELEY, Calif.   THERE'S something odd about all the attention attracted by the Hewlett-Packard corporate-board scandal.
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Nelson Minar says he likes TechCrunch, but they're not journalists so be careful what you say to a TC reporter at a party. He cites two examples where he feels they acted unethically.  In one example, the reporter seems to use off the record comments exactly as they are supposed to. Most non-disclosures require that you keep the information confidential, but only until someone else discloses the information to you. If you get it from another source, on the record or off the record, the NDA is no longer enforceable. In this case they got confirmation from three off the record sources.  The other is just an example of a dumb story, not a violation of journalistic ethics. To say that a big company told a lie is hardly news. If it were about something material and not the age of one of the founders, then it would be newsworthy. But it's not an example of an integrity breach. (You can make a mistake and still have integrity. It's only a problem if you knew it was wrong when you wrote it.) Imho, too much is made of whether someone is a journalist or not. You read reports like this one in a highly reputed news organization, written by a journalist, that contain no information but leave a sensational impression for people who don't know the technology well enough to know that the reporter is talking nonsense. I'd rather read the opinion of a non-journalist who knows the subject and can defend his or her position, and clearly discloses their interest in the subject. At least I'd learn something, and no one would be misled into believing they were getting "news." However I do applaud what Nelson wrote because he had the guts to openly criticize TechCrunch. People from outside Silicon Valley must wonder why hardly anyone does, given that they are at or near the top of most lists ranking tech news sources. Why should they be immune to examination? Answer -- they shouldn't.
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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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On January 31, 2007, the Santa Clara Superior Court certified a consumer  lawsuit to proceed as a class action against Hewlett-Packard Company.  The lawsuit involves certain HP Pavilion models of notebook computers  that Plaintiff I Braun Degenshein alleges contain defective inverters.
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AUGUST 24, 2004  - Welcome to Computerworld.com&#39;s new monthly column on IT ethics by Larry Ponemon. The Ponemon Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
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(InfoWorld) - A shareholder lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard (HP) forÂ attempting to spy on board members and reportersÂ has been expanded to include charges of insider stock trading. An amended complaint filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of California for Santa Clara County accuses HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and seven other company executives of selling $41.3 million worth of HP stock at "inflated prices" shortly before the company revealed that its investigators had used questionable and possibly illegal techniques to gain access to personal records such as phone call logs. The eight executives sold 1.7 million shares of stock between Aug. 21 and Sept. 6, according to the lawsuit. In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), HP said an outside investigator used the practice of pretexting, pretending to be someone else, to gain access to personal records. Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn and four others face criminal charges stemming from their alleged participation in the spying, which also used e-mail tracer technology, according to testimony before a U.S. congressional committee. HP also tried to prop up the value of its stock price by announcing on Aug. 21 it would repurchase $6 billion worth of its stock, the lawsuit says. "In the midst of this acrimony HP executives cashed in," says the complaint, filed by the Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins LLP law firm. HP issued a statement calling the lawsuit "baseless." The lawsuit "represents a transparent effort to exploit issues related to HP's recent investigation for personal gain at the expense of HP, its shareholders and its employees," the statement said. "HP will defend itself vigorously." HP acknowledged that it had obtained the phone records of 12 people by using pretexting. The stockholder lawsuit, originally filed in September, asks the court to declare that HP's executives have "committed breaches of their fiduciary duties" and to order executives to repay the amount the company has been damaged by the spying scandal. The lawsuit also asks the court to require HP to reform its corporate governance and to extract punitive damages from Dunn, Hurd and other HP executives.
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The Hewlett-Packard Co. spying effort that has sparked criminal investigations was wide-ranging and included physical surveillance, photographs and spyware sent via e-mail, and it also targeted wives and other relatives of HP board members and reporters, according to a consultant's report prepared...