Congress Asks HP to Turn Over Records
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A Congressional committee on Monday asked Hewlett-Packard Co. to turn over records related to the company's possibly illegal investigation of media leaks, as the company's board planned to meet again to discuss the fate of embattled Chairwoman Patricia Dunn.
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(InfoWorld) - Several people connected to the Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) board scandal have been invited to testify at a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Sept. 28 on the issue ofÂ pretexting to get confidential phone records. Patricia Dunn, chairman of HP's board, and Ann Baskins, HP's general counsel, have been invited to testify at a hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Washington, D.C. Also invited to testify is Larry Sonsini, lead outside counsel for HP, and Ronald DeLia, managing director of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a Needham, Massachusetts, corporate security company identified as having been hired by HP to investigate who on the board leaked news of a confidential strategy session to the media. HP and outside firms it hired to conduct the investigation are facingÂ possible criminal charges in California for using pretexting to surreptitiously gain access to the personal phone records of HP directors and nine journalists. Dunn has agreed to resign as chairman come January as a result of her role in the investigation, but will remain on the board. Sonsini, chairman of the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, advised HP on the legality of its investigation of the leaks. The committee is considering federal legislation to outlaw pretexting in the U.S. and put other limits on the work of so-called data brokers who gather information for clients. Sometimes their means are duplicitous, such as impersonating an individual to gain unauthorized access to confidential records. HP is being investigated by the Attorneys General of California and Massachusetts, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's office for actions it took to investigate the board leaks that may have violated the law. Terry Lane, a spokesman for the House committee, said the witnesses have not been subpoenaed to testify but could not say what the committee might do if they declined the invitation. Although HP has said it is willing to cooperate on investigations into the pretexting case, spokesman Mike Moeller said the company would not comment specifically on whether Dunn and Baskins would accept the invitation to testify. Neither of the others responded to a request for comment. Â
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A House Republican is pushing a measure that echoes a long-sought Bush administration goal: to require all Internet service providers to keep records on their subscribers.
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(InfoWorld) - In an advance copy of his Congressional testimony released by a House Subcommittee on Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer (CEO) Mark Hurd blamed the scandal that has besieged his company on "a rogue investigation" that got out of hand. "How did such an abuse of privacy occur in a company renowned for its privacy? The end came to justify the means," Hurd wrote. "The investigation team became so focused on finding the source of the leaks that they lost sight of the privacy of reporters and others. They lost sight of the values HP has always represented." Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn , forced to resign Sept. 21 because ofÂ the scandal,Â defended in her testimony her decision to investigate the leaks of confidential board discussions to the news media. Both are among several witnesses expected at a hearing before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday in Washington. The committee is looking into the practice of "pretexting," or using false pretenses to gain access to confidential records. Investigators hired by HP to find the source of leaks engaged in pretexting to get hold of the phone records of directors, HP employees and reporters who cover the Palo Alto, California, technology company. Although much of the criticism of the scandal surrounds the tactics used by the investigators, Dunn wrote in her testimony that equal consideration should be given to the leaks from within the company that damaged HP. HP's board was notorious for its leaks to news media and that such disclosures made it difficult for the board to deal with important issues candidly, she wrote. "I wish fervently that none of this had ever happened," Dunn wrote in her testimony. "But boards have an unquestionable obligation to take steps to prevent [leaks]. That certain steps taken during the investigation went well beyond what was appropriate does not undermine the importance of the board's mission in this matter."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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Hewlett-Packard, which had some well publicizedÂ legal troublesÂ of its own not long ago, has unveiled a data backup system to help other companies when they are hit with a lawsuit or regulatory audit.
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Leaders of a Senate committee have asked the Education Department to turn over records of recent years' public relations contracts, while reminding the education secretary of a federal ban on "propaganda."
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Republican and Democratic members of   the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday   demanded Republican leaders allow a floor vote on legislation   that would ban the use of deceptive means to obtain private   telephone records.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N Chief   Executive Mark Hurd told lawmakers on Thursday there were no   excuses for a probe of boardroom leaks that led investigators   to deceptively obtain private telephone records.
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(InfoWorld) - Verizon Wireless Inc. has sued Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HP's) private investigators for faking their identities to obtain other people's phone records, a practice known as "pretexting." In a case filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, Verizon asked a judge to award it damage payments and to block the defendants from gaining any more records. Verizon said it did not know the investigators' identities, but defined them as "John and Jane Does" who were retained by HP in 2005 and 2006 to investigate confidential information leaks from HP's board of directors, according to the lawsuit. Those people obtained private information about Verizon Wireless customers by using pretexting calls to gain access to the company's protected computers and data storage facilities. They then sold that information. Both actions violate the national Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Verizon said. The scandal has already forcedÂ Patricia Dunn to resign as HP board chairman, andÂ sparked investigations by the California attorney general and the U.S. House of Representatives. In court papers, Verizon described how a woman called Verizon customer service on May 17, 2005, asking to see phone records for an HP director. She called back three days later, arranging to block text messages to that phone and logging on to the person's online account. Then, on Feb. 1, 2006, someone called Verizon customer service again, asking for the number of a second phone on that account. Later that day, the person logged into the account again and changed the password, this time from a computer with a different IP (Internet Protocol) address. The next day, someone called Verizon and asked to see call records of the director's spouse. Verizon workers grew suspicious and placed a warning on the account. Someone called again on March 1, offered the spouse's Social Security number and asked for the mobile phone number. Already wary, Verizon workers called the mobile phone and found that the customer's voicemail did not match the caller's voice. When someone tried again to access the records on March 14, Verizon workers refused. Verizon hopes the lawsuit will help restore its customers' confidence in the security of their records, saying that its reputation has been harmed by the spying. "Verizon goes to great lengths to protect confidential customer information," including training its customer service representatives to identify the schemes used by illegal data brokers, the suit said. Despite those precautions, the HP investigators used "fraud, trickery and deceit" by making pretexting calls to Verizon representatives to gain unauthorized online account access, the suit alleges. Verizon said it will update the suit once it learns their identities. Â 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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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard obtained the telephone records of nine reporters as part of its internal probe of information leaks, the company confirmed Thursday. The company sent the list of the nine reporters to the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, in response to the Attorney General's inquiries. "HP is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge, and we are fully cooperating with the attorney general's investigation," said company spokesman Ryan Donovan. In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),Â HP admittedÂ that an outside investigator had used "pretexting," a technique in which an investigator may obtain information by disguising their identity. HP's internal investigation was sparked by what the company said were "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including discussions by the board of directors, HP said in the SEC filing. At a May 18 board meeting, HP board members asked fellow director George A. Keyworth II to resign, as a source of those leaks. He declined, but Thomas J. Perkins did resign over a dispute with HP's Nonexecutive Chairman Patricia Dunn over the investigation's handling, the company said. The California Attorney General has asked HP for information about techniques used in the leak investigation, while the SEC is making inquiries into a filing HP made when Perkins resigned. HP's Donovan confirmed reports that among the journalists whose phone records were accessed were a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and a reporter from CNet Networks. He declined to name the other reporters. The Wall Street Journal and CNet published reports including leaked information from board meetings. The leaks to the Wall Street Journal included information about discussions leading up to the firing of Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina last year. The Attorney General's office declined to name the reporters on the list handed over by HP. (Additional reporting by Stephen Lawson in San Francisco.) Â
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The U.S. Department of Justice joins the list of agencies asking HP questions about its phone records scandal.
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House Speaker Dennis Hastert has asked the Justice Department to investigate how lawmakers handled allegations that Rep. Mark Foley exchanged sexually explicit messages with teenage congressional pages. The move comes after Democrats questioned whether the House's GOP leadership had squelched concerns about Foley, a Republican who now has resigned.
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Congress urged to require standards in health care databases so private firms can exchange information as needed.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s early efforts to plug a boardroom leak targeted the phone records of then-Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, according to a person familiar with one of the investigations looming over the computer and printer company.
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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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SAN FRANCISCO -- An ethics group is urging Congress to scrutinize Google Inc.'s copyright controls after finding hundreds of apparently pirated movies available on the Internet search leader's Web site.
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The House Energy and Commerce  Committee on Friday asked two Hewlett-Packard Co.   executives to testify at a hearing later this month in the wake  of the scandal over the company's investigation into media  leaks.