Fuzzy Laws Come Into Play in the H.P. Pretexting Case
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Despite the California attorney generalÂs assertion that he has enough evidence to press charges against people inside and outside Hewlett-Packard, a criminal case may be hard to prosecute, legal specialists say.
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A financial-services executive tracks down information needed for a patent infringement case.
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Massachusetts also interested as "pretexters" may have been based there.
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(InfoWorld) - A criminal case against some of the people implicated in theÂ Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandalÂ may wrap up Thursday in a courtroom in San Jose, California. A hearing is scheduled in Santa Clara County Superior Court in the cases against former HP legal counsel Kevin Hunsaker, private investigator Ronald DeLia, and research consultant Matthew DePante. At a hearing in March, a state judge said charges against the three defendants would be dismissed if they performed 96 hours of community service and paid restitution to the victims. At that same hearing, state charges against former HP chairman Patricia DunnÂ were dismissedÂ altogether. Dunn was chair of HP in 2006 when the board authorized an investigation to find out which directors had been leaking details of confidential board deliberations to news reporters. The private investigative firms hired by HP engaged in a practice known as pretexting, in which they pretended to be someone else to obtain phone records of other individuals. HP directors, employees, and several reporters had their private phone records revealed under those false pretenses. The scandalÂ resulted in the departureÂ of three directors, including Dunn, from the HP board. Dunn and the three men had beenÂ chargedÂ with fraudulent wire communications, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy, in a case brought by the Attorney General of California in October 2006. The hearing Thursday had originally been scheduled for sometime in September, but may have been moved up because the defendants met the judge's requirements for dismissal, said Carl Schulhof, a spokesman for the Superior Court. State charges were dropped against a fifth defendant in the case, Bryan Wagner, after he pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy and one count of aggravated identity theft. He was a contractor who engaged in pretexting to gain access to phone records. Wagner's sentencing on the federal charges was postponed to October, his attorney Stephen Naratil, said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal court to make two Florida companies stop telephone pretexting and to pay back victims of the practice. One of the companies, Action Research Group, has been linked in press reports to last year'sÂ Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal, which led to theÂ resignation of HP Chairman Patricia DunnÂ last September. The second company, Eye in the Sky Investigations, has "performed services" for Action Research Group, the complaint said. Eye in the Sky also was called to testify before a congressional investigation into the matter. In a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Orlando, the FTC claims that the practice of pretexting violates the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996. Telephone pretexting is illegal in some states, but Thursday's complaint seeks to clarify where the FTC stands on the practice. "Selling the records constitutes an invasion of privacy that could endanger the health and safety of consumers," the FTC said in a statement released Thursday. It is also a violation of federal law, the statement says. HP's top executives became embroiled in a pretexting scandal late last year. While trying to clamp down on a boardroom leak dating back to 2005, HP hired private investigators who obtained telephone records of company employees and journalists by falsely representing themselves as account holders or telephone company employees. The scandal at HP also led to the resignation of Ann Baskins, formerly HP's senior vice president and general counsel, and Kevin Hunsaker, the company's senior legal counsel. On Thursday, an HP spokesman said he welcomed the FTC's move. "HP is opposed to pretexting and has expressly called for the practice to be made illegal," said HP's Ryan Donovan. "We support the FTC's efforts to permanently halt telephone record pretexting." All five FTC commissioners voted to authorize the complaint, the FTC said.
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By Stephen Foley in New York  Hewlett-Packard is facing a federal investigation into whether the company broke the law when the computer manufacturer obtained directors' and journalists' phone records as part of its attempt to hunt down the source of boardroom leaks.
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A formula for Web schemes: a lot of mathematicians, a lax legal system and Western targets.
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The special master appointed to hear evidence from both parties in the AMD v. Intel antitrust case has recommended that Intel be compelled to produce documents for evidence that it had previously declined to submit. If Judge Joseph A. Farnan, Jr., agrees, Intel may be asked to produce evidence of what AMD alleges to be "foreign misconduct" on Intel's part.
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This week's top-level spying spat hits on a legal gray area that may require new laws to resolve.
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(InfoWorld) - Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The full House could vote on Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act as soon as late Friday or Saturday, Representative Joe Barton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Friday. Barton, a Texas Republican, asked the House leadership to move forward with the bill afterÂ lawmakers ripped into Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) officials ThursdayÂ for allowing the practice during an investigation into board leaks. HP President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn both testified Thursday that they did not know the details of how the leak investigation was conducted. The pretexting legislation has been stalled since the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved it in March. The bill would allow the FTC to seek civil penalties against so-called pretexters, those who masquerade as a customer to gain access to phone records or other personal information. Representatives of five mobile phone service carriers raised no objections to the bill during Friday's hearing. Lawmakers questioned if more businesses than HP have used pretexting or other questionable investigatory methods. "How do we, and how does corporate America, break this ethos that, if someone thinks that illegal or unethical activity ... is acceptable, everybody else in a corporation goes along with it?" said Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. DeGette will explore ways to add new requirements to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting law, she said. Christopher Bryon, a columnist for the New York Post, told lawmakers Friday that he was a victim of pretexting four years ago, long before the HP investigation came to light. A facial recognition software company hired a pretexter to gain access to his sources after he wrote a column about the company, Bryon said. Pretexting appears to be a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, Bryon said. "This is not something I wanted my family to grow up with ... wondering if your mail is being read, if your phone is tapped, if there's a bug in your bedroom," he said. The FTC has filed five lawsuits against alleged pretexters, but the agency lacks the legal authority to seek civil damages, said Joel Winston, associate director of privacy and identity protection at the FTC. The FTC sought to recover pretexting-related profits in those cases, but additional civil penalties would give the agency an additional tool to use against identity thieves, he said. A second pretexting bill, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, has passed the House, but the measure is hung up in the Senate over disagreements over the best approach. The House bill would make pretexting a crime, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Congress is scheduled to adjourn by early next week until after the Nov. 7 general election. Congress may come back into session late in the year to address unfinished business.
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Some experts doubt whether the California law will have much impact on illegal spyware activity. By George V. Hulme. A new California law aimed at curbing spyware, software applications that surreptitiously
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Multiple laws and regulations exist to protect customer data. The unfortunate consequence of multiple laws governing confidential data and encryption is that none offers prescriptive guidance. Whether encryption solutions and strategies satisfy a particular law is left up to the auditors and lawyers. Still, there are several legal requirements that address confidential data.
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A satirical look at the pretexting scandal at HP.
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Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;
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Try not to smile: A top spammer may be sentenced to hard time.
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Financial institutions charged with sharing data concerning possibly suspicious transactions are swamping investigators' abilities to effectively parse the information.
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Regulation of online betting on the cards