HP CEO Allowed 'Sting' on CNet reporter

Mark writes "The Washington Post, reporting on Hewlett-Packard's Chairman Patricia Dunn and alleged spying on other HP board members, has obtained e-mails that implicate the CEO, Mark Hurd, who approved an elaborate 'sting' operation on a CNet reporter." From the article: HP's leak investigation involved planting false documents, following HP board members and journalists, watching their homes, and obtaining calling records for hundreds of phone numbers belonging to HP directors, journalists and their spouses, according to a consultant's report and the e-mails."

Why are supposedly smart people so stupid?

[ip_freely_2000]

Let me answer my own question....because they are amoral.

It's amazing to think these people would sign off on such an act. They had to know that the means to collect information would be shady at best. If they didn't know, they're too stupid to be in their position. It makes one wonder how they got there and what nefarious acts they committed to achieve their position.

So What's Acceptable?

[Infernal Device]

This whole debacle does raise the questions of:

1. How do you stop leaks from occurring?
2. What's acceptable practice to do so?

Obviously, HP went too far in their actions. Investigating within the corporation is one thing, but going outside the corporation, in the manner they did, is beyond the pale. This is a matter easily dealt with by law, without requiring a huge amount of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The first question is more troubling, though. Apple leaks information like a sieve, information that they don't want out there until they do. So do most other tech companies in the manufactured products game, and it's obvious that current sanctions don't work. So how do you kill the leak at the source?

sting != crime

[theonetruekeebler]

Setting up a sting operation to find and plug a leak is not a crime. If I knew there was a leak in my boardroom, or anywhere else in the company, I'd plant attractive data where suspects could find it, each plant different than the other, and see which one showed up in the Wall Street Journal the next day. And I'd start looking for "@wsj.com" in the To: heading of their outgoing mail, because when I hired them they acknowledged that any mail sent from their work account was property of the company. Says so in their hire letter and at the bottom of each outgoing e-mail.

That said, everything else HP's CEO did stinks to high heaven of criminality. Compromising computers, stalking reporters, and fraudulently obtaining phone records should send a perpetrator to jail.