HP Spying Incident Included Journalists 177
rufey writes "It is now being reported that the HP boardroom spying incident that occurred earlier this year also involved obtaining phone records of journalists from at least two news outlets. Journalists from CNET and the Wall Street Journal had their phone records obtained through a method called 'pretexting' to see who, if any, of the HP board members the journalists may have been in contact with."
Lying by Any Other Name... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lying by Any Other Name... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose I were to call HP and pretend to be Dawn Kawamoto (the fact that I'd have to suck down some helium first notwithstanding), and they handed over records of her purchase information to me. If such a situation came to light, I would be facing criminal liability. Some DA would be stringing me up on charges of fraud, HP would be lauding the DA for rooting out privacy violations within their company, and the media would jump on the story, pandering another "identity theft" case to their drooling consumers. Yet when the tables are turned, and one of HP's hired guns is committing the dirty deed, suddenly the euphemism "pretexting" comes into play, and it's only maybe sort of sometimes legal and occasionally not, and it's only even remotely possibly bad because a journalist got caught in the fray.
What. The. Fuck. I've heard the "pretexting" nonsense a couple of times in the past, but it's never been so widespread and massively reported. Doublespeak at its finest. Everyone knows what fraud is, but to say HP's goons were involved in fraud might be a Liability To The Network, so the talking heads start blathering on about "pretexting" as if it's A-OK.
I really wish that this had happened to someone with a bit more influence. It's not that I'd have any less sympathy for Ms. Kawamoto, and it's not that I wish any ill will upon Declan McCullagh, but if he'd been the C|Net reporter who'd been "pretexted," this would have been a much bigger story, and it might actually go somewhere. As it stands, I fear that this will be yet another in a long string of corporate fuckups to go unpunished, that Ms. Kawamoto will never see any sort of restitution, and that a month from now, the business world will have entirely forgotten.
Long live our corporate overlords - they learned this shit from the government, after all, so it must be okay.
Re:Lying by Any Other Name... (Score:5, Insightful)
The AG will bat around the idea that Patricia Dunn should be held criminally liable, but those campaign contributions will kick in. The private investigators will take the fall. HP will be fined but it won't impact them in any way.
That money will go to the city/state which will then be used for more decadent art and show palaces for the rich.
Essentially, the typical.
The only thing that could alter this is if the journalist that are potentially offended by this are to take government to task. They won't because they don't know how to persevere.
From all that I read, aside from one website that had photo copies of the letters from Perkins, I don't see any large media educating the American public about it sufficiently to cause the type of outcry this story deserves.
What law was broken exactly? (Score:2)
It's not that the act of spying was illegal, it's how they choose to do it. If they would have first called the reporters terrorists, it would have been legal.
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Rhetorical or not, the answer is no.
No, it wouldn't. It still would have broken laws against identity theft and false personation, even if they'd called the reporters "satan worshipping illegal alien terrorist nazi communist in
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The first part is easy. You prosecute whomever authorized it, whomever knew about it and didn't report it, and whomever actually did the deed. Whether or not you pull the trigger, if you hired the hitman you're still just as guilty. The second part is the hard part. Which law(s) did they actually break? We know it was wrong. We just don't know how to say it was wrong in the legal sense.
Re:Lying by Any Other Name... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why the solution isn't more obvious to more people, and I don't know why people aren't all over the phone companies for the breach of privacy, like they would be if, say, Choicepoint sold records to identity theves who were pretexting as a legitamite buisness.
Sure it might be slightly harder to get your information if the phone companies were successfully sued, but I get a bill mailed to my house once a month - it seems like they should know where to send private data.
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They didn't do anything that's not done by other investigators. When you sign for a background check at your job, the agency may pretend to be a mortgage company instead of an employer to get info about your employment/financial history, most employees already submit to this and don't even know it. When you owe people money and change addresses, they often pretend to be somebody else like a call from the kids sc
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Well, yeah, lots of private (independent or internal) people doing investigations routinely break the law; the smart ones, though, don't directly provide the information so gained to their bosses without concealing the mechanism used. Ideally, they use the illegally obtained information to figure out how to find legally obtainable confirming information, and provide that, instead.
And if your investigators do tell you how they got their informat
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Can you show me some evidence?
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Big Business may think it's the government, but as far as I'm aware the people haven't yet agreed with them.
so should somebody post your life, then? (Score:2)
spying is not legal on US citizens, it's in the constitution. due process of law requires convincing a judge to authorize a search warrant.
any other use is unconstitutional, illegal, fattening, and divides by zero.
HP, its directors, the so-called "reputable" search firm, and all participants in these sordid enterprises need to be prosecuted. otherwise, the law is vo
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Um, no, because while the USA PATRIOT Act may reduce your practical privacy, particularly against law enforcement, and more particularly against federal law enforcement, it does not, in fact, "eliminate privacy".
If you think it does, please, cite the provision you think accomplishes that result.
Again, please cite the particular provision of the US
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If a pimply faced teenager releases such software into the general public he's a computer criminal, while Sony is just a clever company, which exploits system weeknesses to force malware onto your system, regardless if you want it or not.
HPs behavior is so galling that they also just wound up on my eternal shitlist. Not that it makes a difference to their
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I have a differing opinion, but political affiliation isn't really the issue. I don't know where Dawn Kawamoto stands on the political radar, but I'd never heard of her until today. Declan, on the other hand, is widely known, well respected, and has contacts that even $DEITY would kill for. Had he been the target of a surreptitious investigation with potentially illegal activities initiated on
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I don't disagree, but the likelihood is small.
The RIAA has a big database. The ratio of hits to stupid lawyers in their campaign is growing.
Good point about Declan. I just don't care for his tone primarily; his politics are a bit obtuse, but I would be inclined to liste
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One of these days, the RIAA is going to blindly file suit against a Congressman's kid, and it's going to cause one hell of a flare-up.
No it won't. It will disappear very quietly once a simple phone call is made to "sort out the misunderstanding". In fact, you'd probably never even hear about it. Then the Congressperson's campaign fund would receive a nice little charitable donation to make up for the RIAA's obvious blunder.
Things like this are handled very discreetly within the upper crust of power.
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Isn't "lying" just "social engineering" in
Either way, since the California Attorney General's office is involved, someone is going to get spanked.
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"HP CEO Hacks Phone System To Discover Leak"...
Accept it, spying is legal. (Score:2)
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So, you are saying, that as long as someone is pissed off, the laws (like those against false personation and identity theft) shouldn't apply to them?
No, I can't agree that you get a free pass to do something that is criminal because you're upset that something was done to you that is not criminal.
This just isn't right. (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:This just isn't right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, Martha Stewart simply lied and went to jail. Patricia Dunn sanctioned these criminal acts. Even if her involvement was implicit she's still criminally liable because she knew they would not be able to gain access to this information without resorting to criminal activities.
She is a criminal now employed by the corporate foundations. Forever we'll remember HP as a criminal organization instead of the company that was founded for the employees.
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Good luck proving this in court. Unless Ms. Dunn can be proven to have a background in privacy law or investigative methods, you've got a mountain of reasonable doubt to overcome. Sure, "pretexting" is obviously illegal, but if all she did was ask a private investigation firm if they could get those records, and they said "Sure", then it'll be pretty trivial to c
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Only "obviously" to people who know it is a euphemism for "under false pretenses". They use the term to obfuscate what it is that they are doing. By avoiding the negative word "false" they suggest that such as thing could be legitimate.
To the general populace, to whom "texting" means to send a text message, it could mean composing a text message to be sent at a later time.
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Oh, but wait, the post you replied to didn't say a thing about "trumps every power on earth". It said that confidentiality is a cornerstone of media. Which is why so many places have shield laws.
Pretending that somebody said something they didn't say is a sleazy trick, and in a written medium like this where anyone can look at what actually did get said you are certain to get caught in your dishonesty.
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I think so. Depending on the relationship, HP and Dunn may be chargeable with the offense, as well, or solicitation, conspiracy, etc. The main identity theft law in California is Penal Code 530.5:
Accept it and move on. Spying is legal now. (Score:2)
HP is a technology company, you better believe the have the most sophisticated spy technology. Corporate spying is legal when it's on individuals who cannot defend themselves. It's only illegal if HP decided to spy on AOL or some other cor
That was a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
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They've been fluffing HP and damning Apple for so many years now...why stop?
At least the pathetic "Coop's corner" has some condemnation of HP in it. Nothing compared to C|Net's vitriol against Apple for suing a blogger, though.
Check out PJ's coverage at Groklaw (Score:5, Interesting)
This hits privacy and First Amendment issues to their core.
This is a legal matter and PJ has had her own share of similar hijinx in relation to her reporting on the SCO debacle.
Nonsense... (Score:2)
Re:Nonsense... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree it has all sorts of issues at the core. (Score:2)
Now, if the feds don't jump into the mix, then the case won't be so complicated, but if you get the federal government into the mix I d
Can we dispense with the "pretexting" BS . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
so what you're saying is (Score:4, Funny)
Pretexting Ease (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just basic account privacy measures. Un-***ing-believable.
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There's no big economic reason for the phone companies to protect privacy effectively, and the public service ethic they used to have died with Ma Bell.
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Which is one of the reasons why many think the USA is seriously lacking laws to protect the privacy of individuals.The idea is really simple: An organisation that wants to collect and store information on you has to:
- Inform you about it
- Explain why they are doing this
- Refrain from using the information in other ways
- Let you review the information they keep on you
- Honor requests for corrections and removal of said infor
Re:Pretexting Ease (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I understand, the phone company also now allows you to have a "password" that they will ask you for over the phone.
The phone company isn't the villain here.
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That doesn't explain how easily the phone records of those two journalists were obtained from the phone company though, does it?
After all we're talking about an entity that charges you extra for a private number.
Re:Pretexting Ease--changed phone number (Score:2, Interesting)
A few years ago someone (nka "pretexter") called the telco and changed my phone number and made it unlisted. Since I still had dial tone and wasn't expecting calls I didn't notice until the service change confirmation arrived in the mail a week later.
Of all oodles of data the telco collects (e.g. ANI) all they could determine was which call taker entered the order, and he couldn
Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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Would that be when they were still under the control of their tech-savy founders?
Perhaps as soon as they became a corpration controlled by suits, they started behaving with, as you say, the same sort of ethical standards as Sony, Enron, etc.
Do yourself a small favour: Go rent "The Corporation", you sound like you need enlightning about ethical standards
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Oh well, at least we've still got Tektronix [tek.com]...
makes me think of (Score:2, Funny)
Thomas Perkins' Letter (Score:5, Informative)
The Smoking Gun [thesmokinggun.com]
Interesting reading...
Isn't this ok? (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard this is all the rage in America at the moment!
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-Eric
Prove It (Score:2)
No charges, yet...
In other words, if someone claiming to be reporter Joe Blow somehow gets Joe Blow's records... how do you pin it on Private Eye S. Bullets (s for sweating)?
Unless Mr. Bullets left a paper trail...
Think of the reverse situation; Joe Blow leaks his own info to PI Bullets... then claims he was "identity thefted"... what a great way to leak a leak and still maintain "confidential source" credibility!
I have no idea what I am talking about here.
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PI Bullets had an IP address. Namely, 68.99.17.80 [thesmokinggun.com].
Some HP Officials May Go to Prison (Score:5, Informative)
"The Washington Post" reports, " California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said yesterday that 'people in high positions" at Hewlett-Packard "could be involved in illegal activity.' 'Do we think a crime occurred?' Lockyer said. 'Yes.' But he said the attorney general's office was still trying to figure out 'who did what, when.' "
According to a report [sfgate.com] by the "San Francisco Chronicle", Patricia Dunn (the chair of the HP board of directors) ordered the execution of the criminal act.
Give Lockyer's position on this matter, the attorney general will certainly pursue a criminal case against Dunn. She may spend some time in prison since the issue at hand is a criminal matter, not a civil one.
Prison (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though -- suits don't go to jail. It's so fantastically rare as to border on mythical. Not quite as rare as politicians going to jail, but still pretty rare. America is a nation where you are judged by what you have. A top executive has a great deal of wealth, and so the burden of proof for any criminal proceeding against him or her will be set so high that a successful prosecution is impossible. Meanwhile a 12 year old kid from the ghetto will get the needle based on
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ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
first of all, the rich getting better treatment than the poor is not an american phenomenon, it's a human phenomenon. it's true in every country, in every time period. why are you singling the usa out for accountability for what every country is guilty of?
secondly, your attitude is all wrong. you have a tone of resignation to what you say. what you say IS true about the rich getting away with murder (literally, look at oj simpson) due to their greater resources. but that should piss you off, make you angry
if you're simply resigned to this as a fact of life, then you are complicit with the crime. that's what cynicism is: acceptance of what should not be acceptable. so don't get cynical and negative. that's common and lazy and useless. get angry and keep a positive attitude. then you make a difference. but if you're going to be cynical about it, you might as well say nothing at all if you have no intention of fighting injustice (which is what cynical resignation is: retiring from the fight)
Re:ummm... (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe there are at least 3 reasons for this:
1. This particular incident took place in the USA, so GP is not singling out the USA so much as commenting on the incident and the circumstances that allowed for it.
2. Right or wrong of an action does not depend on what others do, it depends on your action. In other words, pointing at others and saying "they are wrong as well/worse then me" etc is simply no excuse.
3. The USA claims to provide justice for all those within its borders, it is not strange that others hold them to those claims.
The remainder of your post I fully agree with.
Re:ummm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Apathy is acceptance of what should not be acceptable. It's possible to be an apathetic cynic; is also possible to be a passionate cynic who takes action to right the wrongs seen.
As a cynic, my personal problem is that the amount of wrongs I see are overwhelming, and it's hard to maintain an active philosophy of striving against wrong when it's everywhere you look, and so much of it is beyond the ability of one person (or even thousands of people) to change.
as a non-cynic (Score:3, Interesting)
that's a useless observation
because there is nothing but the efforts of people at affecting change
so to look at the task before them, and lament it is difficult is
1. obvious
2. pointless
of course the effort is hard. duh. but is
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There's a difference between being guilty and just doing something. Doing something is just doing it. Being guilty is doing it when it violates your principles. The USA's founding principles are entirely about equality in the eyes of the government. The UK (for example) has the House of Lords and a deeply ingrained class system. Titled people in the UK are supposed to be entitled to better treatment. In the USA, unequal
uh, no, you're wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
essential human nature trumps cultural convention
go anywhere in the world, and you'll find that human nature is pretty much the same
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They do if the case has a high-enough profile. Ask the former board of Enron how they're enjoying their current accommodation.
Tell that to Martha Stuart... (Score:2)
Suits go to jail when it suits the powers that be or when it will take the
pollitical heat off their backs.
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Really? The entire legal department signed off on it? More likely, just the head.
Yeah, because corporate lawyers never okay anything that turns out to be illegal.
'Pretexting' is illegal in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
From the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
Justice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Making America Better (Score:2, Insightful)
This kind of uproar over phone fraud is just the sort of thing needed to force general opinion - and political opinion - towards a re-assertment and re-assesment of privacy rights in the United States.
Just watching my newsfeeds, as every 20 seconds a new opinion article berating the utter stupidity and thickheadedness of Dunn is circulated, gives me hope.
Whereas govt. wiretapping on its own has (obviously) brought out much emotion and little reason from (the higher levels of) bo
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So.. what do we have here? a company that broke the law in order to try to keep its information inside. Stupid, and even criminal maybe, but not really worth a
Bad move (Score:2)
But snooping on people not directly involved with HP? No way. I don't care who they were, journalists or customers... that's beyond the pale. That's the sort of thing we [used to] make our government get a warrant for. If HP wanted that information, they should have gone to court to get it.
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Snooping on their private conversations and using pretexting to obtain information from the phone company are not moral or legal rights HP has, and as a matter of fact the later is definitely illegal.
"Snooping" on business activities and conversations is another matter.
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If HP had contractual authorization to obtain this information, they wouldn't have had to use "pretexting" (that is, false personation) in order to get it, they could have provided the documentation of the contractual release to the phone company and gotten the information. The only reason they would have needed to lie is if they didn't have legal authorization.
HP General Counsel Tending to Execs' Stock Sales (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to call the AG (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were looking into people laying into HP during that time, I am sure things like this got me in their sights.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=2
This is going to get mighty interesting, I am sure we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. It must be nice to know that all the board minutes are transcribed and kept. Anyone want to put money on Dunn eating some of her words in court?
-Charlie
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Hmmm the second article's been withdrawn.
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-Charlie
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-Charlie
All I can say is WOW! (Score:2)
Just my prediction (although I ain' Cringely or nothing)
How long will HP ChairWoman Dunn last? (Score:2)
Fiduciary Responsability (Score:4, Interesting)
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this sympathy martyr who's causing trouble may not like what Dunn did to the board members, but Dunn acted within the companies employee investigation policy.. maybe a little over with the phone records, but what debt collector, divorce investigator, or insurance fraud investigator doesn't "cheat" a little. The leaks were happening BEFORE she replaced Carly! It was her duty to investigate... even board members. Perkins just didn't like that board members were treated like the rest of us have been t
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If the company's "employee investigation policy" sanctioned criminal false impersonation and identity theft under California law of both employees and independent parties somehow connected to employee investigation, well, then I'd say HP is in a world of hurt both from the California Attorney-General's criminal investigation and the private lawsuits
I am shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, there are hundreds of countries and thousands of foreign companies operating in the United States of America. Not all of them are as contrained by American laws as most American corps are. They conduct espionage with covert or overt state sponsorship.
With politics beign such a high stakes game and digging the dirt on the opponant and negative attack campaigns being so effective, are we really sure such tactics are not being used by the candidates? How many campaign managers say to their investigators "Do whatever it takes to find the dirt. Just make sure it cant be traced back to me." Neither the parties nor the candidates will explicitly authorize such operations, preserving the deniability. But tacit understanding is that, those underlings who took the risk and delivered the goods will move up in the good books of the parties.
It is almost certain underlings of parties (both Democrats and Republicans) do it. Foreign govts do it. Foreign corps do it. Private companies do it. So dont spend all your indignation on HP. Reserve some for future use.
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However, lots and lots of indignation pointed directly at HP is a good thing because it taints the practice. Shame may do what guilt hasn't, and make other people think very carefully before doing the same thing that HP is getting excoriated for doing.
It's really no different than Puritan use of stocks and public humiliation, and since corporations can't go to jail, maybe this is the only method of assessing punitive damages that our culture has. (I don't
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I am really shocked that you claim that almost everyone assumes only HP did it. We're talking about HP doing it because we actually have some information about what they did. Yes, its probable other people do similar things but don't announce them to the people that were the subject of the illegal intrusion, or otherwise guarantee that they will get caught. But we can't really discuss the details about what people are doing that doesn't come t
Similar Case study (Score:3, Informative)
Even if you get caught, its a simple business transaction weighing dollars gained against a little bad press and reputation. Purely consumer companies know that people have short memories, right?
Identity theft by any other name... (Score:2)
disaster management board meeting (Score:2)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14734193/site/newsweek
probably to find out who leaked the SEC filing to the wire services. but it should be to divulge the votes of all the board members and all notes and communications related to the matter on a special web site, and Katie bar the door.
otherwise, when you look up "The HP Way" in the dictionary, you are going to see booking pictures alongside the definition.
the difference is going to be