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HP CEO Allowed 'Sting' on CNet reporter

Posted by Zonk on Fri Sep 22, 2006 11:53 AM
from the ouch-that-stung dept.
HP Privacy The Media Businesses
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."
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[+] Calif. AG Files Felony Charges In HP Probe 171 comments
PreacherTom writes, "Former Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia Dunn, along with 'ethics chief' Kevin Hunsaker and others, was indicted yesterday on four felony counts by the California Attorney General. The charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy, carry a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison and $30,000 in fines. The indictments follow on the heels of an HP investigation of internal leaks that conducted "bugged" emails to C-Net reporter Dawn Kawamoto, illicitly obtained hundreds of phone numbers, and spied on HP board members." One of the indictments was for a private investigator retained by HP. The article has links to the complaints and warrants.
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  • I still can't belive this sort of thing happends and they got away with it. it boggles my mind in so many ways.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, she didn't get away with it, did they?
      We are reading about it. There are Congressional hearings (which may not be criminal presecution but is an effective way to bankrupt you with legal fees) and the CA GA is investigating for criminal charges. Yeah, scott free.

    • Re:WOW (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gstoddart (321705) on Friday September 22 2006, @01:18PM (#16162259) Homepage
      I still can't belive this sort of thing happends and they got away with it. it boggles my mind in so many ways.

      What boggles my mind is that you're currently moderated as funny, not the +1 eerie we're all feeling about this.

      Companies illegally spying on people is something straight out of a cyberpunk novel or something. It scares the crap outta me, because if nobody gets into actual legal trouble over this, the next time a company does it, people will just start going "Oh, that old thing", and turn the channel.
  • Fromt the article: "None of the e-mails reviewed by The Post were to or from Hurd, nor do they detail what information Hurd had when he approved the sting operation."

    Just because he approved the action to sting the reporter, he didn't necessairily know what the means were.

    • Re:Don't put the blame on Hurd. (Score:4, Informative)

      by bunions (970377) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:05PM (#16161718)
      zuh?

      From TFA:

      Dunn replied: "Kevin, I think this is very clever. As a matter of course anything that is going to potentially be seen outside HP should have Mark's approval as well."

      On Feb. 23, Hunsaker sent an e-mail to Dunn. "FYI, I spoke to Mark a few minutes ago and he is fine with both the concept and the content."


    • Re:Don't put the blame on Hurd. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BrynM (217883) * on Friday September 22 2006, @12:09PM (#16161746) Homepage Journal
      Just because he approved the action to sting the reporter, he didn't necessairily know what the means were.
      Where I come from, we call that Plausible Deniability [wikipedia.org]. It keeps our best elitists from getting their hands all grubby with the details or criminal charges. After all, repercussions are for the riff-raff.

    • Absolutely put the blame on Hurd. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2006, @12:14PM (#16161779)
      When you are a manager, particularly an officer of the company, and you approve something like an investigation, you know it's going to be sensitive and that if it's not done properly, it's going to hurt the company.


      If you don't inquire into the details of what you've approved, it's either because you are: a) foolish, or b) don't want to be accountable.


      If a CEO directs something sensitive to happen, it's their responsibility to be aware of what it is and how it happens.

      • Or

        c)trust that your managment skill that got you the position has enabled you to trust the delegation of this job to people who are competent to handdle it in a manor you see fit.

        D) none of the above ????
        e) profit!!

        The big problem with this (and government positions as well) is that the people in charge believe they have the best pepple availible to delegate authority and responcibility too. Often this is because they do not know how to handdle it themselves. When these people embarrass the administ
    • So if I arrange for someone to be killed, but don't specifiy the MEANS to do it, that's OK? "Hey, I didn't know HOW the guy was gonna get killed.. maybe it was going to happen real nice and proper like?."

      Funny, I thought deception, fraud, and outright lying were wrong from the get-go. Now apparently the only thing that's wrong is HOW you go about deceiving, defrauding, and lying. If you do it properly, it's not wrong. Silly me.
      • That's a bad example. Asking someone to kill someone is illegal weather you specify the means or not. To catch someone leaking information is not. If I walk into my boss's office and say I think someone is leaking our sensitive information, I'm gonna try to see who it is and he says ok then fine. If he says ok, but how?, then he has a potential problem.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Several points people seem to be consistantly missing:

        1) HP's board had a legal obligation to find the leak of financial information from the board. If they did not, they could be heavily liable under SEC rules.

        2) HP engaged well known and respected investigative companies. This was not cousin Guido. These companies are legally in business and purportedly use legal methods

        3) The companies the investigator used for the requests we now know as "pre-texting" are legally in business, and have been for a while.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hobbesmaster (592205)
        "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
    • Just because he approved the action to sting the reporter, he didn't necessairily know what the means were.


      God forbid an executive be responsible for actions they approved.
  • So now we've got CEO's investigating reporters, and reporters investigating Executives. When will they turn their high powered invest-i-scopes back onto politicians?

    • If you really want to carry the analogy all the way through, then it will simply require yet another reasonably high-level whistleblower (like a Deputy Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example) to leak vital information on actionable offenses. Watergate had its Deep Throat, after all.

      If this happens, though, use of "gate" as a suffix is strictly forbidden, because that's just silly.

      • Re:Reversal of watergate (Score:5, Funny)

        by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:15PM (#16161791)
        If this happens, though, use of "gate" as a suffix is strictly forbidden, because that's just silly.

        I think they've been following that rule for a while now. Notice how there's been no "investigate" for a long time...
      • If this happens, though, use of "gate" as a suffix is strictly forbidden, because that's just silly.


        The correct usage for -gate is only for a Republican(or sometimes conservative) scandal. HP is neither therefore -gate would not be correct.

        Incidently the suffix for a Democrat(or sometimes liberal) scandal is very arcane (due to media bias against reporting and spiking of those stories), but is -aquiddick.
        • HP is neither therefore -gate would not be correct.

          Perhaps you somehow missed the part of the GP post that read, "when will they turn their high powered invest-i-scopes back onto politicians," and therefore subsequently missed the point.

      • How about Nand-gate?

        Herd It, Dunn It -gate?

        Nothing beats the Microsoft monopoly scandals - what were those called? Oh yeah, bill-gates

  • Well Executed Plan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Black-Man (198831) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:00PM (#16161693)
    Dunn was/is a lame duck on the board. She has cancer and had no intentions of remaining as the chairman next year. Therefore, she knew what had to be done to stiffle the critics, i.e. friends of the Hewlett family. She succeeded in getting both of them off the board and now all is left is damage control with her taking the "fall". Gotta give her credit.

  • I knew they should have hired Paul Newman.

  • Why are supposedly smart people so stupid? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ip_freely_2000 (577249) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:01PM (#16161699)

    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.
    • I can only speculate, but it seems to me that nowadays any high-profile tech firm will have their employees sign NDAs. In addition, if they were using corporate email, why the hell shouldn't the boss be allowed to spy on their conversations? It seems to me that he would have a very vested interest in the discourse of others, especially when trade secrets or insider-only communication is involved.
  • This is yet one more point on the side of "humans were not evolved under conditions that would lead to responsible behavior given extraordinary amounts of power in a society." Personally, I'm with Douglass Adams here - I think that anyone ambitious and capable enough to have gotten such power in the first place should by no means be allowed to exercise it.

    Well I guess it's "better" than BushCo etc spying on all of our phones, but at least they can pretend that's for the greater good...
      • Don't you think it's a bit unfair to indict all of humanity based on the actions of a couple people?

        If this was the only reason I felt this way, I think you'd be absolutely right. However, I think that I have seen so many cases of small and medium-scale abuse of power at school and at my various places of employment, and even among my peers... it's a pattern to me, and to be honest, I have a hard time imagining having all of that power and responsibility and not tempted to do a few questionable things
      • So grow up, get over yourself, and realize that you can blame Bush for everything.

        I've got, oh, about 600 posts here on slashdot. Find one where I blame everything, most things, or even a lot of things on Bush. Bush is a symptom of a much greater problem, and I too am worried about people blaming him instead of fixing the root problems (ignorant voters, campaign financing, etc blah blah).

        The Bush administration has admitted to this kind of monitoring. I don't know where you get your information abo

  • Irony (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The document, one of more than two dozen e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, for the first time links Hurd to an internal investigation of media leaks..."
  • and now with no ads [washingtonpost.com]!

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rethcir (680121) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:27PM (#16161858)
    The reporter was sending out an SOS to the world, because not every little thing the CEO did was magic.

  • How could this happen!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChefAndCoder (902506) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:29PM (#16161877)
    What kind of a country could we live in where this type of spying, duplicity, and invasion of privacy would be seen as acceptable by HP's executives!?

    Oh . . . wait . . .

  • Nothing wrong with spying (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2006, @12:29PM (#16161880)
    This whole thing came about due to general bashing of the rights of individual, the concept of spying is trying to justify itself and integrate into the culture and psyche. The value of the individual is being eroded daily. The Soviet constution provided all the rights that Americans have. Except there was a clause that these rights can be suspended in some cases "for the good of the state". If you read the Declaration of Independence you will see that the founding fathers believed in the rights of the individual over some lofty pseduo utopian ideal of advancing the state. Governments are instituted for the protection of the rights of people (thats what it says in the consitution).

    The people you have running around today justifying spying .. these are the same folks that would have said the 4th amendment is useless. They would have argued strongly against the 6th amendment, and would have laughed at the concept of the 8th amendment. Yet these are the same people passing themselves off as patriots today.

    There are folks walking around waving the US flag, and yet they dont believe that all humans are created equal and have inalienable rights. The very concept that founded the country! The nation was formed under war. Redcoat spies and traitors everywhere yet even in those troubled times they instituted the Bill of Rights.

    If you listen to the fake patriots speech their philosophies imply that instituting the Bill of Rights back then in the nations infancy would have brought about the demise of the US. Yet the USA prevailed, liberty wins out in the end. They pass off some lie that torture can prevent an attack. But what about the innocent people you torture to prevent an attack?

    It may seem that I am offtopic here .. but I am not .. my point is that the general sentiment of folks seems to have twisted from rights of an individual towards the goal of advancing the state towards some utopia. And that is why you have people thinking it's OK to spy on possibly innocent people.

  • and be done with it!!!

    Did Hurd not get the memo that the courts rediscovered the old management accountability rule, "the buck stops here?" Hell, in his case, it was a big loop back since the buck left his desk and returned to it!

    What's amazing is how obvious it was that these guys knew that they were committing a slew of felonies, but did it anyway on something that would really creep out a lot of ordinary people. Fat chance of getting a sympathetic jury, Hurd. I hope for your sake you don't get any women
  • the only thing the HP bunch can do is resign, now, and clear the Hell out today. put some field tech in charge of the outfit and try and salvage something.

    I have to laugh at the heavy promotion HP is currently running about their Itanic server line, curiously named "Integrity."

    folks, there is no integrity at HP when they are all about spies and lies.

    Kenny Lay and Bernie Ebbers weren't evil enough to spy on employees, reporters, and each other on the board of directors, for God's sake. looks like all the h

  • So What's Acceptable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Infernal Device (865066) on Friday September 22 2006, @01:02PM (#16162134)
    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?
    • Poor Apple, with all that information leaking out of them. No wonder they haven't been able to turn a profit, with all those valuable bits and bytes slipping through their fingers...

      In actuality, they're still able to make lots of money. If anything, all the grist for the rumor mill serves to keep the fanchildren running in circles. I doubt leaks are nearly as important as most people think. The reaction you often get to corporate leaks has less to do with the actual damage done, and everything to do wi

  • sting != crime (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theonetruekeebler (60888) on Friday September 22 2006, @01:41PM (#16162435) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • I'm not sure I really see the big deal. It's just the rich spying other rich people. It's not like the government spying on everyone. It's not like HP is spying on its own customers. If HP was spying on the cleaning staff that works at its buildings then I think there would be real public outcry. Mostly I think people just find the behavior of HP paranoid (to the point of being a clinical case), but not terribly unethical.

  • HP's Dunn resigns immediately: "code of conduct" (Score:3, Informative)

    by swschrad (312009) on Friday September 22 2006, @03:54PM (#16163396) Homepage Journal
    violation, according to TheStreet.com and reuters.com.

    one down, something like 7 to go, being the rest of the board and Hurd.

    what is a violation of the code of conduct for one, is a violation for all.

    Chicago Tribune had the california AG thinking about going to Hurd's news conference right after the closing bell on wall street. since he's been talking about plastering the place with subpoenas after the new lawyers gagged public comment from HP, I expect he will have five aides with boxes on handcarts to carry them all.

    looking a lot like Watergate here, over the same damn thing. somebody got paranoiacally bent out of shape about one of their designated corporate leakers putting out a couple of things the board hadn't agreed to.

    it won't end the same way. we can do without a corporation. we can't do without a central government that you can trust to preserve and defend the constitution of the US.

    • Easy (Score:3, Informative)

      by wantedman (577548)
      If you want to to it the really n00b way: Place a link to a spacer.gif image in the email, then look at who accessed the image from your logs. You can even be script-kiddie clever by using a script disguised as an image to record all sorts of good information, like IP, browser, etc.

      And yes, spammers use this to see if someone accessed their emails.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by cayenne8 (626475)
        "If you want to to it the really n00b way: Place a link to a spacer.gif image in the email"

        That's why I don't view/send HTML mail...I go plain text.

        Even on webmail accounts, I set them all to not load images unless I ok it.

        I thought that was pretty much common sense??

        • gmail allows you to DISABLE image displays. that's one thing.

          I always disable javascript for anthing that doesn't NEED it.

          finally, I use ELM - good old ascii email (when I'm on my unix box). image preview? pffft! yeah, right. only if the 'image' is in vt100 escape sequences ;)



    • You would simply have the E-mail with an HTML attachment that referenced a web image or page somewhere ('img src="". Just a one pixel transparent image would do the trick. The filename would be so obscure, no web spider or wandering web user would find it.

      Once the image was referenced, the sender would know the IP address of the computer that accessed the page.
      • I see you believe in "Guilty until proven Guilty". Besides you have me all wrong. I support the NSA wiretapping program and I'm not that fond of HP. I just think that people should be able to investigate shit without taking crap from the government.

    • Re:If the government can do it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Epsillon (608775) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:32PM (#16161891) Homepage Journal
      Because big business hasn't even got the thin veil of legitimacy "the mandate of the people" gives goverments. IIRC, a company or PLC has the same rights and obligations under the law as any other individual/legal entity.

      Let the companies get away with it and it becomes a free-for-all privacy nightmare.

    • You're joking, right? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tkrotchko (124118) * on Friday September 22 2006, @12:35PM (#16161908) Homepage
      "I'm having some difficulty seeing precisely where it is illegal."

      Let me call up your cell phone company, claim I'm you (because I've managed to get your SSN), and then get all your call records.

      Then, I'll send you a trojan horse to your computer so I can record your keystrokes to see who and and what you're mailing.

      Are you okay with everything so far? Does that seem all legal and above-board?

    • Apart from spying on their own employees, HP also had several journalists targeted [com.com] and a journalist's father [com.com]'s phone records obtained, by 'prextexting' [wikipedia.org] (read: illegally lying to obtain information).
    • Or they could just "take you out", or dig up enough information on you so that they could enact some clause that does not allow you to get your retirement. Putting the extra money back into the coffers should raise the stock some. Maybe they could just get your whole identity, open up a few credit cards in your name, and use them to pay everyone a dividen.

      Stealing peoples idenities and hacking into their computer systems to obtain private information is a crime. If they could find the leak using leaga

    • Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sizzzzlerz (714878) on Friday September 22 2006, @12:49PM (#16162026)
      If I worked for HP and depended on their stock options for (a good portion of) my retirement, I wouldn't be the slight bit muffed by management doing whatever it takes to stop leaks that may end up hurting the company through the loss of valuable trade secrets, technology, etc. That's the board's job - to raise the stock.

      Ok, for the sake of argument, let's assume that you would stop short of approving the murder of the leaker(s). Just how far, short of that, would you still feel good about: knee-capping, breaking the bones in one's hand with a hammer, kidnapping a family member, burning down their house, torturing their cat, etc.?

      Remember, you are protecting trade secrets here and the value of your HP stock is at stake.

      I hope you think this is absurd but your comment is stupid. It is not the board's job to break the law and it is not within their purview to do anything necessary to protect the stock.

    • we have here the old question, I think used rhetorically to get some folks thinking about our president and his advisors, of "If Jimmy jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff, too?"

      paranoia, spies, and lies is wrong, wrong, WRONG no matter who, when or why.

      those HP folks must have been gorging on somebody's stash to risk the company because they don't like reading trade rags. if they don't like reading trade rags, then geez, get real, don't read 'em. drone on with your little laser pointers and bul

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