(((HP are not actually WIRETAPPING anybody, but these dodgy gumshoes they hired for their boardroom squabbles have been trashing, social-engineering, and hacking email. These are all ancient, time-honored cracker pastimes, but it's pretty weird to see them toppling people at the top of the computer industry. Furthermore, HP had the bad taste to go hacking industry reporters, which means that they don't have a friend left in the press and they'll continue to get ticked-off press coverage indefinitely. They don't have a friend left in Congress, either. If they're unlucky, they might have cells waiting next to Andy Fastow.)))
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/168149/HP spy hearing intrigues watchersBY MARCY GORDON THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPosted on Friday, September 29, 2006Email this story | Printer-friendly versionWASHINGTON — Hewlett-Packard Co. ’s spying scandal — which has toppled the company’s chairman, two other directors and at least two highranking executives — deepened in intrigue Thursday as lawmakers exploring the matter summoned comparisons to Watergate and Enron.Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded to know how investigators for the respected Silicon Valley anchor could use tactics such as “pretexting,” or impersonating other people to obtain their phone records.In one key document cited by the panel, an HP investigator had warned higher-ups, including the company’s nowfired chief ethics officer, that the methods used to find the source of boardroom leaks were possibly illegal and at the very least could damage the company’s reputation.But at least initially at Thursday’s hearing, few answers emerged. Ten people involved in the cloak-and-dagger investigation — including the former ethics officer and General Counsel Ann Baskins, who resigned Thursday — invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refusing to answer questions.Former Chairman Patricia Dunn, who stepped aside last week as the scandal showed no signs of abating, told the panel that she had been assured that phone records had been obtained lawfully from public sources.“I deeply regret that so many people, including me, were let down by this reliance” on such advice, Dunn told the panel.Under close questioning, Dunn stumbled at turns and corrected herself when asked how much she knew of the shady tactics, including when she learned that the investigators had used pretexting to obtain telephone records. While saying she was unaware of the details, she repeatedly defended the investigation as necessary to stem serious leaks of confidential information.“My recollection was incomplete; I haven’t seen all the evidence here,” she said at one point. She said it wasn’t until July that she became aware that pretexting was part of the “standard arsenal” of the investigators’ tactics.“I dispute having ever understood or being told that the fraudulent use of identity was ever a part of this investigation,” Dunn said. Like other HP directors and journalists who were targeted in the internal investigation, she, too, was the target of pretexting, Dunn said.The panel also was to hear from CEO Mark Hurd, who apologized for the investigatory tactics when he replaced Dunn as chairman last week but has denied having direct knowledge of the methods used in the investigation. In addition to masquerading as HP directors, employees and as reporters to obtain their telephone records, the investigators surveilled their subjects and their relatives, sifted through their garbage and used an e-mail sting to dupe one reporter.(((etc etc... they're gonna catch the whole "standard arsenal" of corporate muckraking now.)))
