HP Snooped on Reporter

A Hewlett-Packard contractor used false pretenses to get the home phone records of a News.com reporter who relied on an anonymous Sun source for a story as part of HP's investigation of an internal company leak, News.com reports. News reports yesterday revealed that HP
snooped on the emails and phone records of at least two of its board members, Tom Perkins and George Keyworth and there may also be other reporters who were snooped on.

In [News.com reporter Dawn] Kawamoto's case, AT&T said that on Jan. 30, 2006, someone used the last four digits of her husband's Social Security number to establish an online account, and provided the e-mail address [email protected].

"As was the case with the Perkins account," AT&T general attorney Travis Dodd wrote in an e-mail to the attorney general's office, "the IP address associated with the browser of the person who established the account was 68.99.17.80. As was also the case with the Perkins account, this appears to have been the only date of access to the account."

Given the recent increase in the federal government's attempts to discover the identity of confidential sources, it's not all that shocking that corporations would feel "empowered" to try the same kind of techniques, said Christine Tatum, president of the Society of Professional Journalists and a business writer for the Denver Post.

HP is just shocked, shocked, shocked to find that the investigators it hired to sniff out the leakers used "pretexting" to get at the records of reporters.

"HP is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge and we are fully cooperating with the attorney general in his investigation," said Mike Moeller, an HP spokesman.

Dismayed? They HIRED the snoop.

I hope that Kawamoto has a very good lawyer.

Photo: Aronchi