September 9th, 2006
Hewlett-Packard's Patricia Dunn, I have a problem with you
So now it comes out that investigators working for HP (that’d be Hewlett-Packard) have been using phone pretexting to investigate reporter’s records to track down a leak believed to come from the corporate boardroom.
The leak angered HP Chair Patricia Dunn enough that she reportedly authorized this pretexting. Or, at least didn’t put a stop to it when she learned it was going down.
Pretexting, in this contest, often involves obtaining call records by pretending to be the actual customer whose records are being sought.
I’m no lawyer, but to me this is sounds a bit too much like identity theft or fraud for me to be comfortable with such activity.
Activity, which, it has come out, has involved pretexting the phone records of nine journalists. Three of them are my colleagues.
I have news for you, Patricia Dunn.
Reporters and bloggers feel a duty to find out news about the companies, politicians, and issues we cover.That’s called freedom of the press. The American press believes in it.
And if you can’t enforce board secrecy in the way that some of your competitors are quite adept at doing, it is not our problem. If a board member takes it even further by telling tales to us out of school, that’s not our problem, either.
It’s yours.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
