Report: Evidence suggests HP spied on Dell

update A magazine report published Tuesday indicates that Hewlett-Packard engaged in corporate espionage and spied on at least one of its own executives prior to the company's controversial probe into a boardroom leak last year.

Citing unnamed sources, Fortune magazine reported that "evidence suggests" HP obtained the phone records of Karl Kamb Jr., a former HP vice president, who is being sued by HP for allegedly stealing company trade secrets. The magazine said it also found information that supported some of the claims Kamb made in a countersuit filed in January: the company paid a former Dell executive to turn over some of his employer's trade secrets.

If true, the allegations would contradict HP's assertions that the leak hunt of last year, when its investigators duped phone company employees into turning over private records belonging to journalists and HP board members--a practice known as pretexting--was an isolated event. HP's probe into boardroom leaks led to the resignation of Patricia Dunn, HP's chairman.

Another potential risk to HP is that if the company knowingly obtained a competitor's trade secrets then it could be in violation of federal law. According to Fortune, the Economic Espionage Act bans the practice of obtaining a competitor's trade secrets.

In legal documents HP denied pretexting Kamb. On Tuesday, an HP spokesman declined to comment on the magazine story.

Dell said it is taking the allegations seriously. "We have requested a full and thorough investigation from HP," said Dell spokesman Bob Pearson. "We have not heard back."

Some of the new information that Fortune unearthed includes an invoice billed to Ron DeLia, a private investigator, that included a request for Kamb's address. DeLia was among those hired by HP to spy last year on board members, former employees and journalists, including three from CNET News.com, to uncover an internal news leak.

According to the magazine story, in the summer of 2005, HP began suspecting Kamb of using the company's technology to help launch his own flat-panel business. In August of that year, Kamb's lawyer wrote a letter to HP saying that someone had tried to trick Kamb into handing over his cell phone pin number and had also tried to obtain records for his landline. Kamb suspected HP.

Kevin Hunsaker, HP's senior counsel and a key member of the probe into boardroom leaks, received the letter from Kamb's attorney. Hunsaker eventually left the company after the public learned about the potentially illegal methods used in the leak hunt. He also declined to answer questions posed to him by a congressional subcommittee last September. Hunsaker responded to Kamb's letter by denying HP was behind the attempts to grab Kamb's phone records.

But last August, just before the HP spying campaign was brought to light, Hunsaker was interviewed by attorneys with HP's outside law firm, Wilson Sonsini. They wrote in a report that "Hunsaker first learned that HP had used pretexting to obtain phone records in July 2005...Hunsaker's team told him they had not altered the subject's PIN or voicemail but had used pretexting to obtain phone information about the subject."

Fortune quoted an unidentified law enforcement official saying: "The circumstantial evidence is very strong."

[thunderbomb24]

HP vs Dell

These two seem to be the top competetors in the computer hardware race, so it can become a little cutthroat. I wonder if those allegations are true. I like Dell.

[Maelstorm]

Exit morality, enter anything goes

I personally don't like either HP or Dell. I do not buy their products and I do not use their services. Seems to me that HP has gone way downhill since they aquired Compaq a few years ago. If I want to buy a laptop, I go with a Japanese brand like Sony or Toshiba. For desktops, I build my own.

[esblake]

HP VS DELL

It is clear that HP has reverted to a completely unethical corporation. Frankly, they may have the best cost/price on products however, to purchase from these people is to condone their flagrant disregard for what is proper business and personal conduct.

I have canceled my orders with this corrupt corporation and am moving them to Dell. This may cost me a little cash in the short term, however in the long run I would prefer to be associated with an honest ethical corporation.

[Dachi]

Yeah

I thought about shorting HPQ also.

[trueview]

HP issue happened to me. HP in year 2100? Don't think so at this rate....

I worked with HP and they did something greasy. HP signed a NDA with me, then in a protracted multi-month conspiracy they proceeded to glean as much business information & insights as they could from my start-up company. After that they went silent and didn't even give the courtesy of a thank you. This was in 2003 and I tried to sue them for this evil-doing which I think was on purpose...., but no lawyer would take the case. Since then the CEO was fired, Board of Directors have been indicted, and countless accusations including destruction of evidence and other things which leads me to believe the DNA of HP is cursed. HP should reduce the scope of its business and focus on Printers and limited engagements. HP from the top inwards clearly cannot handle responsibility.

[Stating]

Brand Most Preferred By Spies 2 To 1

I hear that HP Pavilion laptops are preferred by spies more than 2 to 1 over Dells. HP laptops have won the prestigious "Midnight Plumbers Break-In" award 5 years running now.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

HP could have just asked me

Product 1
A better small footprint PC at low watt green PC aimed at the green concerned or familys with childern wanting pcs as apposed to look what movies and 80's music you can watch downstairs.

Or anything other than a 3d printer that bakes cakes like a big one that does things with coarse sand and stuff to stick it with um ummmm customers.

Or the HP wonder pen where you can store what you wrote with it on other device enabled for controlled grafity projects.

Or the five Organic fiber models for artists PC's with all the right kind of software they would want in a deal set of packages.

Or wait a sec thats 4 ideas i gotta think now.
Um the HP kitchen helper that say to her all those wonderful things other women would say to her with a good heart offering praticl and nice advice to a womens network of cleaners.(year i wasnt that impressed with that just woke up bad one myself).

Ok hows about an office PC that has desktop space graphically hidden in the sides so you can always get a pep at what your missing in that lowley staff position of your(sorry it just keeps getting worse).

Wait there though i know i've got so good ones.
You could have the router with a small lift up screen where you can check all sorts of things like package traffic, If the rest of the equippment is compatable watt usage. Adverage main business traffic over net and whos the least usful.non important traffic(oh year the boss is going to love than one after first taking himself out the report).
Also you could check effectiveness of wires over time to get a better view.
Or all sorts of other techy info like effectivness of virtualisation communication shifts from the hub/switchboxes perspective in relation to what the engineer should know.

I got another one you know like a cd rack you could have a 2 month university assesment setup.
Ths is where you have loads of really tiny pcs the size of cds aimed at studying developing software for butterfly arrays and would be cool as a server meaning that load was always there as opposed to computer is overloaded so would make for better load managment.

Um wait a second maybe it would better to think of some of the problems people have.

ok theres a big problem in schools where scools - universitys arent turing up good enough students
in math and engineering.
Part of this problem is a language barrer somtimes or a lack of good teachers.
However low and behold a computer could solve the problem and allow for subsidisation of your gadgets.

So I prepose a new Calculator.
One that has a colour (Oh about time)
Has high school level and university level versions.
Has guides to usual ciriculum infomation in diffrent languages.
Can do maths more graphically (of corse)
Also can connect to PC and load up randomly selected questions for the new term.

Anther one is testing how you could develope a hive mind systems for protected waters or whatever sea like.
So you have power boies that generate energy from fuel and transmit data via satalite and you have little bots swimming round working with each other to survey the waters.

sorry a bit of a sarcastic one here.
You could have mini pc's that analises that the birds brain health is god and monitor that they are foraging well and sing well too.
Yaer kiss my ars Boris (boy of sun egyptian farm making dude)

Ok um thinking..........
Problems thats what i need problems.

Ah you could have digital bumps for bussy roads to get a better picture on how to avoid crashes.

A comptuer/Gadget for builder to get a better perspective than the arcitects layout is always a god one so that he can see what would really fit in and where the problems might be due to reality not quite meeting design.


What you need HP is not dells expertise in squeesing the next stored in the loft oversaturised PC market stratagy you need Problems lots and lots of problems where gadgets might become the solution and you need like the rest of the industry some good hands and minds to take ou to higher levels of development.
You need to take all problems you can find and grow the market and with others even DEll you need to grow the resourse of clevel capabile people of the future in whatever language they first start learning in.

[mssoot]

Dude - throw out whatever it is your smoking

Thats just a rambling mess. Why do you think they call it dope anyway. Oh yea, I don't know if it will make it coherent, but your in serious need of a spell checker too.