Comments on: Calif. top cop on HP, privacy and 'pretexting'

Attorney General Bill Lockyer discusses the controversial practice of pretexting and how his office is dealing with the problem.

HP should be prosecuted

The HP CEO evidently hired some goons to get the personal telephone records of members of the board of directors, without their knowledge, and the goons did this by lying and pretending to be the the owners of the phones in question. To pull off this scam, the goons probably needed personal information, like social security numbers, that HP was in a position to provide (since they pay people for being on the board, they have addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, the works).

If HP can get away with this, your employer or ex-employer can do it to you: lie so they can get the record of every phone number you called. They need to be punished severely enough to send a message that this kind of identity theft won't be tolerated.

[commsoft]

Calling it "pretexting" is way too gentle

At least in most cases, you are pretending to be someone else in order to gain assets (information) to which you are not entitled.

This is really just another form of identity theft, and should be treated (by statute, and then aggressively prosecuted) as such.

[CompEng]

Agreed!

Agreed!

[mpasco]

HP Pretexting

When an individual or company hires a "hit man", that individual or company is as responsible for the consequences of the "hit" as the actual perpetrator, and is as guilty under the law. This has been established in every state's supreme court at one time or another.

It is a no-brainer that HP and it's board are equally guilty of pretexting. Contending that they had no knowledge of how the illegal information was acquired does nothing to exonerate them. They hired the "hit men" knowing that illegal tactics would be used and then benefited from the results. "It fell off of the truck" is a lame explanation when you know what truck it was going to fall off of and are there at exactly the right time to catch it.

Using illegal methods to obtain informtion should raise plenty of flags concerning what else may be happening under wraps. Perhaps an independent audit of their finances and business practices would be in order. They are certainly exhbiting the same corporate arrogance as Enron.