Comments on: Reporters' records accessed in HP probe

Two News.com reporters are among nine journalists whose personal phone records were accessed during HP's probe into boardroom leaks.

[CaptainMooseInc]

Ughhh...

We should all just continue building our own systems and put HP out of business, along with Dell. I'm so sick of the business world these days.

[ewk]

Uh?

And where do you get the components to make your own system:-)

[Wizentub]

Has HP spy hit home users too?

After almost four years of struggling with keyloggers onmy machine.
I finally found it, I decided to run the system discs that shipped with my pc (HP) and up sprang the red alerts.
Keylogger found,
ketlogger found,
keylogger found,
all hiding inside the application CD of the system discs.
HP wont begin to help without 38 dollars as it is now out of warranty.
They should have replaced all discs with the keyloggers in place. Even if they dontuse it anymore it makes any HP machine totally vulnerable to anyone who finds this.
I gather they didtn want to admit they had added it to all software.
This is bad stuff.

[emak]

Scary stuff... I think a lawsuit could/should be coming

HP and/or one of its associates or contractors clearly engaged in
what appears to be illegal activity. HP should have no access to a
c|net employee's phone records, and if I were said reporter, I would
probably sue.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Agreed

I agree 100%.

As a matter of fact, I believe that the company who performs these acts should be sued to an extent so as to provide a deterrent to others. At least ten times what the company was paid by HP.

Also, I believe there should be jail time for the person ultimately responsible.

Also, the phone companies that allowed a person to obtain phone records over the internet with no trustworthy form of identification should be fined, and even sued as well. I hate to think my phone company might give out my records to some stranger because he says he's me (honest). How can they not be fined?

[jsdoyle]

HP Chair should be sacked

The chair of HP should be sacked and prosecuted now for obviously approving these tactics! HP and their Private Investigators should have to pay out the nose to those individuals who have had their privacy invaded or been otherwise harmed. I hope the AG's office goes after them to set a precedent!

[marileev]

Dunn the NSA of business

jsdoyle, your sentiments seem to ring with so many people. Patricia Dunn does appear to be the NSA equivalent in the business world http://www.iwantmyess.com/?p=37

[Galt]

Chairman, Chairperson, Idiot!

"The chair of HP should be sacked and prosecuted now for obviously approving these tactics!"

She did not "approve," she "initiated" the spying, to find the leak, and that's a big difference. In some parts of the world, water flows uphill, well so does crap, and addles the brain.

[drfrost]

I do indeed wholeheartedly concur

Not only should the chair be sacked, I hope they lose a very expensive legal battle over this. Completely unacceptable.

[fred dunn]

Ms. Dunn obviously knew what was going on...

How else can you get the phone records of other individuals without their consent?
It's called conspiracy Ms. Dunn and having achieved the chair of one of the largest corporations in the world I don't think you can plead ignorance of the fact.
The end does not justify the means and who in fact was more in breach of ethics here You and the rest of the board that approved of your means or the information leaker?
Ms. Dunn, and the rest of the board should be replaced for obviously approving of such unethical and criminal activity.
If Mark Hurd does not take decisive action against Ms. Dunn and all who remained in the loop in this conspiracy then he is just as guilty as they.

[khammerberg]

What happened to ethics

Thank goodness there are still some people like Mr. Perkins who believe in ethics and values in the boardroom. Ms. Dunn should be done, there is no excuse for anyone breaking into other people's personal records. If this behavior is okay, why doesn't she post here phone numbers, bank accounts and credit card numbers so we can all see where her money comes from and how she spends it. Seems like fair play to me.

[baswwe]

What r u talking about? CNET has no ethics.

buhaha
no meesage

[Galt]

What happened..Lip-Flapping!

Ethics?? Careful, you are getting into philosophy, and that's a dirty word...got replaced with Lip-Service, and the more Lip Flapping Service that ensues, the less black and white things get, until it's forgotten in the gray of it.

[Rita McKee]

WHY IS EVERYONE SO SURPRISED AND SHOCKED??

Good grief... given the current political climate and sterling examples the Bush administration has set vis-a-vis privacy, actions like this are only to be expected.

Wise up, people.

[fred dunn]

Who's surprised? We're angry....

As you should be too. I think most Americans know what you are referring to but does that make it right? Are you so complacent that it doesn't anger you?
And while I disagree with 'W's means, methods, policies and just about everything else, what Ms. Dunn did had nothing to do with national security.
As far as wising up I think it is you that should wise up. If something is wrong you should do your best to correct it, else live with the consequences. You seem to be fine with it.

[heystoopid]

Shame and Scandal in the HP Family

Shame and scandal in the HP Family!

Say this story as it is now unfolding at the seams, is starting to read like a failed conspiracy plot from a Hollywood TV Soap like "Desperate Housewives"!

Oh well, time has come for her to end it all now, fall on her sword and resign in disgrace! ie do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do!

Her choices and actions are diminishing by the day, as this scandal continues to deepen!

[amigabill]

"sometimes illegal" ???

> Pretexting is a sometimes-illegal method of
> obtaining personal records through
> misrepresentation of someone's identity.


Under what conditions is this legally OK to do?

[Hep Cat]

Re: "SOMETIMES ILLEGAL"???

>Under what conditions is this legally OK to do?

Your last name must be Bush.

[Hep Cat]

Yet News.com complains about Apple suing bloggers...

What hypocrites. Their favorite company after Dell was breaking the
law to spy on them.

Somebody call the waahmbulance!

[declan00]

No connection

News.com, as far as I know, has never expressed a position on Apple suing bloggers. (One of our columnists may, but that's not the same thing.)

Even if we had, though, that's not what's happening here. The bloggers (again, as far as we know) broke no law. HP, on the other hand, may well have done just that.

[anarchyreigns]

You aren't intelligent....go away.

<eom>

[Jackson Cracker]

Obviously, this wasn't hacking

It's just very poor security on AT&T's part. A name, 4 digits of a SSN and
a Yahoo email address gets you any customer's phone records.

[ewoychowsky]

Actually it was

It's called social hacking.

[PorkSoda]

Oh really

Why do you classify this as Not Hacking?
To the mass majority, the common belief is that hackers only use computers, wrong... Have ever heard of Social Engineering? It obviously work really well.

As it stands, AT&T does need to tighten up on their security, but do you realize just how easy it is to call some poor bastard who sits in front of terminal all day long answering phone calls from people they would rather forget even talking too. Not to mention that they are most likely overseas and make little to nothing for salary. How can the fact that they just don't really care about security even come into play. They just give out information to whom ever can guess the correct questions to their low level answers, Pets name, street you live, mothers maiden name.....

The bottom line is, there is no security, just a lot of smoke and mirrors.

So, yes it is hacking if you access someones personal data and they should be punished to full extent of law.

[Mergatroid Mania]

What?

Of course News.com complained about Apple suing bloggers (News.com sides with reporters).

Now their complaining about HP sticking their noses into reporters phone records (News.com sides with reporters again).

Where's the hypocrisy here?

Do you "Get It"?

[lylep]

so getting information...

about those who illegally distributed company confidential is getting the major press here.

if your company had confidential information that was being distributed to the press are you ok with that? note that we don't know what *other* information has been compromised, just what was published.

not condoning the HP action, just want to remind us of how we got here...

[fred dunn]

The End does not justify the Means...

We all know where this started but as was stated by Mr. Perkins the first process to pursue was just to ask the directors if they had contact about this "leaked" information. If that didn't work then you would have to start another strategy but not an illegal one. The next logical step would have been to have the directors agree to have their phone records scrutinized.
Instead Ms. Dunn took it on herself to become J. Edgar Hoover (probably the same dress) and gather info behind peoples backs without their consent.

[gggg sssss]

not by breaking the law they dont

Last we heard, HP was not in the law enforcment business. Unless I missed the one where they merged with teh CIA. So they cannot do things that are illegal to see if something illegal was done to them - maybe nothing illegal was in fact done to them.

Now GW on the otherhand may, being in charge of the country, the CIA and the FBI etc may indeed have a case. That is something that the peopel of teh US can decide on in a few months.

[nylad]

advertising

You notice that HP is one of the major advertisers of C/net news.com. So do you ya think that news.com will do anything about this stupid breach of a reporters records? Will news.com protect their own reporter in this (like supply an attorney, etc)? Does this say something about the veracity of any news reporting coming from any corporate media. NO wonder we can't believe any thing any of them say. If reporters are afraid that they too will be targeted, will they get to the bottom of any investigation. I don't think so!

[enovikoff]

I get it

What side someone takes has nothing to do with statistics. News.com is simply reporting on illegal or unethical behavior. Bashing reporters has become the favorite sport of the Bush administration... that doesn't make it right. And after bashing comes criminal violation. News.com is doing what they're supposed to: being a watchdog. If the "story" comes from watching their own, so be it.

[GrandpaN1947]

H-P Innocent

H-P did nothing wrong. The company they hired did it.


They outsourced their dirty work :-)

[fred dunn]

That's called conspiracy to defraud...

And they are just as guilty if not more so for initiating the conspiracy. The "investigator" would not have done this without being paid and Ms. Dunn and her gang including Mark "Capone" Hurd knew damned well that the gathering of phone records by a third party without the consent of the first party was illegal. Remember they are in the Information Industry.

[Too Old For IT]

HP now has RICO problem

"Corporatins now feel empowered" indeed!!

Just because Patricia Dunn and Mark Hurd are miffed does not mean that they get to use the techniques of organized crime to wreak vengance on their "enemies list". I think the US Government should be able to dissolve a now corrupt HP based on these blatant actions.

If they weren't busy trying to eliminate the middle class in America, they wouldn't need to worry about how the public viewed them! A little sunshgine in the boardroom, please.

Tom Perkins is a hero, and should be promoted to chairman of the board as soon as Dunn and Hurd are sacked. George Keyworth should be re-nominated, and if not by the board, then by the shareholders.

[WJeansonne]

Rodent "Investigators" Should be Sued out of Business

These type of unethical "investigators" are probably hardened criminals acting as a legitimate business, no doubt. HP association with them only tarnishes their image. Moreover, just how secret are suppliers these days anyway enough to justify an invasion of privacy on this scale. The scumbag so-called "investigators" should be thrown in jail to teach them a lesson.

[zeitgeistwriter]

re: "sometimes illegal"

it seems that the legality of pretexting depends on which state you live in and what kind of records are being accessed.

[fred dunn]

Pretexting is not the only crime here...

In these cases the pretexting was only made possible by the obtaining and using the social security numbers of the victims. Once they have taken the steps to illegally obtain and use the information gathered it is considered by the FTC as Identity Theft and can be prosecuted as same.

No story yet has discussed how the social security numbers were obtained. This is the real story as it will involve the perpetrator having much more information on all of the victims than they realize, Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Credit histories, real properties owned, academic records, employment records, criminal records, military records, drivers license info and records, just to name a few.

Once this information is had then it is a short stop to obtaining accounts in the victims names.

[CancerMan2]

Big Telco Evildoers

This story is yet another example of the problems created when Big Telco captures and retains customer data. There will always be Big Telco employees who are willing to sell confidential customer information to suppliment their income. The answer is for consumers to buy prepaid cellphones rather than sign a contract with Big Telco. Big Telco cannot and will not guarantee your privacy.

[grayfrier]

If HP'S was willing

If HP'S Board and Chairman were willing to do this what other Illegal things have they condoned and allow in their quest for the Almighty dollar who else have they screwed up and over and not gotten caught doing?
And how many more big companies will be allowed to do as they please look back at Sony for one what ever happened after they got caught screwing up our computers because they felt like it and didn't care what people said or did!
Looks like one more company i for one will never ever deal with for any reason and that goes for their Sub's too.

[gggg sssss]

Conspiracy theory 102

Haven't baught a Compaq or HP in ages, but I assume they all come with spyware-trojan horses masquerading as support/management applications like Open View or their update thingy. Lets assume that HP can just connect to any HP server/desktop through this application and go fishing. Why wouldnt they just browse until they find something good? Who would stop them?

Let's pass this around and see what the response is.