Comments on: HP probe dug deep on CNET reporter, family

Investigators tried to draw a connection between a board member and the father of a CNET News.com reporter.

[Mr. Network]

Beating a dead horse

We know the story. CNET is continuing to act surprised and upset. If someone was leaking information from the CNET boardroom, wouldn't they try to investigate it? And is it possible the people they hire to investigate could use shady tactics?

The simple answer is, don't print confidential material provided by 'sources that wish to remain anonymous'.

The media certainly seems to have a big problem with this. I'm certain that in college if I had presented information as fact in any of my submissions and cited anonymous sources as the basis of my claims, I probably would have been failed.

Like OMG, have you heard California is the home of gossip about private actions of people and businesses? Quick look over there -> like OMG Carmen Diaz took a crap on a toilet, that's big news. Print it Smith!

[Dragon Forge]

No an attempt to corral the horse before it bolts...

There will be no need to get defensive if we understand this rejoiner is merely a dissociative catalyst...

If just for a moment, could you ask yourself to review this in a brighter light?

Would it be possible that there is some merit to providing people with the truth? On a cursory glance, someone mis-spoke about the future of HP. That is where 'get over' it needs to be applied 1st and foremost. Make the most of it turn a 'bad' into a positive. Or, there is the deniability strategy where an emphasis was misunderstood or the HP representative/spakesperson/leak was wrong. Finally HP could always just admit 'hey! yeah that's where we are going', and then make the most of it, change strategies or even pretend to change them. Who really cares as long as it is not 'Salemization'.

Now ask yourself the motivations, was there money ionvolved?, which I really doubt. What is more likely is that there is some out of control evil festering in HP and the only watch words that could be uttered is this HP representatives "mis-step".

Likening it to celebrity watching, a sad voyueristic propensity of the North American throng, is a feeble spin that has nothing to do with the protection of our systems and rights.

Perhaps in your venture through college you adopted a we vs them set of ideologies and seldom talked with your professors. There is a way to do things and a way to do things right, even though the way may not seem abundatly clear at the moment, but then that is the integral focus of post secondary eduction.

The last line sounds like it is a harkening back to the elementary days and an attempt to dispose of an important and realistic topic by subjugating the real world rhetoric to a rather boring, over used dispensation.

There may be a few more things going on in the world than you have room for.

[marileev]

Reporters becoming the Story

Tech reporters aren't in the same game as the celebutaunt tabloid press. The story of reporters families being tracked a la organized crime style is actually relevant to the story and case as a whole.

fred dunn wrote here "This cancer has mutated a high integrity and ethical company into something it should not be." And thus the importance of how far Patricia Dunn and her cohorts on the leak case were willing to chase phone records, emails, photographs of reporter's parents, etc.

Corporate Governance is a big character in this story and HP's turned into a cancer http://www.iwantmyess.com/?p=104

[fred dunn]

HP has a cancer...

It is not an incurable cancer but a cancer none the less. This cancer has mutated a high integrity and ethical company into something it should not be.
As I posted on the 2nd day of this scandal, this thing is going to peel like an onion. In the beginning it was just a case of getting private phone records of it's directors, then it expanded to reporters, then to other employees and family memebers of reporters. Now it has expanded to direct surveilence of reporters and employees.
In it's zeal to find the "leak" it (HP) did what any organized crime group would do, they just said "make it happen". This is where the whole thing went wrong.
In the coming weeks we are going to find out that more data than was previously thought was gathered on more people than we previously thought and in fact more people than HP will currently admit.
So to all of you major stockholders out there I say this your names will most likely come up in this investigation as if HP was concerned with a director leaking information don't you think they would be just a little bit curious on how you're going to vote at the shareholders meeting? How do you think they can compile a coherent strategy without that information?
This thing is ging expand faster and wider than anybody first thought, take my word for it.

[Dragon Forge]

Just a moment here ! ! !

A U.S. governmental investigation has said HP went over the top in maliciously hunting down its victims?!?! Let's not worry about the 'high-lighting' here for a moment, while you take a sip of objectivity. Should not have HP come straight forward in the initial stages with such a single instance of callous disregard and illegal activities rather than waiting to be forced to fess up, but still not wanting to express accountability? No they are not made of the 'right stuff', never have been. With serious infractions pending there can be little doubt this is the modus operandii of HP in all its affairs.

There should remain no hesitation in drawing firm conclusions now, that this is not all HP has done which normal human beings would find counter to all that we believe is fair, right and objective in an open market system.

Should another form of government ever find its way to favor I am sure the executive and ceo would be ardent proponents, if not integral components, in such a decline of a good and free society.

The marketability of "pretexting" as a method of down playing what it actually is, suggests that it is an accceptable practice that has its own word, lexicology and culture. Well no need to go further her this is now obvious.

Since, just like any criminal investigation, they have just started being found out, parallel the objectivity to a criminal found on the street.

Suppose someone (now a suspected criminal) was found to be leading an organization in what turns out to be an illegal activity. You and I both know that an individual capable of such acts would more than likely be involved in many, many other activities that are of a far more serious in nature for which we would like a thorough examination and analysis done.

Before we can trust an organization to do the right thing we must affirm our faith in our various levels of public administration and the evolution of our codes and norms to the point that punitive measures should be applied to be fair. There are no excuses for, large or small, business or personal, the continual, secretive transgressions that not only rack our fiber but are entirely demonstrative of a nation in deep trouble and at the mercy of "business" organization's hunger for power and a Godless society.

The "Keystone Cops Affair", that is Mark Hurd's design in doing the laughably attmept to 'sting'/'entrap'/'play god' (minisculized denoting ego), goes miles in testifyin that HP finds nothining objectionable in its behavior. I do not think HP is capable of knowing right from wrong or like a sociopath, is far too adept in covering most of its tracks.

Is there now not clear evidence that this is a criminal organization whose activities in all matters should be examined?

Let us now prove to the rest of the world that we have the accumen, the technological know how, and fortitude to make ourselves right.

[ryangbcsi]

don't complain

it goes with the terrirory of being a reporter. if you dont like it - then dont probe into secrets of public companies.

[Penguinisto]

Eh?

Corporations do not have the same 'Privacy rights' (for lack of a better term) as individuals. Publicly-traded corporations have even less.

/P

[Penguinisto]

Can you say "Lawsuit from Hell"?

Sure you can... HP will be lucky to escape one from this.

Reporter or no, HP has no right or valid reason to invade the privacy of anyone who does not work for them (and those who do work for HP may have signed these rights away, but only insofar as their work activities and office areas).

I know that if a corporation I didn't work for tried to pull a stunt like that on me, there would be a very long line of tort lawyers at my door - all of them competing for the chance to help me make a rather large pile of money from the situation.

/P

[ralfthedog]

Small damages at best

What HP has done is wrong. but any damages awarded will be trivial. No personal records were made public. No monetary damage was done. No one died. I don't even see a broken arm or leg.

People need to go to jail for this, but I don't see piles of cash at the reporters door (Unless HP offers cash not to cooperate with the prosecutors).

[timpatco]

Wither PattyGate?

So how come this isn't being called PattyGate and who was the mole after all?

[brzrkr]

cyber speak: "Pretexting"

Are companies or people using synonyms for deception so they can hide in denial from their dishonesty? The nature of fraud and lies won't change by using new words.
At best, referring to fraud as "pretexting" is sad self rationalization. I think more likely it's a smokescreen to try to hide the wrongness of the position from others, like using the terms "extraordinary rendition" and "collateral damage"

[ralfthedog]

Pretexting, was just the type of fraud.

Nothing wrong with the term pretexting. It is just a specific term describing an action. If you try to get information by pretending you are someone else you are pretexting. Pretexting can be wrong, I don't know if it falls under the category of fraud or something else.

Under some circumstances pretexting is legal. Sometimes it is even moral. In this case it was wrong, and probably illegal.