HP Chairwoman in for a Spanking !
HP’s new chairwoman Patricia Dunn has resigned, effective immediately, after her part in the corporate spying scandal that has dogged the company for weeks was revealed.
Under orders from Ms Dunn, HP hired a team of private investigators to investigate the leaks of confidential corporate information to CNET News during 2005.
The P.I.s have been (illegally) accessing the private telephone records of HP board-members and journalists without their permission, as part of their dubious tactics in order to learn who among the board of directors had revealed corporate secrets.
The investigators are said to have used a technique called pretexting, the act of impersonating someone else to gain access to their confidential records, in order to acquire telephone details - the corporate espionage equivalent of breaking into an office and stealing the phone bills.
Accusations of installing key-loggers and other hacking software onto Journalist’s laptops are amongst other claims of “surveillance” being bandied around
It is expected that Ms Dunn and the private investigator firm will face criminal charges:
“We currently have sufficient evidence to indict people both within Hewlett-Packard, as well as the contractors on the outside.”
reported Bill Lockyer, California’s attorney general, on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”
A Congressional Committee is sceduled for next week where she will be called to answer questions on her conduct. On the break of this news, the chairwoman (who originally claimed she would not step down until January 2007), departed immediately.
Patricia Dunn, in an ironic twist of fate, was only days before, given a Hall Of Fame award by the Bay Area Council, the organisation for promoting business ethics and openness.
Perhaps if Hewlett Packard spent more time and money on fixing the bugs in their printer drivers and less on flashy TV adverts and bugging the phones of reporters, they would get back to being a successful peripheral manufacturer.
