Users see HP scandal as minor distraction
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HP was blasted by legislators this week, but corporate customers say the boardroom leak scandal is a minor distraction, and they still back CEO Mark Hurd.
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The U.S. Department of Justice is asking questions about conduct by Hewlett-Packard Co. that has embroiled the technology company in controversy.
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The Hewlett-Packard surveillance campaign ranged from internal monitoring of e-mail and instant messages to physical surveillance of an HP board member and at least one journalist, according to one of the lawyers at the firm recently retained by the company to investigate its conduct in the matter.
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Company's employees have been posting their thoughts on tech topics.
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Internal documents say HP has pretexted before and that its investigators trailed a reporter while on vacation.
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This week's HP World is over, and users at the event had a lot of things on their minds.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard board members and journalists were under physical surveillance by investigators trying to find out who was providing information to reporters, and private investigators tried to put tracking software on a journalist's computer to keep tabs on e-mail, according to a New York Times report. Patricia Dunn, HP's chairman, the company's general counsel and a staff attorney oversaw the internalÂ investigation of news leaks, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources who have been briefed on HP's findings so far regarding the secret investigation. It isn't clear how much involvement in the investigation there was by Dunn and others at HP, the Times reported Monday. HP announced last week that Dunn willÂ step aside as chairmanÂ in January, although she will remain as a director. Two others also have resigned from the board in the wake of the scandal. Over the weekend, HP identified Michael Moeller, director of corporate media relations, as one of two HP employees who was targeted in the internal investigation. "Investigators' suspicions were misdirected and unfounded," Robert Sherbin, HP's vice president for external communications was quoted as telling the Times on Sunday. The internal investigation reportedly was conducted in two stages, with the first from January 2005 to August of that year, which came up with nothing to go on, and then a second phase beginning in January 2006 after the technology news site of CNET NetworksÂ posted an article about an HP senior management meeting held that month. The board first clamored for an investigation into leaks of information to journalists in January 2005 following an article in The Wall Street Journal that spoke of board discussions regarding management reorganization and changes in the responsibilities to be handled by Carly Fiorina, who was then chief executive officer and chairman. She was ousted by the board in February 2005. Within days of that board action, The New York Times published a detailed account of a directors' meeting that was crucial to her ouster. Reporters from the Times, the Journal, CNET and Business Week have been informed by the California attorney general's office that HP investigated them. California and federal authorities are investigating HP's conduct and the California attorney general has said that charges are likely. HP has admitted that its the private investigative firm it hired used "pretexting," with investigators pretending to be journalists in order to obtain their personal telephone records. Even after a summary of the internal investigation was presented to leaders at HP, in Palo Alto, California, those in charge were unaware that possibly illegal methods had been used to obtain information, the Times reported. In May, the investigation's findings were relayed to the board of directors, including the allegation that its longest-running member, George Keyworth, was the source of the leaks to journalists. He refused to resign, but Vice Chairman Thomas Perkins, an influential and important Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was incensed over the probe and quit the board. He then turned his attention to pressuring Dunn to resign. His surprising departure was announced in a mildly worded HP statement that offered no clue as to the fractious nature of what had transpired, details of which began to emerge in news accounts earlier this month.
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(InfoWorld) - Huge, ugly scandals have a way of planting new terms in the lexicon. Consider the way the Watergate affair of the early 1970s made -gate an all-purpose suffix denoting scandal, or the way last yearâs Sony digital rights management imbroglio made ârootkitâ an unlikely term heard around the dinner table. Thanks to Hewlett-Packardâs daring board of directors, weâve got another one: âpretexting,â which describes the technique of impersonating someone else to obtain personal information. In the case of HP, that personal information was the private phone records of board members and journalists, unknowingly caught up in an all-out effort by HP Chairwoman Pattie Dunn to plug press leaks at the company. Last week, HP announced a board shakeup to try to put the whole mess behind it, but it may be looking over its shoulder for some time, experts say. Dunn will relinquish her chair to CEO and President Mark Hurd in January. The scandal created two other board vacancies: director Thomas Perkins quit in protest last May over the companyâs investigation; and director George Keyworth, identified as the source of the leak, resigned the same day as Dunnâs announcement. At print time, Californiaâs Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that the state was working with authorities in Massachusetts and that he had the evidence he needs to indict people connected to the pretexting scandal both inside and outside of HP. The scandal is a teachable moment for American business, said Kirk O. Hanson, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. âIt is a cautionary tale about how companies conduct investigations into employee conduct and give direction to outside vendors,â Hanson said. This case will help them clarify what they can and cannot do to protect their interests. âExpect the word pretext to begin showing up in corporate handbooks,â Hanson said.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N is   under investigation by U.S. federal prosecutors over its   inquiry into boardroom leaks to the press, authorities said on   Monday, adding to the computer maker's legal woes.
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Hurd silent on growing scandal HP's spy fiasco went from bad to catastrophic yesterday, as the company admitted to having tapped the phone logs of nine reporters.â¦
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CNET News.com's Charles Cooper writes that HP's "non-denial denial" was a missed opportunity to make a grander statement about privacy.
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A satirical look at the pretexting scandal at HP.
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HP CEO Mark Hurd is scheduled to speak at the company's large user and partner event, the HP Technology Forum, Sept. 17 as the company confronts a scandal over boardroom press leaks.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Extending beyond the skullduggery that pried loose people's private phone records, Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Hewlett-Packard board members and journalists were under physical surveillance by investigators trying to find out who was providing information to reporters, and private investigators tried to put tracking software on a journalist's computer to keep tabs on e-mail, according to a New York Times report.
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At HP World this week, company officials scrambled to reassure customers that it is working hard to fix its order processing problems by the end of this month.
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(InfoWorld) - Last year's HP Technology Forum was chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This year, storm clouds of a different sort hang over the event. As an estimated 6,000 attendees converge on Houston for the annual Hewlett-Packard user conference, the subject on many minds is the one the company is most loathe to discuss: theÂ shakeup of HP's boardÂ and theÂ prospect of criminal chargesÂ related to a spying scandal. The California Attorney General and a Congressional committee are among the institutions probing HP's possibly illegal methods of investigating news leaks from its board. HP has until Tuesday to respond to an invitation from the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee for HP's Chairman Patricia Dunn and General Counsel Ann Baskins to testify at a Sept. 28 hearing in Washington. But at the Technology Forum, a gathering of HP user groups, partners and other vendors, HP is focusing on its business success, which is considerable. With revenue, earnings and stock price all resurgent in the last year, HP CEO Mark Hurd could rightly say, "Pay no attention to that prosecutor behind the curtain," when he delivers a keynote address on Sept. 18. In the quarter ended July 31, HP's earnings-per-share (EPS) topped analysts' estimates at $0.52 on 5 percent revenue growth to $21.9 billion, compared to the year ago quarter. Across many of its business lines, HP, of Palo Alto, California, has gained on rivals, said industry analyst Rob Enderle. HP personal computer sales have grown with its "the computer is personal again" marketing campaign, Enderle noted. IBMÂ sold its personal computer businessÂ to Lenovo Group, in 2005, and Dell has suffered negative publicity from the AugustÂ recall of 4.1 million fire-prone batteriesÂ in Dell laptops. In storage, HP closed the market share gap with EMC in second quarter numbers released Aug. 29 by research firm IDC. With EMC's 20 percent share, based on unit sales, to HP's 19.3 percent, the two are in a "statistical tie" said Brad Nisbet, an analyst with IDC. "HP has been executing well under new management," Nisbet said, referring to Hurd, CEO since March 2005. In servers, HP is a strong second to IBM, according to IDC market share numbers, but has made some errors, said Enderle. It still is using Intel's Itanium processor in its high-end Integrity servers, which rivals aren't embracing. Gartner research shows that 90 percent of the Itanium chips shipped in the first quarter of this year ran on HP servers; neither Dell nor IBM build Itanium computers. Technology Forum organizers get tight-lipped when the conversation shifts to the board scandal. "That's HP's business," said Nina Buik, vice president of Encompass, one of the HP user groups planning the event. "We're not focused on those issues unless it impacts the technology." And as long as the scandal doesn't touch Hurd personally, the customer satisfaction should be unaffected, said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of research at IDC. . "I don't think [the scandal] is a drag on the company's success," he said. "I have not found one customer who said 'I'm not going to do business, or I am concerned about doing business, with Hewlett-Packard as a result of this.'" HP Technology forum runs from Sunday to Thursday this week.