Journalists sue HP over "pretexting"
ITnews.com.au reports that four journalists and one of their family members have sued Hewlett-Packard over the "pretexting" scandal that occurred nearly a year ago.
To briefly recap the scandal, HP suspected that a board member was leaking company secrets to the media. HP engaged private investigators to try and locate the leak, and as part of that investigation -- and apparently with the knowledge of senior HP executives including Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of the HP board -- private investigators impersonated these journalists for the purpose of obtaining copies of the journalist's telephone records from their telephone providers. "Pretexting" is a euphemism for impersonation.
This caused a major scandal at the time; the US being somewhat more respectful of freedom of the press than in Australia. Dunn conceded that pretexting was wrong, but HP defended it as being "not generally unlawful". Congressional hearings were held, legislation was debated. Criminal charges were filed against Dunn and others, but went nowhere; the charges against Dunn were dismissed, three others pleaded no contest in return for a small amount of community service, and the US Department of Justice announced one conviction. A few people (including Dunn) resigned under a cloud, HP paid the state of California US$14.5 million to settle a civil action against the company, and the whole thing generally went away.
I'm happy to see that the journalists who were targeted by HP aren't content to let that be the end of things.
To briefly recap the scandal, HP suspected that a board member was leaking company secrets to the media. HP engaged private investigators to try and locate the leak, and as part of that investigation -- and apparently with the knowledge of senior HP executives including Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of the HP board -- private investigators impersonated these journalists for the purpose of obtaining copies of the journalist's telephone records from their telephone providers. "Pretexting" is a euphemism for impersonation.
This caused a major scandal at the time; the US being somewhat more respectful of freedom of the press than in Australia. Dunn conceded that pretexting was wrong, but HP defended it as being "not generally unlawful". Congressional hearings were held, legislation was debated. Criminal charges were filed against Dunn and others, but went nowhere; the charges against Dunn were dismissed, three others pleaded no contest in return for a small amount of community service, and the US Department of Justice announced one conviction. A few people (including Dunn) resigned under a cloud, HP paid the state of California US$14.5 million to settle a civil action against the company, and the whole thing generally went away.
I'm happy to see that the journalists who were targeted by HP aren't content to let that be the end of things.
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