IP Democracy: Does HP's Spying Undercut a Free Press?

The collosal debacle that is HP’s pretexting scandal just keeps on growing. For those not in the know (and I can’t imagine there are many people who don’t know the story), HP’s Chairwoman Patricia Dunn hired private investigators to spy on board members whom she believed were leaking information to the press. Consultants to these private investigators used a form of fraud known as pretexting, whereby they posed as board members to obtain confidential records, to peruse the calling records of the board members to see if they were the leaky boats.

When HP board member Thomas Perkins (the respected venture capitalist of Kleiner Perkins fame) was informed of the spying efforts, he objected and then resigned from the board. (As an aside, is Perkins the only HP board member with any guts or moral conscience? No one else complained or took a stand in the face of this outrage.) Perkins tried to get HP to modify its SEC filing regarding his departure so that it properly indicated that Perkins resigned in protest over the spying. HP ignored Perkins, who then took his amazing story to the press.

That’s when the dam sprung a leak (no pun intended). The swirling public controversy caught the attention of California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who says he will probably file criminal charges against HP.

But the dam really burst when it became known that not only did HP spy on its board members, it also spied on reporters, including writers at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNET’s News.com. There is no way to overstate just how bad a move this was for HP, nor how sorry the tech giant will be that it ever thought to mess with the press this way.

Lockyer tried to verbalize the grave danger HP faces from the awakened media monster but even his clever word bite is inadequate.

Now, to have illegally spied on reporters I would say is stupid cubed — to the power of three. What a way to stick your finger in the hornet’s nest, to spy on reporters.

I have faith that a p*ssed-off press will make mince-meat out of HP. That’s why I disagree with Lucy Dalglish, head of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Daglish believes that HP’s snooping will have a “chilling” effect on reporters and their sources.

“It shows incredible arrogance on the part of the company and disrespect for the role that a free press plays in a democracy,” Dalglish said. “It’s completely inappropriate and it clearly will have a chilling effect on reporters being able to do stories where they have to rely on confidential sources. There’s a reason why there are so many safeguards and hoops that the Justice Department has to go through to get phone records.”

Although Dalglish makes some valid points, given the badness that has befallen HP — and we can only imagine what horribleness is ahead — only the most foolish companies will attempt to gag board members or executives in a similarly idiotic fashion, or even try to hint that “leakers will be punished.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 8, 2006 3:27 PM to IP Democracy