At a recent congressional hearing, the chief privacy officer of Hewlett-Packard testified in favor of a federal privacy standard for consumers. “Privacy,” Scott Taylor said, “is a core HP value.”
We know now that wasn’t the case.
The HP corporate board is under scrutiny over the hacking of phone records during an internal leak investigation. The scandal has shined a light on a reprehensible and perhaps illegal practice called “pretexting.”
The episode was kicked off when HP board chairwoman Patricia Dunn responded to some uncomfortable news reports by ordering an investigation into who was leaking confidential boardroom discussions.
At a May board meeting, Dunn announced that investigators had identified a source quoted anonymously in a January story on CNET.com. She revealed that the source had been identified as board member George “Jay” Keyworth.
Investigators hired by HP had faked the identities of board members and nine journalists in order to obtain their phone records. One board member, Tom Perkins, quit in disgust, alerting authorities that he had acted “solely to protest the questionable ethics and the dubious legality of the chairman’s methods.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Pretexting has existed since at least the early 1990s and has recently turned into a cottage industry that dances along a blurry line of legality.
For a fee, pretexters contact companies using some key bit of information – such as a Social Security number or mom’s maiden name – to con their way into getting records that belong to others. Often the buyers of this information are private investigators checking out a spouse. Sometimes, it’s a way to hijack personal information so an identity thief can open charge accounts, order merchandise or borrow money.
Pretexting to get financial information already is illegal, but experts don’t agree about whether that law applies to phone records as well. Congress is considering legislation that would clarify the situation. Given the HP fiasco and the threat to any and all of us, that’s an excellent idea.
All kinds of law enforcement are looking into the HP mess. On Tuesday, California’s attorney general said his office already has found enough wrongdoing to merit indictments. Dunn will step down in Janury as HP chairwoman though, incredibly, she will remain on the board.
HP’s scandal erupted just as the company was enjoying a resurgence under new CEO Mark Hurd. Hurd will succeed Dunn as board chairman while remaining CEO and president – a potential conflict that is sure to raise new questions about HP’s corporate governance. But that’s a different story.
