Poor Patricia, Poor HP
Poor Patricia Dunn. She’s being butchered by the blogosphere and the mainstream media. But, rightly so. She was caught spying on her board members and journalists.
The basic facts are these: HP’s general counsel, at the request of its board, hired an outside investigative agency to determine who on the board had been leaking information to the press earlier this year. When the agency reported back that the leaker had been director George Keyworth, a former science advisor to President Reagan, Keyworth admitted it and was asked by Dunn to resign. He refused.
There followed a long chain of events, including the resignation from the board of Keyworth’s friend and fellow director Tom Perkins. Now, largely because of prodding by Perkins, it has emerged that in order to obtain those phone records, HP’s agent used methods that are unethical at best (and probably illegal as well).
The company admitted in an SEC filing yesterday that its contractors had lied to the phone company - on how many occasions remains unclear - by pretending to be someone they were not. They then were granted access to personal phone records.
If she was investigating the HP board by examining their HP email and internal HP telephone records it’s all fair game. Accessing the home and cell records of board members AND journalists by hired private investigators who are pretexting crosses the line.
The unethical (and possibly illegal) practices authorized by the Chairwoman of HP are reprehensible. She’s claiming ignorance. She didn’t know the precise methods that the PI was using to figure out which board member leaked information to the media. Bullshit. She’s responsible. She has to go.
And it’s comes at a time when HP was finally recovering post-Compaq-Carly ™. Profits are up, Dell looks more and more like the ugly girl in school, and Mark Hurd looked unstoppable as HP CEO.
And poor HP. The shareholders and employees deserve better.