The SoapVox

Ok, it seems like Groklaw’s RSS feed is broken today [edit: no, it wasn't Groklaw's fault, it was my RSS reader that was being dumb], for some reason…I didn’t see any updates, and decided to check, and found…four new articles about HP.

The first one is about The Wicked Chairwoman of the board, Patricia Dunn, who claims she didn’t know pretexting was being used in the investigation. So…she’s gonna blame the company that they hired for the investigation. As PJ so nicely puts it:

See? It’s all the fault of the investigators, or maybe just the subcontractors they hired. The lowest guys on the tottering totem pole did it. Natch. All alone. Without authorization from a living, breathing soul. California’s Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that would be HP’s obvious defense, that it wasn’t them, that it was the data brokers that broke the law. And so it comes to pass.

I guess everybody saw that one coming in a mile away.

On the second post (updated four times), PJ informs us about the Feds and Congress getting into the game. At least this info I hadn’t missed lol! She also mentions HP’s quarterly report for the period ending July 31, 2006, and makes emphasis on the fact that there’s no mention at all about the loss of a board member nor about the May 18 meeting…I guess HP wants to make sure the less people possible read about their idiocy.

PJ’s third post is called, appropriately, The New HP Way, and looks in some depth at what the un-chairing of Dunn actually means…and among other things, she comes to the same conclusion as I in my previous post:

Uh huh. If they are keeping her on the board, how have they ensured it won’t happen again? What is the message they are really sending? A spokesman for HP is quoted in Forbes as saying that she “stepped down voluntarily to minimize the distraction to the company.” Um. What? She told us Friday she’d only step down if the board asked her to. Is that voluntarily? Pretexting is a form of lying, remember. Let’s not get in that lying habit, shall we? Dunn, for her part, expressed regret that people who are not her used “inappropriate techniques”. Personally I’d have used the word illegal

She also talks about the resignation of Gearge A. Keyworth, who resigned from the board today and was the leak that Dunn was hunting down and had refused to resign from the board until today…and then goes on to analize an article by Ina Fried in which things keep getting confusing, making it seem like at least some of Keyworth’s leaks were actually orchestated by the company…how’s that for a nice twist?

In the article, PJ also posts the whole official press release.

Then comes the fourth post, short and sweet: CA AG on HP: I have enough to prosecute. This comes from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and the salient point of the article is:

“I have enough evidence to prosecute people in the firm and on the outside,” Lockyer said in an interview.

Does that sound to you like Lockey bought the “we didn’t know” excuse? Didn’t think so :)

In other words, the story about the leak is getting weirder and weirder, while the Wicked Chairwoman will only last until January, but will stay as boardmember, demonstrating that HP isn’t taking this very seriously…but the Attorney General of California is, and he’s willing to push until he gets those that are guilty of these crimes…let’s hope he gets them nailed, and not just gets them a slap on the wrist…it would be saying very bad things to american corporations if you could get away with this kind of crap.

UPDATE: Groklaw’s latest update to the last post now says that it’s not two statutes that were violated, but three. And the CA AG is getting ready to file charges as soon as next week…let’s hope they nail the guilty parties as hard as the law allows.

Technorati Tags: hp legal problem, hp illegal investigation, pretexting, tom perkins, hp leak probe, hp pretexting scandal, hewlett-packard pretexting

Tags: Thoughts

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