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Hewlett-Packard fraudulently obtained private phone records while trying to trace a media leak, according to a former board member who resigned when he learned of the action.
Tom Perkins, one of the founders of Silicon Valley venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and an HP board member until May, resigned after learning that HP consultants posed as Perkins and other board members to obtain their confidential telecommunications records -- a tactic known as pretexting.
The investigation was intended to uncover the source of a CNET News.com article published in January describing a confidential planning session among board members that took place over several days at a California resort spa.
"This is the corporate governance equivalent of using an elephant gun to shoot a butterfly in a gun-free zone," said Perkins's attorney, Viet Dinh, a former Justice Department attorney and author of the Patriot Act who now teaches at Georgetown University law school. "The unfortunate truth is that one of the world's largest and most respected corporations may have used fraudulent practices to spy on its own directors."
Pretexting is a method whereby a third party calls a phone company and poses as a specific customer of the phone company in order to request records of the customer's phone calls. Such records generally contain the phone numbers of people called, the date and time of the call and the duration of the conversation.
Tom Perkins, one of the founders of Silicon Valley venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and an HP board member until May, resigned after learning that HP consultants posed as Perkins and other board members to obtain their confidential telecommunications records -- a tactic known as pretexting.
The investigation was intended to uncover the source of a CNET News.com article published in January describing a confidential planning session among board members that took place over several days at a California resort spa.
"This is the corporate governance equivalent of using an elephant gun to shoot a butterfly in a gun-free zone," said Perkins's attorney, Viet Dinh, a former Justice Department attorney and author of the Patriot Act who now teaches at Georgetown University law school. "The unfortunate truth is that one of the world's largest and most respected corporations may have used fraudulent practices to spy on its own directors."
Pretexting is a method whereby a third party calls a phone company and poses as a specific customer of the phone company in order to request records of the customer's phone calls. Such records generally contain the phone numbers of people called, the date and time of the call and the duration of the conversation.
Several phone carriers, including AT&T and Verizon have recently brought suit against pretexters to bar them from contacting the phone companies again and have won those suits.
AT&T would not comment about the allegations against HP specifically, but the company recently filed suit in Texas and will soon file an additional suit in California "to seek the identities of perpetrators who have wrongfully accessed our business records containing private customer information -- including calling records," wrote spokesman Walt Sharp in an e-mail. "AT&T will pursue damages and injunctive relief against those imposters who we are able to identify, and will take appropriate actions against anyone identified as directing such activities."
AT&T would not comment about the allegations against HP specifically, but the company recently filed suit in Texas and will soon file an additional suit in California "to seek the identities of perpetrators who have wrongfully accessed our business records containing private customer information -- including calling records," wrote spokesman Walt Sharp in an e-mail. "AT&T will pursue damages and injunctive relief against those imposters who we are able to identify, and will take appropriate actions against anyone identified as directing such activities."