HP's Surveillance Methods

Seems like it's not just Board of Directors' Phone Records that were obtained by HP under the excuse of enforcing an exemplary corporate citizenship, but on pretty much everyone that communicated with them or is somehow in their circle of friends -- no comments on the boring minutes of meetings shared with the press as the main reason all this. Besides passing the ball to the next board member over who's been aware of, more details on the exact methods used by HP emerge :

- HP obtained phone records for seven current or former HP board members, nine journalists, and their family members;

- HP provided investigators with the Social Security number of one HP employee, in addition the Social Security numbers of 4 journalists, 3 current and former HP board members, and 1 employee were also obtained by investigators;

- HP investigators attempted to use a tracer to track information sent to a reporter;

- The concept of sending misinformation to a reporter and the contents of that email were approved by Mr. Hurd, although no evidence was found to suggest that he approved the use of the tracer for surveillance;

- Investigators hired by HP monitored a board meeting, a trip to Boulder taken by a board member, as well as the board member's spouse and family members;

- In February of 2006, investigators watched a journalist at her residence and in February of 2006 “third party investigators may have conducted a search of an individual’s trash.”

By the time HP provided the associated parties SSNs, they've pretty much left them on the sharks to finish the rest, disinformation though, is something I previously thought they didn't do, but with dumpster diving in place as well, I guess they did order the entire all-in-one surveillance package.

Megacorp ownz your digitally accumulated life, and yes, it can also engineer and snoop on your real one. All they were so talkative about, is publicly available information that every decent analyst should have definitely considered starting from HP's historical performance as a foundation for future speculations. In between HP is (was) also sponsoring a Privacy Innovation Award.

Who's the winner at the bottom line? That's ex-CEO Carly Fiorina -- phone records also obtained -- whose upcoming book will profitably take advantage of the momentum.