Hewlett-Packard Settles Spying Case

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/business/media/14hp.html?ref=technology

SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/hewlett_packard_corpo
ration/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  has agreed to a financial settlement with
The New York Times and three BusinessWeek magazine journalists in connection
with the company's spying scandal that stemmed from surreptitiously
obtaining private phone records.

The parties to the dispute declined to disclose the amount of the
settlement, which was reached privately and not as a result of a lawsuit.

The settlement brings to a close one of a few unresolved aspects of a spying
scandal that tarnished Hewlett-Packard and brought down its chairwoman,
Patricia
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/patricia_c_dun
n/index.html?inline=nyt-per> C. Dunn, and several high-ranking executives.

To trace what Ms. Dunn and others considered disloyal and risky leaks from
the company's board, H.P. retained investigators who engaged in a
wide-ranging investigation in 2006. The inquiry involved "pretexting," a
practice that had someone pretending to be someone else to obtain private
records from phone companies.

Phone records compromised included those of the three BusinessWeek staff
members - Ben Elgin, Peter Burrows and Roger Crockett - and the family phone
records of The New York Times reporter, John Markoff, and his wife, Leslie
Terzian Markoff.

"What H.P. did was an affront to the free press," said Terry Gross, a San
Francisco lawyer who represented the reporters for BusinessWeek, part of the
Mc-Graw-Hill Companies, their families and The New York Times. "They didn't
like what reporters were writing, and they broke into their private
telephone accounts to identify who their sources were."

...

 

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