http://energycommerce.house.gov/
Barton Condemns H-P for Leak Investigation
September 28, 2006Hewlett-Packard’s Pretexting Scandal: Testimony of Patricia C. Dunn
September 28, 2006Hewlett-Packard’s Pretexting Scandal: Testimony of Mark Hurd
September 28, 2006
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/23/1735202&from=rss
The Culture of Evasion
Posted by Zonk on Saturday September 23, @02:40PM from the dodging-the-bullet dept. HP Businesses The Almighty Buck
theodp writes "In the wake of Patricia Dunn's resignation, Wired's Fred Vogelstein walked away less than impressed with HP CEO's Mark Hurd's spying mea culpa. He says it smacked more of standard corporate ass covering than leadership, especially coming 3 weeks after the scandal broke. His sentiments are echoed in Computerworld's Culture of Evasion, which was written before Hurd mounted an I-knew-nothing-defense. Hurd claims that he bailed out on a meeting that approved the spying, neglected to read the spying report directed to him, and was clueless about the tracer technology employed in the reporter-baiting false e-mail he personally gave thumbs-up to."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/09/29/hp/index_np.html?source=rss
Another spying scandal for Capitol Hill
-- By Walter Shapiro
Hewlett-Packard ex-chairwoman Patricia Dunn got grilled about an unfolding scandal one lawmaker called "a plumbers' operation that would make Richard Nixon blush."
Sep. 29, 2006 | You know a company is in deep trouble when both its general counsel and its chief ethics officer resign on the eve of their congressional testimony -- and then immediately invoke the Fifth Amendment when they are sworn in on Capitol Hill. So it was with Hewlett-Packard on Thursday as most of the major players in the fast-moving Silicon Valley boardroom scandal were scheduled to have their moment of truth (or, at least, what passes as such in Washington) before congressional inquisitors.
There was an immediate letdown as Ann Baskins (the now ex-general counsel) and Kevin Hunsaker (her suddenly departed deputy), along with a half dozen private investigators and telephone snoops, all declined to testify, completely wiping out the initial panel of witnesses. Gone was the hope that Congress would unravel the underlying mystery of how a respected corporation like Hewlett-Packard could launch an internal leak investigation that morphed into a witch hunt -- one that included using flagrant misrepresentation (called by the euphemism "pretexting") to obtain personal phone records, computer spyware to track which employees forwarded e-mails to each other, and elaborate schemes to plant undercover moles in newsrooms.
Before a word of relevant testimony was heard, members of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee vied with each other to come up with the best one-liners to describe the saga of how Hewlett-Packard besmirched its honor by trampling on privacy rights. Colorado Democrat Diane DeGette likened it to a "made for TV movie." Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat clearly taken with the gumshoe angle, called it a "third-rate detective novel." Florida Republican Cliff Stearns invoked both the Keystone Kops and "Mission Impossible." But Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who has served in the House for more than a half-century, came up with the pitch-perfect analogy when he invoked Watergate to call it "a plumbers' operation that would make Richard Nixon blush were he still alive."
In an irony not lost on both Democrats and Republicans, Hewlett-Packard was being pressed to justify using quasi-legal subterfuge to obtain phone records as the full House was poised to vote to give the National Security Agency blanket permission to continue its warrantless eavesdropping program. Idaho Republican Butch Otter, a conservative with strong libertarian sympathies, wondered how Congress "could claim the moral high ground" on privacy "when some activities of our government have been questioned."
Instead of shocking new disclosures, what Thursday's hearing offered was a character study of Patricia Dunn, the former chairwoman of the Hewlett-Packard board (she resigned last week) and the central player in the leak investigation. When Dunn, now 53, was appointed in early 2005 to succeed Carly Fiorina as the head of the faction-riven Hewlett-Packard board, her elevation was regarded as an up-by-her-own-bootstraps triumph for a woman who had started in business as a secretary for Wells Fargo Investment Advisors.
There is no evidence that Dunn demanded that private investigators skirt the edge of the law (and perhaps go over it) in their efforts to discover which board member was giving the press accounts of the board's internal deliberations. (George Keyworth, Ronald Reagan's former science advisor, was later identified as the leaker.) But internal Hewlett-Packard memos and e-mails suggest that Dunn knew the rough contours of what was being done in the name of the board and did nothing to stop the investigators' subterranean practices.
Dunn, who has survived several bouts of cancer, could have also claimed her rights against self-incrimination. By instead testifying, she took on the task of simultaneously trying to accomplish two semi-contradictory goals: restoring her reputation and saying nothing that would add to her legal jeopardy in the litigation that is certain to flow out of the Hewlett-Packard meltdown. As her lawyer, James Brosnahan, said after the hearing, "Patty Dunn is a fighter. Everyone who thought that she'd go quietly into the night is wrong."
Dunn's defense -- which is based on the supposition that a talented, driven woman could also be obtuse -- came shining through as she described in her opening statement to the committee her dealings with an outside investigator, Ron DeLia, who had earlier invoked the Fifth Amendment. "In my two or three conversations with Mr. DeLia," Dunn said, "I learned that checking telephone records was a standard investigative technique at HP, and that they were drawn from publicly available sources." In reality, DeLia and his shadowy sub-contractors obtained these records through impersonation and other unethical (if perhaps legal) means.
"I understood that you could call up and get phone records -- and it is a common investigative technique," Dunn also said. As she continued to repeat her innocent assumption during her nearly five hours of testimony, Oregon Republican Greg Walden finally lost his patience. With a note of puzzlement Walden asked, "You thought that I could call up and get your phone records?" Dunn responded, "I thought you could." Finally, shaking his head with incredulity, he simply inquired, "You're serious?"
In a technical sense, Dunn was an impressive witness. Toward the end of the afternoon, both Republican subcommittee chairman Ed Whitfield of Kentucky and DeGette, the senior Democrat on the panel, had that glazed, weary look that can often be seen in bus stations at 3 o'clock in the morning. Dunn, in contrast, was sitting at the witness table, not a hair out of place, with the kind of strict posture that Emily Post would admire. The only hint of Dunn's nervousness was her tight two-handed grip on her pen.
Dunn's difficulties at Hewlett-Packard may have partly stemmed from her self-imposed tunnel vision and her unswerving belief in corporate hierarchies that left her behaving as if ethics were not her department. In her written chronology provided to the committee, Dunn acknowledged that she had been briefed about a "sting" operation that would somehow expose the leaker by feeding fabricated information to a business reporter covering the company. Asked by DeGette about her feelings as to whether this was proper corporate conduct, Dunn admitted, "This did raise some concerns for me." The Colorado Democrat pressed her on what she did as a result. Dunn's answer was classic bureaucratic buck-passing: "I sent the team to management to get approval for their techniques."
While Dunn spent half the afternoon expressing "regret" in a passive mistakes-were-made fashion, she drew the line there regarding her culpability in the scandal that has left Hewlett-Packard reeling and cost her the chairwoman's seat. "I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened," she flatly declared at one point. While perhaps integral to Dunn's legal strategy, this stubborn response may represent the twilight of the career of a boardroom champion who, as she testified, prides herself on her mastery of corporate governance.
...our other ongoing scandal!
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=BATT-LENOVO
Dear Lenovo Customer,
Lenovo and IBM Corporation, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies, have announced the voluntary recall of certain lithium-ion batteries manufactured by Sony Corporation. In the interest of public safety, Lenovo will offer customers free-of-charge replacement batteries for all recalled batteries. View Battery recall FAQs.
Would HP have done this?
Toshiba to exchange a further 830,000 Sony batteries
Toshiba claims there are no safety issues with the battery pack used in certain notebook PCs
By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service September 29, 2006
Toshiba is offering to replace a further 830,000 laptop batteries containing cells made by Sony, it said Friday. The offer covers computers sold worldwide and is separate from a similar announcement made by the company last week.
Once again, quality control would have been cheaper!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060928-7858.html
Sony issues global li-ion battery recall
9/28/2006 1:46:55 PM, by Jacqui Cheng
Sony has finally bitten the bullet and issued a worldwide recall of all Sony-manufactured lithium-ion batteries used in notebook computers. Earlier in the day, Lenovo/IBM joined the ranks of Dell, Apple, and Toshiba in issuing a recall for all Sony batteries that ship with their notebooks.
http://www.csoonline.com.au/index.php?id=779580743&rid=-302
2006: The Year of Living (Less) Dangerously
Staff Writers , CSO Online 28/09/2006 13:07:04
In its fourth edition, The Global State of Information Security 2006 survey reveals that global information executives, still relatively new to security's disciplines, are learning and improving.
http://secure.idg.com.au/images/cio/CSO_Security_Survey.pdf
Are we getting a bit carried away?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/09/28/cp-athabascabreach.html
Forwarded email breached student's privacy: commissioner
Last Updated: Thursday, September 28, 2006 | 2:34 PM MT The Canadian Press
The president of Athabasca University breached a student's privacy by forwarding an e-mail to other employees, an adjudicator for Alberta's privacy commissioner has ruled.
The student contacted the president and several other employees asking for permission to resubmit some assignments and rewrite an exam, the privacy office says in a release.
The president spoke with the student, then sent her an e-mail, which contained a sequence of past e-mails, and copied it to a number of employees at the distance-education university.
The adjudicator found the president had the authority to disclose some information, but overstepped the limits of what was necessary.
The university has been ordered to develop a policy about how to deal with information in such situations.
Somehow I don't trust this company.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060928/183004.shtml
Diebold Swears Everything Will Work Perfectly In Time For The Election
from the somehow,-I-doubt-it dept
Even if you ignored the history of problems with Diebold's voting machines, and just looked at the problems Maryland had a few weeks ago with Diebold's electronic voting machines, it's pretty difficult to believe that the company will have a "total fix" of the machines in the next few weeks. However, since Diebold's machines have a ridiculously long list of problems for many, many years, combined with Diebold's typically indifferent, misleading or mocking responses to each report of problems, it's shouldn't even be an option to believe that they'll actually be able to deliver glitch free (and secure) machines (note that they're not promising to fix any of the security issues, just a few of the glitches that were seen last time). Also given that last minute changes are likely to introduce new, unexpected, problems since there won't be any real ability to test them, this could just make things worse. Of course, the article about Diebold quotes elections administrator Linda Lamone: "We're not going to use the e-poll books unless Diebold is able to demonstrate to me that they're in tip-top shape." That would be the same Linda Lamone who claimed that no one in her office had ever had computer problems, so you have to wonder what her definition of "tip-top shape" is.
Towards ubiquitous surveillance What legal protections would you have? (Can you hear the Twilight Zone theme? Do do de do, do do de do)
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34697
Intel proudly shows off snooping tech
IDF Reads your PC even when it's off
By Tony Dennis in Dullsville, California: Wednesday 27 September 2006, 23:29
IN A LAUDABLE effort to make life much, much easier for IT managers, Intel outlined how it intends to widen the scope of its Active Management Technology (AMT).
AMT can effectively snoop on what's inside your PC.
The principle is simple. Details about a VPro or Centrino based PC are saved into non-volatile memory. But, scarily, this information can be read even if the machine's power switch is in the 'off' position.
Armed with such information an IT manager might want to remotely fix a PC. This can be done using Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (formerly known as La Grande).
Just how powerful this facility can be, was shown in a demo where a connected laptop was rebooted and its BIOS edited from a management console.
Good stuff. But Intel intends this capability to work over wireless networks not just wired (ie fixed Ethernet) links.
Obviously Intel claims this kind of stuff is mega secure. But what if it were hacked? Or what if they hacked it?
You could potentially be woken up in the middle of the night by the sounds of somebody completely reconfiguring your laptop.
Shall we call this the Boulder Syndrome?
Karr's lawyers say porn case can't continue with no crime scene
posted by: Jeffrey Wolf Web Producer Created: 9/27/2006 9:49 PM MST - Updated: 9/27/2006 9:49 PM MST
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) - Lawyers for John Mark Karr, one-time suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case, told a judge Wednesday that the child pornography case against their client cannot move forward after key evidence went missing. [Have they looked on e-Bay? Bob]
Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Cerena Wong agreed to consider whether to dismiss the five misdemeanor charges against Karr amid revelations that the sheriff's department lost the computer that allegedly held the pornographic images.
On Wednesday, sheriff's officials and prosecutors revealed that not only was the computer missing, but also their copies of its contents. All that remains is reports from the 2001 investigation and new information about what was contained on Karr's computers.
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