Posted on 09/21/2006 2:00:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BOSTON
Insert your own punch line: Hewlett-Packard Co., the technology company facing federal and state investigations for spying on board members and journalists, is co-sponsor of an award for "privacy innovation."
Nominees are currently being accepted for the fourth annual HP/IAPP Privacy Innovation award, which Hewlett-Packard gives in conjunction with the Maine-based International Association of Privacy Professionals.
According to the award's Web site, the prize was created to honor "strong and unique contributions to the privacy industry."
"At present, there is not sufficient recognition for organizations that have embraced privacy as a competitive advantage, and as a business/governmental imperative," the site states.
Previous winners of the award have included eBay Inc., Microsoft Corp., Sprint Nextel Corp. and two Canadian provincial offices. No one from HP is a judge.
Two IAPP directors did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday, nor did an HP spokesman.
HP is facing multiple investigations into the company's surveillance of directors, employees and journalists as it sought the source of boardroom leaks to the media. HP investigators posed as other people to obtain their phone records and sent at least one reporter monitoring "spyware" in an e-mail.
An HP director quit in protest of the methods and another resigned after being outed as a leaker. Questions about HP's methods led the board chair, Patricia Dunn, to agree to cede the post in January, though she plans to remain a director.
One place to read about all this is none other the Privacy Innovation award's Web site. It contains a long list of privacy-related stories in the news, including the HP affair.
On the Net:
http://www.privacyinnovation.org/about.html
Anything HP wants to do in their buildings or with their equipment to find who is leaking in espionage is alright with me.
You have privacy in your home, not at the work of you boss and don't expect it IMO.
The award would have meant something in the days when HP was the pinnacle of ethics, the place everybody wanted to work.
Now it's like getting and award in records confidientiality from Hillary.
Do you think is would also be okay for them to monitor employees who are watching porn while in HP buildings with HP equipment?
The problem is, they went far outside of physical company properties as part of the "investigation",, or so it sounds.
I know of employers who fired some of their women employees for just that. They were hired to work and be good representatives of the company, not to look up porn while at work.
Bottom line is there is home time and work time. Consider work time to not be private and to be a time to do what you are paid for, not to do any private thing beyond taking emergency private calls when needed IMO.
If calls are made FROM HP offices or with phones or phone lines paid for with HP money, then no.
If these home lines were paid for with HP money directly to work out of that home, then those records are fair game, if they were private lines, then that is of course against the law.
Seems HP had major espionage going on way up in the ranks though and got desperate.
I think they should have used outside of work what ever legal private investigative means they legally could have and nothing more.
As you say, they enter the illegal side of the line in going after privately held lines of participating in fraud to get information illegally. ILLEGAL is not good, I agree with you.
Wasn't there a recent survey about how much time is wasted at work? Do you suppose HP and others would probably make a lot of money up by monitoring employees and firing time wasters or even prosecuting those who are looking at porn.
If they tapped any lines that HP paid for they may be OK, if they were private lines they did not pay the bill for that gets to be illegal fast.
More needs to be revealed before we can judge IMO.
WHO WERE THEY LEAKING TO?
Who was willingly stealing form HP by the way?
Judge first, ask questions later.
;-)
I agree, need to wait and see if there is any there there..
At this point, I'm not sure if any actual "stealing" outside of info re: inside corporate meetings, topics, and direction of company occurred , ...
In this case, it seems the methods used are more in question, and not so much the motive to determine where leaks might be inside the power ring.
If administration is being also paid by competitors to participate in espionage, that should be made known in this case as well.
If someone was slitting their wrists, they may have felt desperate measures were required.
We'll have to see what unfolds...
Desperate Measures
an HP courtroom melodrama coming soon
to the WB network this fall :-)
If it's a COMPANY computer, on COMPANY time, in a COMPANY building.....they can monitor all they want.....this is OLD news......when I was in HR at Sequent Computers in 1989 we were dealing with this.....sheesh.
The reporter leads the reader - by the nose - by using the words 'spying'. The leaker was the hostile party.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.