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The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book. Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story ... was “bullsh-t.” ... McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this...

...In recent letters to state Sen. Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), the trade groups said the proposed legislation was written too broadly and could undermine anti-piracy efforts. They said investigators sometimes pose as someone else to obtain bootlegged CDs or movies and to break into online piracy rings... Hollywood succeeded in killing a similar bill last year. Other opponents of the bill included the California Chamber of Commerce and the Direct Marketing Assn.

I am preparing a presentation on phishing, for my computer law class. I will have them create a hyperlink that apparently goes to a "real" site (e.g. www.realsite.com), but actually goes to a second site (e.g. www.fakesite.com). Question: am I correct that there's a way that www.fakesite.com can "mask" its own URL, and tell the browser instead (falsely) that it's at the "real" site? Is there html that does it? I'd like to be able to explain that concept and how it's done, and appreciate any help. Thanks.

HP's freshest board member Ken Thompson won't need to take the company's Pretexting 101 course offering. As Wachovia's CEO, Thompson has become well acquainted with the legal concerns surrounding phone record fraud. Just months before the HP scandal materialized, Wachovia was found to be keeping curious company. The financial services firm stood out as the largest customer of Global Information Group, paying the Florida-based data broker and suspected pretexter $456,250. It's not clear what Wachovia hired Global Information to do. Wachovia won't say. And, when a Global Information staffer was brought before Congress in June to testify about the practice...

The California AG has charged Dunn with four felony counts, but her lawyer claims they've got the wrong person for the wrong reason California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has charged former Hewlett-Packard () Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and others involved in the company's spying scandal with four felony counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy. "One of our state's most venerable corporate institutions lost its way," said Lockyer at a press conference on Oct. 4 announcing the charges in the month-old scandal. The indictments give Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and the company reason to breathe easier, even as they await word...

SAN FRANCISCO - California’s attorney general announced indictments Wednesday against Hewlett-Packard’s ousted chairwoman Patricia Dunn and former ethics lawyer Kevin Hunsaker for their roles in a snowballing boardroom espionage scandal. “In this misguided effort, people inside and outside HP violated privacy rights and broke state law. Those who cross the legal line must be held accountable,” Attorney General Bill Lockyer told reporters. Three private detectives involved in the US computer equipment giant’s alleged spying operations were also indicted, Lockyer said. Dunn and Hunsaker were indicted along with Ronald DeLia, Matthew Depante and Bryan Wagner, Lockyer said at a press conference...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - A California court issued arrest warrants Wednesday for former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, former senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and three private investigators tied to the technology giant's pretexting scandal after they were charged with felonies in connection with the H-P boardroom leak scandal. The five are charged with fraudulent wire communications, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft and conspiracy. ~ snip ~

SAN JOSE California's attorney general will seek criminal indictments Wednesday against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and four others involved in the corporate spying scandal, according to news reports. Citing people familiar with the case, The New York Times and BusinessWeek reported that Dunn, Kevin Hunsaker, HP's ousted chief ethics officer, and Ronald DeLia, a Boston-area private investigator, would each face criminal charges. Two other outside investigators Joseph DePante of Melbourne, Fla. and Bryan Wagner of Littleton, Colo. were also being charged, the Times said. They each will face four felony charges: use of false or fraudulent pretenses to...

From the House Committee on Energy and Commerce website - Schedule - Hewlett-Packard’s Pretexting Scandal Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Thursday, September 28, 2006 2123 Rayburn House Office Building 10:00 AM ET Webcast available Available now in PDF format - Testimony of Patricia C. Dunn Testimony of Mark Hurd

See for example this thread first. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, a large scandal has broken concerning the efforts of unscrupulous, highly-placed individuals to gain access to the private phone records and conversations of dissenters. The rights of these dissenters are guaranteed by law. Does this sound familiar? Are you thinking of the words “NSA interecpt / wiretap program?” If you are, then we are not connecting here. I am speaking of the recent controversy regarding some of the corporate executives at Hewlett-Packard, and their attempts to unearth the source of leaks of corporate secrets (or...

Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd announces he has accepted the resignation of former chairwoman Patricia Dunn from the board of directors as a result of the H-P leak investigation and spying scandal. MORE...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co. shoved Chairwoman Patricia Dunn off its board Friday, severing its ties to a leader whose efforts to plug a media leak morphed into a spying scandal that has spawned criminal and congressional investigations. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company will turn the chairmanship over to its chief executive, Mark Hurd, who was supposed to take over that job in January as part of changes announced two weeks ago. But things have changed since then amid a wave of leaked documents revealing how deeply HP's investigators intruded into the personal lives of seven directors, nine journalists,...

Excerpt - Don't blame Hewlett-Packard Chairman Patricia Dunn, her new lawyer said Wednesday, for the convulsions the company's board have suffered in the wake of its troubled investigation of boardroom leaks. "She's neither a lawyer nor is she an investigator," said James Brosnahan, the Morrison & Foerster litigator whom Dunn hired this week. "And she's not the kind of person, frankly, who would advise people to do something illegal." Dunn has come under scrutiny for her role in directing the troubled probe -- The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that she closely supervised it -- and she's the latest figure...

Excerpt - Hewlett-Packard Co. may be the world's largest technology company, but the superlative that better suits it these days is Provider of the World's Strangest Corporate Drama. For two weeks, almost every day has brought revelations of questionable tactics that HP investigators used this year and last to root out who had been describing boardroom deliberations to the media. Corporate intelligence is an old and frequently practiced art, but HP's efforts feel more Watergate than Wall Street. Not only did investigators impersonate board members, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records, but according to multiple reports, they also...

Excerpt - Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Mark V. Hurd approved an elaborate "sting" operation on a reporter in February in an attempt to plug leaks to the media, according to an e-mail message sent by HP Chairman Patricia C. Dunn. The document, one of more than two dozen e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, for the first time links Hurd to an internal investigation of media leaks that has led to criminal probes and will be the subject of a congressional hearing next week. ~ snip ~

SAN FRANCISCO Extending beyond the skullduggery that pried loose people's private phone records, Hewlett-Packard Co. investigators hunting for a boardroom leak shadowed the company's directors and tried to install snooping software on at least one reporter's computer, according to published reports. While the additional surveillance reported by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal may provoke more indignation about HP's probe, the tactics aren't likely to shift the focus of the inquiries into whether the company and its investigators broke any laws in their quest to identify the boardroom leaker. Authorities and politicians remain primarily concerned about the...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - A Congressional panel on Friday asked outgoing Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, H-P general counsel Ann Baskins and two others tied to the company's controversial probe into media leaks to appear at a hearing on the matter later this month. The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters to Dunn, Baskins, H-P's outside counsel Larry Sonsini and private investigator Ronald DeLia, seeking their testimony at a Sept. 28 hearing. The committee previously gave H-P until Sept. 18 to turn in requested documents related to the investigation. The requests came a...

SAN FRANCISCO Investigators plan to search the Boston-area offices of a private investigation firm involved in the Hewlett-Packard Co. spying scandal, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday. Lockyer told The Associated Press that he is working with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly in the investigation of Security Outsourcing Solutions, a small firm believed to have aided HP in its possibly illegal probe to root out media leaks in its ranks. "He's assisting in getting our search warrants served on that firm so that we can fully examine their records," Lockyer said. He said the firm's Needham, Mass., offices will...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - California's attorney general could file criminal charges within a week in the boardroom spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co., a spokesman said Wednesday, and experts say the company's top brass and third-party detectives are all possible targets. Also on Wednesday, the company disclosed that the scope of the investigation into media leaks was wider than it initially reported. In a message Tuesday to HP's 150,000 employees, embattled Chairwoman Patricia Dunn acknowledged the investigation extended beyond board members and included two HP employees and "a number of individuals outside the company including journalists.""I extend my sincere apologies to...

NEW YORK - Although the boardroom scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co. made the practice more widely known, buying phone records or other personal information obtained by "pretext" calls appears to have been common in parts of the business world. In a letter to the House Energy and Commerce committee, which was investigating the issue this year, data broker PDJ Investigative Services described its customers as "law offices, repossession companies, financial institutions, collection agencies, bail enforcement agencies, law enforcement agencies and various private investigation and research companies.""Those businesses have a common need. That need is to be able to locate individuals, who...