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Taking Corporate Spying to the Next Level
18 comments- IT TOPICS:Business Intelligence, Careers, Management, Security
Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn decided earlier this year she had to put a stop to press leaks coming from the board of directors. To do so, she commissioned a company that specializes in electronic surveillance to monitor the home phone records of her own directors to find the leak . She succeeded in finding the leak, but the cost to her career and personal reputation may just now be coming to light.
What I find interesting in this situation is that the surveillance consultants didn't actually tap any of the phone calls of the directors; instead, they did what the article calls 'pretexting', a form of fraud where the consultant calls the phone company and pretends to be the person under surveillance and asks for their phone records. I call it fraud, plain and simple. They then used the metadata contained in the phone records to determine who the directors were calling and when, which provided enough information for them to determine who was the press leak. This was provided to Chairwoman Dunn and was enough evidence for her to ask for the resignation of the offending board member. Surprisingly, only one board member, Tom Perkins, was incensed enough by the spying to resign. Dunn and the board have apparently done everything they can to cover up the situation, but now are facing civil litigation for this action.
This is a perfect example of the power of metadata and the fact that you don't need to have the actual data to draw a considerable amount of information from records. After last month's AOL debacle, people should be starting to realize how important the metadata is. This is why we need to protect our search records, our phone records, and any other information that will tell others where we've been and when; that information is just as important to our privacy as the actual search results and phone records themselves. Privacy is a right, not a privilege, one we have to be vigilant in defending.
Patricia Dunn stepped over a line when she commissioned the monitoring of her board members. Can someone who is willing to cross that line lead an international company with the confidence of her stock holders? After all, if she crossed this line, what other steps might she be willing to take? Do her ends justify her means? On another level, this can be seen as a direct parallel to our own government's desire to see our phone and search records; the only difference is the government is using 'terrorists' as the justification, not 'press leak'. The scale is different, but the scenario is the same.
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- Martin McKeay: Taking Corporate Spying to the Next Level
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