HP spying, round 4: Hurd heard (and pimp my Yankovic)

I Lost On Jeopardy ... but I won on IT Blogwatch! Today we tune into the IT world's real-life soap opera, with the latest revelations involving HP and its senior officers. Not to mention Weird Al Yankovic's new hit, dedicated to geeks, y'all ...

When will it end? The HP saga lurches in a new direction, after reports surface that HP CEO Mark Hurd knew and approved of the bizarre techniques used to ferret out a boardroom leak. IDG's Steven Schwankert picks up the thread:

Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd knew of plans for a disinformation campaign designed to find the source of leaks from boardroom discussions, The Washington Post reported today. ...

The disinformation campaign was designed to uncover the source of the leaks by creating a phony HP insider who would gain the trust of a reporter, feed her false information and, in the process, place a software tracer on her e-mail using an attachment, according to e-mails obtained by the Post.

Groklaw describes how the trap worked:

The plan was this, according to the article: HP senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and another HP employee made up a fictitious tipster, Jacob, who would "be" a disgruntled HP executive and would cultivate [CNet reporter Dawn Kawamoto] by telling her that he was an avid reader. Then "Jacob" would send her a valid tip about a new handheld device, so she'd trust him, and after that a bogus tip about HP buying a computer data farm. Their hope was that she'd forward the first tip to board member George Keyworth, with the web bug reporting it back to them. This is so all about Keyworth. And guess what the vehicle was for the keylogging software? A Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

Paul Kedrosky is one of the bloggers who invokes John Le Carre:

Call it Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Stupid, but I can't wait for the novelization. ...

But now it takes a turn for the dangerous, with it obvious that CEO Mark Hurd has approved this ploy to plant material false stories and an electronic bug on a reporter, all to catch an HP boardmember.

[HP Chairwoman Patricia] Dunn is gone. The longer HP pretends otherwise, the worse it gets for Hurd and for the share price. It is all over but the announcing.

Ron K. Jeffries concurs:

We most likely have not heard the reall “good stuff” yet. My prediction: the record will show they sought advice from external counsel. So Larry Sonsini, of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati may be implicated, although there may be just enough plausible deniability that he can avoid becoming a witness before Congress

It is incredible that the HP board has not terminated Patricia Dunn. And given how this is playing out, they need to start an immediate search for a CEO who understands ethics and the law.

John Paczkowski, Good Morning Silicon Valley:

... At a time when the company now says it did not believe that its actions were illegal, but when the company should have known, at the very least, that its actions quite possibly were, or that it was retaining others to commit acts that quite possibly were illegal, an ethics officer was appointed to lead an investigation, because he was an attorney, and could shelter that investigation from public or regulatory view.

Rob Hyndman: Hurd might get some heat, but ...

These disclosures may well earn Hurd an invitation to the House Energy and Commerce investigative subcommittee hearings. But will they do worse? Not as long as Hurd can argue he believed the investigation to be lawful, which by all accounts is what he was told by those conducting it.

Grokaw closes out with this thought:

Here's the saddest part of this extraordinary tale. A company insanely paranoid about leaks is now leaking from coast to coast things you wouldn't want your best friend to find out about you. Odd about life, how things work out sometimes.

Friday Afternoon Update: Hurd describes what he knew and when, and Dunn resigns, effective immediately. Do you think Hurd should himself step down? Visit the Sound Off blog to share your thoughts.

Buffer overflow:

Around the Net

• Paul Murphy: Programming language choices
• TrustedReviews: Batteries That Recharge Through USB
• Antony Reynolds: Women in IT
• The Old New Thing: If you don't trust your administrators, you've already lost
• bwilds: Wireless Network Auditing with Windows
• Schneier on Security: Screaming Cell Phones
• Dennis Crouch : Patent Prosecution: Sensitivity to Claim Fee Variation

Around Computerworld

• Robert L. Mitchell: CIO: Quad-processor Opteron server is "untouchable"
• Jerri Ledford: The current state of security is no surprise
• David DeJean: The New Wish Book: IBM's Linux Migration Guide
• Martin MC Brown: Making gadgets continually appealing
• Douglas Schweitzer: Hey Ken, I'm jealous too!
• Shark Tank: It ain't pretty, but it'll do for now
• SaaS Revolution: Recent press: Microsoft, Oracle and RightNow coming on strong
• Preston Gralla: AT&T charges elderly widow $14,000 in "rent" for rotary phone
• Robert L. Mitchell: Server virtualization will create the need for more physical servers, not less
• Lucas Mearian: Think they can't see your email? Think again.

And finally... The word "JavaScript" finally makes it into song lyrics, thanks to Weird Al and his bass-heavy viral hit, "White and Nerdy."

Computerworld's Senior Online Projects Editor Ian Lamont compiled IT Blogwatch today. Next Monday, regular Blogwatcher Richi Jennings will return - yay!