Patricia Dunn (HP’s Chairwoman) hired and authorized a team of “electronic-security experts) to spy on board members for the month of January 2006. This was in response to board level strategy information being leaked to CNET. What I find amazing is that the scope of this spying program covered board members home and personal telephone records. Apparently they used a lot of pretext to get the record information and then some data analytics to look for trends and patterns.
During a board meeting the person accused of leaking the information admitted to it and was asked to leave. That’s when things really heated up. After 90 minutes of lively discussion, Tom Perkins (board member and VERY prominent VC) called Dunn’s activities “illegal, unethical and a misplaced corporate priorityâ€. He then quit. Since HP is a public company it has to report Perkins’ leaving to the SEC. Perkins’ private lawyer has asked the SEC to force HP to disclose the reason behind his departure.
I can smell the lawsuits and can almost hear the SEC auditors firing up their laptops. This one is going to have some substantial ripple effects
More on the story here
Technorati Tags: HP, Patricia Dunn, Board of Directors, CNET, Surveillance, Pretext
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