By Kevin Allison, Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall
Financial Times (of London)
Published: 9/8/2006
Excerpt:
Hewlett-Packard on Thursday admitted that private investigators hired by its board had surreptitiously acquired the phone records of several journalists in an attempt to ferret out a suspected boardroom leaker.
The news came as Bill Lockyer, the California state attorney general, was quoted by the Bloomberg news service as saying that it appeared a crime had been committed when HP’s investigators engaged in “pretexting,” the act of impersonating a person in order to gain access to sensitive information. The investigators engaged in this activity to obtain personal telephone records of people they suspected were involved in the leaks. ...
... Bob Steele an ethics specialist at the Poynter Institute, a journalism thinktank, said: "For HP investigators to improperly access the phone records of the journalists puts the truthseeking role of the journalists in jeopardy. Other confidential sources might back off from working with journalists if they have little or no confidence that their identities would be protected."
Although the use of pretexting to uncover sensitive financial information has long been considered illegal, there is no law that explicitly bans using the practice to aquire other information, such as telephone records. However, legal experts have said that the practice could fall foul of existing laws against computer hacking and identity theft. ...
