HP execs charged

It has been announced that ex Hewlett-Packard Chairman Patricia Dunn and four others are to be charged by California officials today, the first prosecution in an investigation of illegally obtained phone records, a clerk said.

Dunn allegedly authorized the internal investigation, which involved using fake identities to obtain private phone records, a tactic called pretexting.
Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd wasn’t named as being one of the accused.

The company must now do all it can to quickly distance itself from the affair, though how it achieves this will be a challenge. Certainly the fact that Mark Hurd wasn’t on the list is good news for the company – though this is likely to impact on the day to day running of the company.

We still have a sneaky suspicion that more bad news is still waiting to come out of the woodwork. As with all things bad our simple suggestion is to get everything out into the open now otherwise HP will find it hard to recover from the sleight.