HP “pretexting” scandal keeps chugging

Huge, ugly scandals have a way of planting new terms in the lexicon. Consider the way the Watergate affair of the early 1970s made –gate an all-purpose suffix denoting scandal, or the way last year’s Sony digital rights management imbroglio made “rootkit” an unlikely term heard around the dinner table.

Thanks to Hewlett-Packard’s daring board of directors, we’ve got another one: “pretexting,” which describes the technique of impersonating someone else to obtain personal information.

In the case of HP, that personal information was the private phone records of board members and journalists, unknowingly caught up in an all-out effort by HP Chairwoman Pattie Dunn to plug press leaks at the company.

Last week, HP announced a board shakeup to try to put the whole mess behind it, but it may be looking over its shoulder for some time, experts say.

Dunn will relinquish her chair to CEO and President Mark Hurd in January. The scandal created two other board vacancies: director Thomas Perkins quit in protest last May over the company’s investigation; and director George Keyworth, identified as the source of the leak, resigned the same day as Dunn’s announcement.

At print time, California’s Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that the state was working with authorities in Massachusetts and that he had the evidence he needs to indict people connected to the pretexting scandal both inside and outside of HP.

The scandal is a teachable moment for American business, said Kirk O. Hanson, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

“It is a cautionary tale about how companies conduct investigations into employee conduct and give direction to outside vendors,” Hanson said. This case will help them clarify what they can and cannot do to protect their interests.

“Expect the word pretext to begin showing up in corporate handbooks,” Hanson said.