As most people know by now, Hewlett-Packard was recently caught spying on its directors and employees, and some reporters, using methods that are probably illegal and certainly unethical. Throughout the scandal, we’ve heard a lot from HP spokesman Mike Moeller. This got my attention because Mike was my next-door neighbor in Palo Alto during my sabbatical five years ago. Mike and I spent more than a few evening and weekend hours chatting over the fence.
Now it is reported that one of the targets of HP’s spying was … Mike Moeller. An HP internal email turned over to investigators says, “New monitoring system that captures AOL Instant Messaging is now up and running and deployed on Moeller’s computer”. The company also reportedly had a detective follow Mike at a trade show, and they acquired his private phone records.
I wouldn’t have figured Mike as the type to leak boardroom secrets to the press, and indeed the spies found he had done nothing improper.
What’s interesting is that he is still serving as spokesman for HP. I’m not sure what to make of this. He must have been unhappy about being targeted; who wouldn’t be? But the essence of the spokesman’s job is to stay on message – the company’s message, not your own. Resigning in anger is not the spokesmanlike thing to do, and can’t be a good career move.
Heads have rolled at HP over the spying incident – as they should have – but the investigation is far from over. Executives claim not to have known what was going on, and not to have known it might be illegal, but those claims are hard to believe. Why would the company’s lawyers have allowed this to happen without getting careful legal opinions in advance? The most plausible reason is that they didn’t want to find out whether the spying tactics were legal, just as the executives probably didn’t want to find out how the information they received had been collected.
Obviously HP is not the only organization that did this. The investigators HP hired had plenty of other customers, and they are only part of a larger industry of private spies. Obtaining others’ phone records by identity theft is common enough to have its own euphemism: “pretexting”.
After the fallout at HP, expect more revelations about spying by other organizations. People will be more alert for spying, and they’ll know that revealing it can bring down the mighty. Meanwhile, law enforcement will be prying open the records of the “investigators,” finding more examples of reputable organizations that wanted information but didn’t want to be told where it came from.
Eventually the scandal at HP will blow over, and Mike Moeller’s job will return to normal. But maybe he’ll think twice before sending that next email or instant message to his family.
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