Compare and Contrast

by on September 12, 2006 · 8 comments

Patricia Dunn, the chairman of HP’s board, is resigning. The news comes jut a couple of weeks after the public learned that she had used an illegal technique called “pretexting” to obtain the phone records of her fellow board members and nearly a dozen journalists.

So when a corporate executive illegally obtains the phone records of 2 dozen people in order to spy on them, she’s forced to resign in a matter of weeks. On the other hand, when a high-ranking government official does the same thing to as many as 200 million people, he gets a promotion. What’s wrong with this picture?

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info Patrick

    A clarification, I read she will step down from the chairman’s seat in January at the next board meeting, but will remain a nonexecutive member of the board.

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info Patrick

    A clarification, I read she will step down from the chairman’s seat in January at the next board meeting, but will remain a nonexecutive member of the board.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/ enigma_foundry

    Well, what’s slightly wrong with the picture is this: Patricia Dunn who started the ‘investigation’ which lead to the spying isn’t really resigning. She is stepping down, in January of next year as Chairperson. She is staying on as a Board member after that. Tom Perkins, the real Hero, who blew the whistle on the illegal investigation in the first place, is out, as is the member of the Board who had done the actual leaking. This is a terrible precedent, and shows that HP cares more about the leaking than the illegal investigation.

    Well I most emphatically do care, and will not support HP in any way unless they fire Dunn immediately. So I think the most important comparison to make is not with the government program, although it was a good point to make, but with Perkins.

    In any case, there are many laws that were broken here, I certainly hope that Patricia Dunn ends up in jail and bankrupt. But I doubt she will…

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim Lee

    Interesting. I’m inclined to agree that she should have been booted off the board outright. Still, lossing her chairmanship is a demotion, and you’d be hard pressed to find many examples of similar disciplinary actions after government officials screw up.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com eee_eff

    Well, what’s slightly wrong with the picture is this: Patricia Dunn who started the ‘investigation’ which lead to the spying isn’t really resigning. She is stepping down, in January of next year as Chairperson. She is staying on as a Board member after that. Tom Perkins, the real Hero, who blew the whistle on the illegal investigation in the first place, is out, as is the member of the Board who had done the actual leaking. This is a terrible precedent, and shows that HP cares more about the leaking than the illegal investigation.


    Well I most emphatically do care, and will not support HP in any way unless they fire Dunn immediately. So I think the most important comparison to make is not with the government program, although it was a good point to make, but with Perkins.


    In any case, there are many laws that were broken here, I certainly hope that Patricia Dunn ends up in jail and bankrupt. But I doubt she will…

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim Lee

    Interesting. I’m inclined to agree that she should have been booted off the board outright. Still, lossing her chairmanship is a demotion, and you’d be hard pressed to find many examples of similar disciplinary actions after government officials screw up.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/ enigma_foundry

    Tim: I rather vaguely remember something about a hotel in Washington…

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com eee_eff

    Tim:
    I rather vaguely remember something about a hotel in Washington…

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