HP goes to WashingtonIt's been a busy week for the top echelons of HP who have been in Washington explaining just why they were engaged in illegal black ops against their own board members and employees, not to mention sundry journalists. Well not all of them were explaining - some were refusing to testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment. For those of you who aren't US citizens, the Fifth Amendment to the US constitution says that you can't be forced to make a statement incriminating yourself. Pleading the Fifth is something of a two edged sword! Those that did testify mostly claimed to be ignorant of what was going on. A few, very few, expressed their regret, although it's difficult to tell from the write-ups whether the regret was for doing it, or for being caught doing it. While this was going on TechRepublic web site was revealing details about a commercial service that tracks emails which was used by HP during the investigation. It provides an interesting look at the arguably legal but sleazy side of the investigation business. Details are in the TechRepublic URL - don't let the shambolic nature of the site put you off - the article is interesting. Then, at the end of the week, Verizon put its oar in by filing a lawsuit against 20 unnamed data brokers, accusing them of helping with the phone fraud involved in the black op. Oh, and on a purely business issue, it emerged that HP is to buy VoodooPC, the games PC specialist. VoodooPC make dream machines for playing games on - absolutely top end stuff. I wonder how long it will take HP to wreck that company? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/29/verizon_sues_hpspy/ |
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