I want to point out once again that I am subjected to viciously violent attacks from those using the surveillance technology 24/7 especially since last Sunday whose web journal entry started with "We're trying to stop him," from Lt Harry Bird. When I picked up what was going on with Hewlett-Packard, this already intense abuse escalated with every attempt to slow me down and stop me from addressing this issued as it emerged especially with respect to dealing with it. This included direct attacks against my computer technology which has been all too familiar for several years with hundreds of instances thoroughly documented.
There is the difference between day and night between what is happening to me and the process of adderssing the Board of Directors' leaks at Hewlett-Packard which has unleashed such an incredible brouhaha. This is why I want to carefully review these events on an ongoing basis to compare and contrast the psychology at work in each situation. People attack the relatively small situation vehemently but do not do so for situations which are far more significant with devastating implications. This gives everyone the illusion that they are doing something while allowing the really important and difficult situation such as I am experiencing to go unchecked. Attacking the defenceless and/or relatively weakened person also derives from this seeking the easy target instead of addressing the most important problems.
At the beginning of my awareness of the so-called scandal at Hewlett-Packard I question much of what has been done and view the activity carried out to investigate the leaks to identify their source in order to stop them as necessary and well taken. So far I see that there is a similarity in rogue elements taking over at the extreme boundaries of this activity to carry out illegal, unlawful and criminal activity in order to achieve results and earn a reward at any expense.
This is true in my direct experience here, and I will form a hypothesis that this what happened at Hewlett-Packard until such information becomes available to change that hypothesis. I know what I am experiencing directly. I am surmising from what is currently known about the Hewlett-Packard incident that the rogues there are doing what they are doing here, namely, trying to pull a fast one for their own personal gain. To make it explicitly clear by what I mean by "rogues" I want to state that these are the people I consider who are outside at the ground level actually getting the work done.
The real issue, I believe, is the psychology of our times where spying and surveillance has become acceptable on a widespread basis because the standard has shifted to not getting caught from not doing something wrong. The standard which permeates the world at present is actually a lack of standards which permits anything as long as one does not get caught. It is getting caught that is wrong not the process of committing the unlawful and/or criminal act. Lt Harry Bird often says "He can't prove it" about his activity against me. This means that as long as he cannot be caught, he is entitled to do whatever he wants in his own eyes.
In the case of use of surveillance technology this means practically anything. Lt Harry Bird and others are constantly referring to "cover" and "alibi" indicating that they are using the surveillance technology to note what I am documenting and reporting so that they can cover for each other by creating alibis for the date, time and activity which I document. This is why the two of them, Lt Harry Bird and BS (the mother of the abused children, remain here 24/7 using the surveillance technology against me. It is the method of the fraudster to ensure that the fraud is maintained.
The Hewlett-Packard situation is completely different. My experience has been going on for over eight years 24/7 with a great deal of communication and information provided publicly. This has gone to everyone in authority all the way to the top, and it still continues. This is, theerefore, a reflection of abuse of power up to and including the top. This is not the case at Hewlett-Packard. Pattie Dunn, according to reports so far available, initiated the investigation into the source of the leaks delegating that to the legal department at Hewlett-Packard who carried out the work.
Nothing could have been more appropriate since she was also under investigation as a Board member. I suspect that the legal department carried out appropriate activity too. The question arises then as to at what point did the process of "Pretexting" arise and who knew what and when? At the very least the rogues appeared at ground level which is all that is known so far except for the questions which arise related to the handling of the information obtained and the identification of the culprit who turned out to be Dr Keyworth. The question arises in my mind as to whether or not Pattie Dunn is responsible for this if she delegated it to the legal department, and whether or not there are other elements at play within the corporation which are using her as a scapegoat?
There is an excellet article about this in today's Canadian Financial Post part of National Post by Peter Morton. He has an interesting quote from a former General Electric Chairman of the Board, Jack Welch, who points out the fact that all the noise has been directed at Ms Dunn instead of the leaker who was an "ethical criminal." It is interesting to note in the Mercury News announcement that Dr Keyworth claimed he was asked by management to carry out both off and on the record interviews with the media.
Didn't Hewlett-Packard have an investor relations and public relations department(s) to carry out this function to insure consistency, continuity, confidentiality and most important of all compliance with corporate disclosures which are fair for all investors.?
Why was it being done at the Board level by an outside director who admits that he did not have authorisation for the information supplied to CNET.com?
If this was a well known practise by company officials, are they then to blame for the fact that Dr Keyworth became a leaker outside his supposedly "vetted" area of communication?
Was he working against the interest of the Chairman of the Board in doing this activity and disrupting the all important process of corporate governance for which the Chairman of the Board was responsible?
This sounds a lot like Dr David Kelly being asked on occasion to brief the press in his consultant's role for the Department of Defence and a top expert on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Dr David Kelly then takes it upon himself as a matter of conscience to brief journalist Andrew Gilligan who broadcasts his remarks from home at 6:00 am on BBC's Radio 4 Today programme making a statement which is immediately corrected in the next broadcast which continue periodically throughout the morning. However, this is then pounced upon by those at Number Ten and the whole series of events unfold which leads to his apparent suicide, the Hutton enquiry and the departure of the BBC's Governor and Director General.
There are a lot of basic similarities here. A critical point is the immediate resignations at the BBC and at Hewlett-Packard of those at the top. I believe that this was and is a mistake in each case. These people should have remained in their jobs until all the facts were brought to light instead of caving in immediately as Director General Greg Dyke did at the BBC when the Hutton Report was issued, and now Pattie Dunn has done failing to stand up for corporate governance pending a complete and thorough investigation which is just starting.
The differences, however, are quite profound for it was the media who took the hit for publishing Dr David Kelly's information, and no one in the government was sacked over the fact that Dr David Kelly carried out independent briefings of the media. No one at CNET.com has been sacked for publishing this information about Hewlett-Packard, but the Chairman of the Board at Hewlett-Packard has lost her job. I think we have to look at analogous versus homologous functions, similarities and differences. Analogous is alike in appearance but different in function and used and understood quite commonly while homologous is alike in function but different in appearance, e.g., wings, arms and the vestigial organs of whales.
Andrew Gilligan's report turned out to be accurate in the long term, but in the short term the government won the battle by destroying the then management at the BBC. The issue at the BBC was one of corporate governance which has been subjected to great scrutiny since including a proposal from the government for reform. The process at Hewlett-Packard is just starting.
The differences really stand out between the UK government/BBC and Hewlett-Packard as they relate to the process of trying to identify the leaker. Hewlett-Packard's rogues in the field used a method called "Pretexting" whereby a false identity is assumed in order to obtain the phone records of various individuals to do a network analysis for the purpose of identifying contact relationships. This is a well know process, and one that produces valuable information. It is what the National Security Agency (NSA) did in the US under the authority of Bush without FISA, i.e., court, approval which has now caused such a turmoil of litigation. Law enforcement in the UK seeks to preserve telephone and ISP records for a longer period in order to carry out such network analysis when necessary. It is an important way to obtain valuable information.
George Bush is arguing that he has the right to approve NSA's network analysis of millions of phone records without NSA obtaining a warrant. The government and NSA have lost the first round in the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has obtained a ruling from Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in its favour against the governmet and NSA. The issue that has turned up in the Hewlett-Packard situation is whether or not the "Pretexting" process is legal. Mercury News provides some valuable link information documents about this issue. They provide Email correspondence between Tom Perkins and Larry Sonsini which reveals these two aspects. On the one hand there is the statement that a subpoena is required to obtain such information, and on the other hand Hewlett-Packard's legal department maintins that what it did was within the law.
"HP is now facing five inquiries from
the U.S. Attorney's Office,
California attorney general,
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and
Federal Communications Commission."
Is Pattie Dunn the fall guy here? I think so at the moment. The issue is far larger and far more important that most currently realise. If someone sets in motion a proper procedure for a legal investigation through a corporate legal department the target of which also includes that person, then that person has delegated responsibillty for that investigation and given this set of circumstances cannot interfere with it.
Further, there is a presumption of legality with respect to the information obtained since the investigation is carried out by the legal departement. Pattie Dunn is being made to pay for failures which have occurred elsewhere over which she had no control and for which she had no responsibility. Perhaps she is acquiescing in the overall interest of good corporate management, but is this really what is happening? Perhaps she is being misled here as well. Time will tell.
Information when made public must be done so on a fair and equal basis as is legitmately required by law. Pattie Dunn comes from an investment management background where the value of information is the essence of a stock's current price. Stock markets are deemed efficient theoretically because at any one point in time all the information determining price is known to everyone. When a select group gets information that is not generally known say when a director of a corporation privately briefs others on the basis of inside, confidential information, they have an information advantage over the rest of the investing public.
Having a solid background in index funds and actively management portfolios for decades, nobody knows this better than Ms Dunn. She goes back to the days when index fund versus active investment management was being pioneered at Wells Fargo Investment Advisors (WFIA), and she is absolutely right in making certain that information does not leak from the board of directors of a publicly owneed corporation for whose board she has responsibility as its chairman.
As an outside director, Ms Dunn is responsible to the owners of the corporation: the shareholders. She is not an employee of Hewlett-Packard. This is why outside directors ae so important, and why the by-laws of Hewlett-Packard require that the Chairman of its Board of Directors be an outside director. This is supposed to insure independence from corporate executives and that the interests of the owners of the corporation are served and not the corporation's employees or, most especially, its executives.
The point is to balance the power of the corporation's executives against that of the interest of the owners for a publicly owned corporation. Naturally, there is this balance of competing interests which all come together at the Board level. If it's done right, it is a very tough job even at the best of times but look at what abuses in the past have wrought.
Dr Keyworth did not originally resign when confronted with the fact of his leaking information. He cited the fact that he was elected by the shareholders (owners) and only they could remove him unless he voluntaily resigned. The same is true for Ms Dunn. It seems that both agreed to resign their positions at the same time: she the Chairmanship of the Board and he his position as director. Maybe Ms Dunn refused to resign on an outside director.
Outside director Tom Perkins had already stormed out in May, and Mark Hurd, President and CEO will become Chairman on 18th January 2007, after the by-laws are changed to permit a corporate executive to be Chairman of the Board. Will the by-laws have to be changed by a shareholder vote?
Concentrating power like that in one person is a dangerous situation. Mark Hurd will now be in charge of the corporation as its Chief Executive, and he will be in charge of its Board of Directors as its Chairman. This is not a good outcome, and the interests of the owners (shareholders) appear to suffered a setback. The question is whether or not the owners have the say in the change of the by-laws and what they think about their own interests being so reduced.
The stock price might have gone up initially on the announcement of these changes, but that doesn't mean anything. Perhaps it's short covering. I have usually found that the initial reaction has nothing to do with what the future holds for a corporation. It is not until reality begins to sink in, and the full impact of the information is completely digested before the stock price accurately reflects what has occurred. Remember markets are only "theoretically" efficient. If they were fully efficient, there would be no point in investing. Rewards go to those who accurately prdict the future, i.e., accurately predict future information unless they have a corporate director who provides inside information the leak of which Ms Dunn sought to plug.
I'm surprised no one has come up with a Watergate Plumbers' analogy or perhaps a better word might be homology since the structure is the same but the function different. The attempt to plug the leaks from Hewlett-Packard's Board of Directors was legitimate and essential. Nixon's Watergate Plumbers were trying to stop leaks as part of a criminal objective.
CNNMoney.com September 13 2006: 5:27 PM
California AG may indict within a week in HP case
By Grace Wong, staff writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer may file criminal charges within a week in his investigation of tactics used by Hewlett-Packard Co. in an inquiry into boardroom leaks, a spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday.
"It could happen in a week," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer. However, "We're not going to confine ourselves to a specific timeline for any charges."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/12/news/companies/hp_dunn/?postversion=2006091315