Reporters' Phone Records Accessed in HP Probe

As part of its internal probe of information leaks, Hewlett-Packard obtained the telephone records of nine reporters, the company confirmed.

The company has sent the list of the nine reporters to the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California, in response to the Attorney General's inquiries.

"HP is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge, and we are fully cooperating with the attorney general's investigation," said company spokesperson Ryan Donovan.

CNET Reporter's Records Obtained

CNET reporter Dawn Kawamoto said the California state attorney general's office informed her yesterday that her home phone records had been obtained through a practice known as pretexting, in which someone poses as the owner of the account.

In an August 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), HP admitted that an outside investigator had used pretexting to obtain information. HP's internal investigation was sparked by what the company said were "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including discussions by the board of directors, HP said in the SEC filing.

Kawamoto said someone must have posed as her husband, Jon Kawamoto, to obtain the records since the couple's home phone account is in his name.

"I'm furious," she said. "I feel like my privacy has been violated, and how do I know that this guy who pretexted me isn't going to hawk my information to somebody else?"

She referred questions on how she intended to respond to CNET.

Resignation

At a May 18 board meeting, HP board members asked fellow director George A. Keyworth II to resign, as a source of those leaks. He declined, but Thomas J. Perkins did resign over a dispute with HP's Chairperson Patricia Dunn over the investigation's handling, the company said.

The California Attorney General has asked HP for information about techniques used in the leak investigation, while the SEC is making inquiries into a filing HP made when Perkins resigned.

HP's Donovan confirmed reports that among the journalists whose phone records were accessed were a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and a reporter from CNet Networks. He declined to name the other reporters. The Wall Street Journal and CNet published reports including leaked information from board meetings. The leaks to the Wall Street Journal included information about discussions leading up to the firing of Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina last year.

The Attorney General's office declined to name the reporters on the list handed over by HP.

Yardena Arar of PC World and Stephen Lawson of IDG News Service contributed to this report.