MENLO PARK, September 11, 2006 (PodTech News) – Gartner, Inc. Vice President Martin Reynolds said he thinks Hewlett-Packard Board Chair Patricia Dunn did the right thing to investigate leaks of proprietary HP information to the news media, and that he doesn’t think she knew the private investigative firm she retained would use pretexting to conduct the investigation. (Pretexting is the practice of getting a company to turn over consumer records by pretending to be the consumer in question.) HP has said the practice was used to obtain the personal phone records of board members and nine reporters. HP’s board met yesterday, and is meeting again late today, in the wake of investigations into the practice by the offices of the California Attorney General and the U.S. District Attorney’s office, Northern California District. PodTech’s Catherine Girardeau interviewed Reynolds to get his take on the role of HP Chair Patricia Dunn, who ordered the investigation into the leaks.

REPORTER’S NOTES: Must-read: an in-depth tracing of the tensions between HP Board Chair Patricia Dunn, and director Tom Perkins, in Newsweek‘s upcoming September 18 cover story. Elana Centor defines pretexting on BlogHer. Richard Koman writes up the mounting calls for Patricia Dunn’s resignation in his post on Silicon Valley Watcher. TechBlog looks at CEO Mark Hurd’s role. Should he be the one to go? Valleywag says Dunn is done, and Hurd should stay away from the Board Chair job. Robert Scoble speaks loud and clear on the Dunn deal, just in case you haven’t read it yet.

— Catherine Girardeau

Tags: Elana Centor, HP, HPE, Mark Hurd, Martin Reynolds, Patricia Dunn, Richard Koman, Tom Perkins
 
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