SV Confidential, Volume 1: Dunn's a patsy!
Welcome to SV Confidential, the Valleywag court watch that starts with Day 1 of the Congressional hearings for Hewlett-Packard. Today, Congress starts figuring out who to blame for an espionage case that may be just one of scads of corporate investigation scandals.
First up is testimony from ex-chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who says she didn't even know what pretexting was until former board member Tom Perkins told her about it this June.
Pretexting, as Dunn now knows, is calling a company impersonating a customer so the caller can get that customer's account information. In this case, investigators under Dunn's command pretexted AT&T to get call records for Perkins's personal phone.
Dunn's former lawyers could back up her story, as they claim they felt the whole investigation was legal. The Congressional panel clearly doesn't think so, as they've asked everyone today how lying to get people's personal records, planting spies at news offices, and planting e-mail-tracking software on a reporter's computer seemed legal.
