IN MY SHOES: A Private Eye Had His Eye On Journalist And Her Family
Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam was among several journalists who got caught up in Hewlett-Packard’s misguided – and possibly illegal – attempts to investigate boardroom leaks. She recounts the year-long intrusion into her life by a detective hired by the technology firm:
Unbeknownst to my family and me, someone was scoping out our trash earlier this year -- someone hired by Hewlett-Packard Co. ...
I learned this -- and more -- as I sat in a conference room at H-P's outside law firm yesterday in San Francisco, where attorney John Schultz ran through a litany of snooping tactics H-P's agents used against me as part of its effort to identify which of its directors might be leaking news to the press. ...
H-P's agents had my photo and reviewed videotaped footage of me, said Mr. Schultz, of the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. They conducted "surveillance" by looking for me at certain events to see if I would show up to meet an H-P director. (I didn't.) They also carried out "pre-trash inspections" at my suburban home early this year, Mr. Schultz said. …
Many details of what H-P had done in my case I had already gleaned from some now-public investigation documents. According to those documents, H-P built up information on my husband, including where we got engaged and married. H-P sleuths reviewed voicemails I'd left for an H-P director, and got a description of my car. They read my instant messages to an H-P media-relations executive. According to the California attorney general, H-P's investigators also used the last four digits of my Social Security number to impersonate me in order to obtain my phone records, a technique known as "pretexting."
H-P's lawyer shed no new light on these details, but one thing's increasingly clear: H-P went to some truly strange lengths to dig up personal details.
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