Ex-HP chairwoman appears in court

OUSTED HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn appeared before the beak yesterday facing charges over her involvement in the outfit's spying antics.

Dunn, 53, made a brief appearance in Santa Clara County Superior Court to sign a promise to return on November 17 for her arraignment.

According to Associated Press, someone at the court thought she was a celebrity and asked for her autograph. Dunn declined and hopped into a chauffeur-driven sedan to be fingerprinted, photographed, booked and released at a nearby police station.

Also charged were former HP chief ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker and three investigators, Ronald DeLia, Matthew DePante and Bryan Wagner. The five each are charged with false pretences, hacking, identity theft and conspiracy. Each charge carries a fine of up to $10,000 and three years in the slammer.

In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes over the weekend, Dunn will defend the investigation of directors and members of the media. According to excerpts released by CBS yesterday she said that she initiated the probe "at the request of this board to solve a serious problem."

The trailers for the programme have Dunn saying that "Investigations, by their nature, are intrusive. If you think that Hewlett-Packard is the only company that has an investigations force, which by the way, is peopled mostly with former law enforcement officers that do all kinds of private detective work, monitoring, posing as other people in order to solve problems to protect shareholder value, you're being naive."

More here. µ