Nominative determinism
Cynthia Lie, attorney at law.
The HP pretexting scandal has finally ended, with the last person involved getting three months in prison for illegally accessing the phone records of journalists. Colorado private investigator Bryan Wagner convinced phone companies to hand over the telephone records of HP's management and the journalists who spoke to them as …
I always find it fascinating (and a little scary) how the same act has different consequences in different countries. In this case , in the U.S. pretending to be someone else to access private information results in jail time, whereas in Australia a similar act is regarded as a prank.
Of course what makes it scarier is the lengths that US courts are often willing to go to in order to extradite someone into their hands.
...is the fact that it is the fall-guy at the bottom of the $h!theap that gets screwed, again, while the instigators get off scot-free. Just goes to show that if you have been/are an HP Board member you can just about get away with anything, with nothing more than a slapped wrist - at worse.
As an interesting side-note, Perkins went on to join the board of News International in 2007. He still holds his position, despite the corporation's own troubles with illegal access to phone records. It seems some crimes are more egregious than others, to his mind.
That is an interesting point. Had the last sentence been left off, it would have been good journalism, too.