Legal Woes Dog HP Execs As Scandal BroadensLegal Woes Dog HP Execs As Scandal Broadens

Dresslar said that those charges could extend to the third-party companies that HP hired, such as Security Outsourcing Solutions, to do some of its investigative work. It's possible that if a third-party committed the actual crime, and it can be proven that it was done under the direction of someone at HP, that person could be charged with conspiracy.

There is a federal law -- the Gramm-Leach-Bilily Act -- regarding pretexting, but it specifically relates only to financial records. The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has pushed through broader pretexting legislation, but only at the committee level. A date has not been set for it to go to the floor for debate.

Congressional Hearings

In the meantime, HP executives have been called to Washington D.C. to testify about their pretexting actions in front of the Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, Sept. 28. The committee has been investigating the practice of pretexting since February, according to Terry Lane, a committee spokesman. He said when news came out of the HP scandal, the committee turned its attention specifically on HP.

"Clearly, the invasion of privacy is one of the major reasons the committee has undertaken this investigation and hearing," says Lane. "It wasn't just that they looked at internal phone records. They used pretexting to get the private phone records of board members and journalists. It wasn't the HP phones that were supplied [to employees] on their desks. They were targeting the phones people paid for out of their own pockets We want to get to the bottom of it."

The committee has asked for Hurd and Dunn to testify, along with HP's general counsel Ann Baskins and HP's outside counsel Larry Sonsini.

Lane says HP sent in boxes of information this week that the committee had requested from them. He adds that he has not yet compared the information sent in with the list of information requested.

The committee sent a written request to Dunn on Sept. 11 asking for her to turn over the identity of the outside consulting firm and any outside consultants that assisted in the leak investigation; copies of any contracts and investigative plans; a list of people who were targets of the investigation; a list of everyone, including HP employees, who were involved with the investigation and had contemporaneous knowledge of it; a list the type of records that were procured; copies of reports prepared by third parties, all records of communications about the investigation; and copies of all drafts and final board minutes that relate to the leak investigation or the committee inquiry.