Patricia Dunn was the chairman for Hewlett Packard for quite a bit. During her reign a scandal leaked out about HP’s spying endeavors. Apparently they were spying on their employees.
HP used a method called “pretexting” where agents disguised themselves as board members and employees to extract information regarding phone records from phone companies. They also performed a sting operation where a “dummy” codenamed Jacob fed insider information to CNET writer Dawn Kawamoto. This created a false sense of trust. Afterwards, Jacob injected malicious spyware that would afterwards record every keystroke Dawn would write to extract more information. After this became public, Dunn denied any involvement with this ordeal, although it was her who approved it. This led to her quick resignation as chairwoman. She was then succeeded by Mark Hurd.
As you can infer, this was a clear violation of basic employee’s rights for privacy. Hewlett Packard did not make an ethical decision. Although it could be argued that other companies closely monitor their workplaces via surveillance cameras, the employees of HP had no idea this was going on. There was no consent, which led to a huge outburst from the media.
