[Ol' Sox]

The article says that the "personal" phone records of HP directors were examined for calls to the reporter. I'd bet a fair amount that these were phones that belonged to and were paid for by the company and as such, were company assets. If so, they are subject to any scrutiny that the boss determines is necessary. The same goes for email.

Under existing US law, employees have very little right to privacy when using company property. The same does not hold true in the EU, where employees' correspondence cannot be examined casually.

[Liz]

Even so---if they were company-paid, the PR fallout of corporate spying is horrendous---heads will roll.

[Sam's Army]

From another report and press release on this same issue, the pretexting was done on the BOD member's private phones (all of them).

As such, most BOD's are not employees of the companies boards that they serve on; they are brought in from outside agencies, etc to give oversight and direction.

This is a big deal.

[HAL9000]

I'd bet a fair amount that these were phones that belonged to and were paid for by the company and as such, were company assets

I'll take you up on that bet because AT&T has already confirmed that Tom Perkins' personal telephone account records were pretexted. So how much do you want to bet?