By Ira Winkler

There is a current article from Fortune describing some more accusations of “Pretexting” against HP. HP’s response is that they did not perform any pretexting. Sadly the reporter either didn’t question any further or didn’t have the opportunity to ask more questions. Nobody said that direct HP employees performed illegal pretexting themselves. The fact is that they paid to have the crimes committed.

The whole plausible deniability excuse is ridiculous. The HP Executives knew exactly what was going to be done, and they paid to have it done. Just as paying someone to commit a murder makes a person an integral part of a crime, knowingly paying someone to commit a criminal act is makes that person equally responsible for the crime. It is time that reporters and the criminal justice system started to treat things that way. Just because it is HP’s policy not to perform pretexting, it doesn’t mean that they are off the hook when they pay others to do it for them.