The criminal investigation into corporate spying at Hewlett Packard Co. extends as far back as early 2005, suggesting that the company began prying into private phone records long before the current scandal.
People familiar with California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's probe into HP's efforts to ferret out the source of boardroom leaks to the media said Tuesday that the state's top prosecutor was examining the legality of tactics used at least since March 2005, when Chairwoman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina was ousted.
That was nearly a year before her successor as chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn, initiated the investigation at the center of a drama that has riveted Silicon Valley.
Private eyes hired by the company this year obtained the phone records of nearly two dozen employees, directors and reporters in an attempt to identify the source.
The wide-ranging spying also included physical surveillance, photographs and spyware sent via e-mail, and it targeted spouses and other relatives of HP board members and reporters, according to a consultant's report prepared for the company that was obtained by the Washington Post.
Lockyer has said he has enough evidence to indict people both in and outside HP -- a company once admired for "the HP Way" of honesty and fair dealing.
"The attorney general is focused on the events in 2006 but is looking at the company's actions in 2005 as well," said one source who requested anonymity because the probe is continuing.
In what may be a case of the hunter becoming the prey, Fiorina, who railed against leaks since a boardroom fight in 2002, may have been among those whose private phone records were obtained. Fiorina is listed as a possible victim of HP's tainted investigation into boardroom leaks, the source said.
In the months before she left, Fiorina had asked Larry Sonsini, the company's outside legal counsel, to look into numerous disclosures of boardroom information. According to another source, he sat down with each director separately to remind them of their fiduciary duties and to ask them whether they had divulged confidential information.
But Dunn, who was just as angry about the leaks as Fiorina was, took more drastic action.
Dunn consulted HP's security department, which includes its Boston-based global investigations unit. That unit engaged Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a small Needham, Mass., investigations firm, which in turn hired a Florida investigations company, Action Research Group, to allegedly obtain the phone records.
