“PRETEXTING” - ITS AGAINST CALIFORNIA LAW

The “talking heads” on the financial news channels have today been assessing the recent HP “pretexting” case, and have been challenging the possibility that HP’s executive team violated the law. On the other hand, the California Attorney General filed charges yesterday against the executives. In addition to conspiracy charges the basic criminal charges are based on the following penal code sections.

538.5. Every person who transmits or causes to be transmitted bymeans of wire, radio or television communication any words, sounds,writings, signs, signals, or pictures for the purpose of furtheringor executing a scheme or artifice to obtain, from a public utility,confidential, privileged, or proprietary information, trade secrets,trade lists, customer records, billing records, customer credit data,or accounting data by means of false or fraudulent pretenses,representations, personations, or promises is guilty of an offensepunishable by imprisonment in the state prison, or by imprisonment inthe county jail not exceeding one year.

530.5. (a) Every person who willfully obtains personal identifyinginformation, as defined in subdivision (b), of another person, anduses that information for any unlawful purpose, including to obtain,or attempt to obtain, credit, goods, services, or medical informationin the name of the other person without the consent of that person,is guilty of a public offense, and upon conviction therefor, shall bepunished either by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed oneyear, a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000), or boththat imprisonment and fine, or by imprisonment in the state prison, afine not to exceed ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or both thatimprisonment and fine.

502(c)(2)
(c) Except as provided in subdivision (h), any person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of a public offense:
(2) Knowingly accesses and without permission takes, copies, or makes use of any data from a computer, computer system, or computer network, or takes or copies any supporting documentation, whether existing or residing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network.