Under questioning, ex-chairwoman Patricia Dunn claimed to believe that she thought that people's phone records were publicly available. CEO Mark Hurd admitted that the company's founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, would have been appalled at the behaviour of the company if they had been alive.
Meanwhile, telecoms firm Verizon has filed a suit against 20 data brokers for fraudulently obtaining phone records belonging to HP board members and journalists.
HP has been found to have gathered evidence via investigators on the private phone calls and movements not only of HP board members but of their families and of nine journalists.
Dunn's initials appeared in handwritten notes from a meeting discussing the pretexting of third parties. Pretexting is where a person pretends to be someone else and calls a phone company to fraudulently receive their call details. Dunn denies being in that meeting.
Despite being found to have been told that pretexting was involved in investigations and being the person who ordered investigations into company leaks, Dunn said that she did not accept responsibility for the subsequent events. "I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened," she said.
In what is becoming a widening scandal, HP's General Counsel Ann Baskins resigned from the company and refused to testify, citing the US Constitution's fifth amendment right of someone facing a criminal prosecution to stay silent. "I'm sorry to say her career is ruined. She made some errors in judgment," said Dunn, according to CNet News.
Hurd, who is also the company's president and has been appointed chairman after Dunn resigned, has been increasingly drawn into the scandal. An internal communication claimed that Hurd had knowledge of a fake email sent to CNet News reporter Dawn Kawamoto.
That mail provided a fake news tip in an attempt to flush out the leak and also allegedly carried a piece of technology which would track it if forwarded. An internal email from one HP lawyer to Baskins said: "I spoke with Mark and he is on board with the plan".
Under questioning Hurd denied outright any knowledge of pretexting, physical monitoring or digging in rubbish bins. He only said, though, that he did not recall approving of the tracer. He did admit knowing of the email.
Member of Congress John Dingell said that the actions of HP were "a plumbers' operation that would make Richard Nixon blush, were he still alive. The cure, in this case, appears to have been far worse than the disease, and now poses a far greater threat to Hewlett-Packard."
