Detective agency is target in HP 'spy' probe

Investigators plan to probe a private detective agency linked with Hewlett-Packard as the spying scandal deepens at the computer giant.

HP chairman Patricia Dunn said this week she would step down from the top job in January after admitting she had authorised a private investigation into her own staff.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer today said he is working with his counterpart in Massachusetts to obtain a search warrant for the Boston area office of Security Outsourcing Solutions, a company believed to have helped HP in its possibly illegal probe into leaks of company information to the media.

Lockyer said he also wanted a warrant against Security's managing director, Ronald R. DeLia. The detective agency says on its website that it provides network and computer security and publishes a newsletter called Corporate Homicide: Life in a Global Economy.

HP has said that it had known that so-called pretexting -- using false identities to obtain phone records of directors and journalists -- been taking place since at least 19 June when former director Tom Perkins, who quit in May in protest,was informed about the practice.

The FBI, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission and US House Energy and Commerce Committee are also conducting their own probes into Hewlett-Packard.