Why spy? Just say 'hi'.

WHAT'S mystifying about all the trouble in the boardroom at Hewlett-Packard Co. is why the chiefs took such a complicated route to snoop on those they suspected of leaking information to reporters. They even hired private investigators, who used elaborate and allegedly illegal tactics to gather telltale bits of intelligence.

I thought these days it was simple. Employers pretty much let technology do their snooping for them. It's even legal.

If an employer suspects someone of leaking sensitive stuff to the press, all the employer need do is hand a cell phone to the leaker and say, "Here, take this. Use it all you want."

So long as the cell phone is company property, the company has a fight to check the log of calls.

If the leaker is too wary to get caught by the old cell phone trick, then all the employer need do is make sure the leaker has a company-issued computer. Sooner or later, the leaker will get an incriminating e-mail or visit a telling Web site.

Even so, the computer is an old trick, too. Newer technology lets employers peer over the shoulders of workers in ever-more clever ways. Companies can get GPS technology imbedded in cell phones, for example, so they can tell where their employees are--even if they're speeding on the highway. Time magazine recently had a story in which a boss called an employee who had called in sick and asked him why he was driving to Reno when he was supposed to be sniffling in bed.

That same article quoted an official of a workplace privacy organization saying, "Virtually nothing you do at work on a computer can't be monitored." In the Hewlett-Packard case, the private investigators allegedly posed as if they were someone else to get access to private computer records in an effort to get the goods on their quarry. California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, was quoted as saying, "People gaining access to computer records that have personal information--in California, that's a crime."

Gosh, gaining access to computer records with personal information does not seem like that big a deal. You can just Google someone's name and come up with a surprising amount. And databases have all kinds of information about you. That's why we get all that targeted junk mail or spam that knows the way we vote or the last few purchases we made.

Beyond that, people voluntarily and regularly send out all kinds of sensitive stuff about themselves into the electronic ether. Go to MySpace.com or Facebook, and you can learn all kinds of eye-widening details about people, particularly young people. Several employers have told me they routinely rely on social networking sites to spy on their young job applicants.

Here's a simple trick: Ask an applicant to send you an e-mail from their personal account, not their work account. An e-mail name can be one of those telling little personal expressions, a way for some to describe themselves. And they often will give you surprising insight. I mean, if you hire someone whose e-mail handle is NoonBongHitter, you can assume he'll return to work late from lunch a lot.

Best of all, that' s a legal way to get personal information. No private eye needed.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [e-mail].