The HP self-spying story seems to have legs. Some of the stories are spinning it as a personal story about HP’s chair:

Now Dunn faces a furor over her handling of the board. Critics say she could take a fall, possibly losing her role as board chair, for spurring an investigation that spied on her fellow board members and reporters to find out who was leaking information to the press. The outside investigators called telephone companies pretending to be board members and reporters to get telephone records — actions that could be illegal.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is investigating and said Thursday that laws have been broken, although it’s unclear by whom. The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the matter as well.

HP board chair’s leadership in question, By Michelle Quinn and Therese Poletti, Mercury News, Posted on Fri, Sep. 08, 2006

Easy enough to do, given all the colorful characters: the board member who was the target of the spying refused to resign; one of the most famous and influential venture capitalists resigned instead and took the story public after HP refused to; everybody from ethicists to the California Attorney General is weighing in.

Let’s look at a few perhaps less obvious angles.