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Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

wsj.com

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Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#251

Post by HealthNeed »

bredren wrote: post #136
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #133

Funny how Google can ignore the privacy of internet users' conversations but when it comes to their employees' conversations, Google does not want to share those with the Government. According to the Government's memo supporting sanctions, Google is deleting conversations within 24h despite being under litigation holds. https://ia902501.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.22... Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt app…

In Schmidt’s first tv interview on Bitcoin he also said concern over unchecked criminality was overblown. He suggested that criminals make enough opsec mistakes that would be recorded that the government need not be worried.

Which has mostly been born out, at least about criminals making opsec mistakes.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#252

Post by celdon25 »

dylan604 wrote: post #173
coliveira wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the best penalty for a big company is really to be broken up. It doesn't penalize the people working on the company or its clients, since the business continue, but it does penalize the management and board of the company for their misbehavior.

Except if the broken up companies then start trimming staff because of the uncertainty of operating with corporate daddy any more. What was a stable company now becomes unstable and the ultimately, it is the employees that suffer

Would you rather have an unstable company or an unstable industry, or even an unstable society if certain abuses go unchecked for long enough? And being without a job is less painful when there are more companies competing with each other and incentivized to innovate and therefore grow.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#253

Post by ClumsyPilot »

avalys wrote: post #100

This is regulatory and legal overreach. Yes, there are laws about preserving evidence and records. However, these laws haven't been updated to reflect how office communication has changed over the years. No one would propose, circa 1950, that companies must record every conversation between two people in the office for regulatory compliance or lawsuit discovery, etc. purposes. But effectively, that's what retention r…

> requiring every employee to wear a body camera

This comparison is all over the thread and it's stupid.

Camera captures things you don't want to be seen - taking a piss, flirting, having a brainfart and saying something dumb.

Sending a message is an active choice - don't send a picture of yourself pissing, flirt somewhere else, make sure it's not dumb before you click send.

It's a tool for work communication, not personal What's app.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#254

Post by throwaway29303 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #175
throwaway29303 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Schmidt also didn't want to leave paper trail [0] to avoid being sued in another case as well. And somehow Mr. Schmidt considers himself to be a well behaved [1] person. "I am very well tested, I am very well behaved." -Eric Schmidt [0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper... [1] https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt

When he says "well behaved" he surely means in the computing sense of being predictable and having the range of his behaviours to be well known. Rather than the more common interpretation of "generally morally upstanding"?

The latter. Just Ctrl + F type "behaved" and you'll see. The whole exchange is quite an interesting read. (And that conversation took place in 2011, btw.)

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#255

Post by tantalor »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #248
tantalor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is, if you are on a lit hold and preserving some of your written communications, then you have to preserve all of them. You can't decide to shield some of them. That makes sense, I guess, but why would that not apply to verbal communications as well?

> why would that not apply to verbal communications as well Because total surveillance has never been goal or precedent. The legal profession has always understood that people act differently when they speak and when they write. It is unrealistic to hold people accountable to every mis-spoken word, mistake or dumb thing they have said in spur of the moment. If I ask someone 'how long will X take' and they must answer…

> these words could be read in 1 hour or in 1 day

Not if you rely on the ephemeral nature of "auto delete" chat messages

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#256

Post by blindriver »

Why on earth would anyone from Google want to break the law and try to destroy evidence on behalf of Google? I highly doubt this happened the way that this article claims it happened. Google has hundreds of thousands of employees, the idea that there's a group of employees that are willing to go to jail on behalf of the company over something that is easily detected is ridiculous.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#257

Post by klyrs »

gameman144 wrote: post #203
klyrs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only evil to a capitalist is loss of capital. The "don't be evil" motto still applies. Just not the way that you're accustomed to reading it.

Eh, I'd identify as a capitalist and there are definitely lots of evil things far worse than loss of capital. Capitalism need not imply anarchy or surrendering our moral compass.

According to far too many, a corporation's sole duty is to the enrichment of its shareholders. I speak not of an ideal capitalism, but of capitalism as it is practiced.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#258

Post by [deleted] »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #3

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552824/512/1/united-s... > The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required Google to suspend its auto-delete practices in mid-2019, when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation. Google did not. Instead, as described above, Google abdicated its burden to individual custodians to preserve potentially relevant chats. Few, if any, document custodians did so. That is, few cu…

[deleted]

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#259

Post by [deleted] »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #209
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #133

Funny how Google can ignore the privacy of internet users' conversations but when it comes to their employees' conversations, Google does not want to share those with the Government. According to the Government's memo supporting sanctions, Google is deleting conversations within 24h despite being under litigation holds. https://ia902501.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.22... Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt app…

> To Schmidt, and 130,000+ other people on Google's corporate welfare You are probably using the wrong expression. Corporate Welfare means Welfare for Corporations. So it's when a government bestows money grants, tax breaks, or other special favourable treatment for corporations. It is nothing to do with employees, not paying excessive salaries, or keeping unproductive ones around. It does not imply that main benefic…

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