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Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

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

#281
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices.[1] It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war It sounds like you are confusing culture with aesthetics.

Where in that definition do you propose governance comes in? Do you think culture is governable? To me, culture lies outside the scope of governance entirely -- it's literally just what people do to express themselves and the ways they like to spend their time. > Societal values Notice it doesn't say economic or material values.

Was their practice of direct democracy an important part of ancient Greek culture? (Yes! And it's Republic forms were also part of their culture!)

Does the age of monarchy still have impacts on the UK? My imported gin still says "By Order of Her Majesty" on it. "God save the Queen" (or now King) is, intrinsically, part of UK culture.

> values, beliefs, and practices

That includes practices of law keeping, beliefs in how the law is executed, altered and enshrined, etc.

In the US specifically, the founding fathers wrote _at length_ on capitalism, the free market, and how communal economic systems (they were writing prior to Marx) didn't scale. Our society is built on capitalism, through and through.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is particularly funny because one way Google scams people to get them to buy more storage space is by moving deleted drive/Gmail items to the Drive Trash instead of deleting them. So when you try to clear space by deleting emails etc., it doesn't seem to help. Furthermore, even if you clear your Trash, it can take hours to take effect (for Some Reason), making it seem like you need to just give up and buy more s…

When I click on trash it says "Items in trash are deleted forever after 30 days", so I don't really understand this complaint. Trash is a feature that most users have come to expect in file management systems. Also, "turn off history" - which seems to be what this complaint is about - is just a public feature of the Chat app built into gmail.

> one way Google scams

If you see a sentence like this, you can be certain you don't have an interlocutor that is acting in good faith.

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

#283
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.

I'm surprised you're getting downvoted given the amount of snark in other comments. Or is the directness the part we're not supposed to be saying out loud?

the people who can downvote on this site all have remarkably similar political/ethical positions, or it is my impression at least that is the case. really makes you think huh

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual custodians just means employees, right? What incentive was there for employees to do this? I know that if I was told to do that, I would ignore it because I have better things to do than fiddle with settings. The only way I would do it is if they said I’d be fired if I didn’t do it or they increased my salary and decreased my other responsibilities.

I think "custodians" in this case means the administrators of the chat system. It was within their power to preserve this data, and they did not do so.

Though it says "chat-by-chat basis", which sounds like individual user action.

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

#285

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…

Rules for thee, but not for me. Many companies try to get away with that. The problem is that we let them.

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

#286
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Probably as a field in employee records API, DBMS, and/or business rules processor as a synthetic attribute called "legal_hold" to combine requirements of all legal cases and jurisdictions. Every system and process that could potentially delete data needs to check "legal_hold". One of many fun feature requirements of enterprise software that aren't necessarily needed at smaller scales.

There’s a big company called Google that, among other things, sells enterprise services, and they have a list of their apps that support litigation holds: https://support.google.com/vault/answer/6127699?hl=en And lo and behold, Chat supports it. edit: as pointed out elsewhere, there is some documentation that “off-the-record” chats are exempt: https://support.google.com/vault/answer/7664657 That seems odd to me. Off-…

What's amusing is that it also automatically converts all the Google Doc files to word format, because Lawyers Use Word.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so when you get sent a “legal hold” notice, and you click on some kind of acceptance, you are basically acknowledging that you’ll get fired if you don’t preserve the data. That’s how this works. The incentive to compliance is that you don’t get fired by your general counsel.

If someone is fired, then Upper management just used rank and file employees as a shield to escape legal liability. But if no-one is fired, then what? Responsibility just disappears?

That a subordinate did not perform their duties does not absolve their superior of the consequences.

The responsibility still ultimately falls on Google Legal and up to the executive team. They can choose to fire people if it makes them feel better, I suppose, but it won't change the consequences they will now face in litigation.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will decide what people should and shouldnt do. Google will decide whether people deserve privacy in their lives for certain things or not. Language of the abusers.

I al hoping that one day American society will wake up to the fact that Tyranny can, and has been privatised. It is not only the state that you should be afraid of.

Surveillance capitalism is several orders of fucked up, but to call it tyranny is pretty dismissive of the plight of people living under actual tyranny.

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

#289
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are demonstrating scary level of Moral Confusion. CIA operates in the National interest, at least hypothetically. Google can operate against national interest to make money, or 'whoever pays most' interest. The people of USA have granted CIA privileges of secrecy and legal protections explicitly to do ShadyShit. No-one ever gave Google permission to do ShadyShit. CIA employees go through background checks, US Gov…

Morality and legality are the same, when you consider yourself to be on the same side as the law.

Black and white thinking doesn't work in the real world.

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

#290

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…

That sounds like a reasonable distinction between verbal and written as in email or memo, but chat is then in a grey area. Chat is used more often than not in a casual conversational way that does not promote a lot of thinking before writing.
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