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…
QQ: Was Google the only corporation required to suspend its auto-delete practices? Thanks!
No, some other big tech companies also had to do this.
I think we’re going to see another cycle in tech, much like the one where they realized that people kept saying illegal things in a documented fashion and this kept getting them into trouble leading to short retention policies. Except this time it will probably involve mandatory court-ordered retention which will further push people towards dropping “let’s discuss this offline” comments and trying to hide their conve…
It'll just end up with mandatory RTO and end of WFH. It's kinda funny how enlightened WFH HNers in this topic don't realize that they're effectively (in WFH case) defending recording of every private workplace conversation forever so it can bi sifted through by lawyers, HR and compliance auditors for any kind of wrongdoing.
It's a precedent workplace surveillance in total scale just to hunt for (I quote) "shady shit".
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.
How much do your morals swing as you travel different countries or even states? Age of consent being an example of morality - the legal age varies by country but it would be sociopathetic if someone were to “shop around.” Morality is not legality; the law _aspires_ to codify the spirit of a society’s morals - therefore it is morality that dictates to law, and law aims to catch up to morality when zeitgeists change. Equating the two things would be a poor understanding of sociology and civic politics.
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.
Maybe it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs of the other.
I really despise auto-delete policies. Obviously, because of the inconvenience and all the context/history/search capability you lose, but also because it's addressing the problem the wrong way. Rather than be accountable for your actions, the company would rather create a system to circumvent the law and sweep the evidence under the rug. Creates a terrible incentive structure. It goes to show that the company is run…
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.
Maybe it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs of the other.
> it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs [sic] of the other.
There are generational labor camps in North Korea and a litany of horrible ongoing civil wars in Africa. They are evil. So is industry pushback against unleaded aviation fuel [1][2]. But comparing the evils of the civil war in Somalia to those of leaded avgas is, at best, pointless.
except that the harmless written word is notoriously easy to quote out of context and otherwise use "against you" in court. At google's scale, it's virtually impossible to NOT have mountains of "incriminating" conversations. Also, it seems arbitrary that OTR chat should be recorded but hallway conversations and phonecalls are ok to delete...
> harmless written word is notoriously easy to quote out of context and otherwise use "against you" in court. Do you believe lawyers and judges are unfamiliar with this issue? Like their entire lives are spent reviewing documents, letters and email. They invented the concept of Disclosure before computers existed, so that Defence can rebut or put proper context to any argument that will be made by prosecution.
> Do you believe lawyers and judges are unfamiliar with this issue?
They are absolutely familiar with this issue and if you've ever been in any legal case, they'll gleefully exploit every small word to make you look like the biggest criminal rapist in the world and maximize the time you spent in jail.
Go read why exactly do we support Signal and other E2E encrypted messengers. Establishing precedent that every word you say while WFH can be used against you for decades is problematic no matter how much you hate Google.
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…
> 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. How the hell is this a thing. I can understand if they did this post litigation being filed then it would be a problem. How is a company supposed to anticipate when and where the government is going to file charges and keep records for them w…
If you and I have a private dispute, you sue, and I tell your lawyers I shredded everything related to the case because I routinely shred my papers at the end of each month, even if that's true, I'm probably going to settle for more than had I maintained records. (Assuming I wasn't blatantly lying.) The shred-it-all approach has its upsides. But it also comes with liability.
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…
In times of remote work and working from home, there's no meaningful difference between recording all conversation in office and retaining all private chats.
Is the DoJ's argument that if you anticipate being sued in the future, you're not allowed to use private messaging at all?
Who is you? Why should a company and its employees, afforded limited legal liability, have "private messaging" in the course of its business?
Same reason why 24/7 surveillance of everything you do in your life is destructive for society.
When you're a "company employee" for at least third of your life you're still human that deserves some privacy away from spying eyes of HR, lawyers and government looking for something you did wrong.
(Is this really so hard to understand? Is that something we from ex-socialist totalitarian regimes really understand?)