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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

#311

Post by meltyness »

hedora wrote: post #224
donalhunt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit weird that this is even a thing given Google's ecosystem supports retention and litigation holds - technology acquired through buying Postini iirc.

It sounds like a selling point: 1) Use Postini 2) Violate an explicit court order by automatically deleting all your incriminating documents. 3) Blame thousands of unaware individual contributors for not each manually blocking 4) Cite this case as precedent, and demand whatever slap on the wrist Google is about to receive. 1.5) Buy insurance to pay whatever that fine works out to. 5) Continue breaking the law. 6) GOT…

Seems like it simply supports the DoJ's case that they're acting as a trust, if they simply bought a $625M competitor to completely dissolve its product.

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

#312

Post by hugh-avherald »

gameman144 wrote: post #185
jeremyjh wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just let the plaintiff or prosecuter decide what evidence they would have liked to find and instruct the jury to assume it was found. This would never happen again anywhere.

This seems like some insane government overreach, though. Like, make the penalties for destroying evidence super steep and criminally liable sure, but it seems pretty wild that you could be convicted of a crime without evidence. In that case, the government has an incentive to destroy evidence and its paper trail.

I don't want to alarm you but (a) it's definitely possible to be convicted of a crime without evidence and (b) the only things stopping "the government" fabricating evidence are the government officials themselves.

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

#313

Post by JaceLightning »

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…

Google Chat autodeletes ALL conversations after 24 hours. Not a legal thing. Not only a Google thing--it would do this for any other company using GSuite.

It's a bit of a stretch for the government to assume this feature exists solely to piss off the government.

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

#314

Post by andrepd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #296
di456 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] https://news.sccgov.org/n…

Yes, but your point is? This is a thread about Google and their abuses, so it makes sense that is what is being discussed (not invalidating that there are much worse things happening in the world).

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

#315

Post by ClumsyPilot »

izacus wrote: post #302
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in 1950, if you wanted to just ask a quick question of your colleague Joe, you'd walk over to his office and ask him verbally. Have we lost legs? >Today, if you want to ask a quick question of your colleague Joe (who might be in a different state), you just send him a message on Slack What would you use in 1950's, a phone, a letter? Have we lost phones? Do you think preserving paper letters was easier than pres…

> Have we lost legs? How do you walk to your colleague when you WFH? I remember topics here where mandatory office was deemed a crime against humanity on HN.

I have personal phone numbers of coleagues I consider friends. Gossip stays out of any corporate machine.

Why are people so suprised that court want the messages?

What do you think will happen if someone makes an HR complaint, or you assert some boundaries against unreasonable boss?

Anything you say in corporate software can be used against you

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

#316

Post by doctor_eval »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #269
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…

> 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. It's kind of weird that we've turned formerly ephemeral things into "evidence" just because they…

This doesn’t seem right to me. There was a relatively short period of time when phone conversations were ubiquitous, cheap and fleeting, but for the the majority of history, business communication was performed in writing, and we’ve basically gone back to that with the advent of ubiquitous email and messaging.

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

#317

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jamwil wrote: post #288
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand Tyranny as abusing your power in a manner thats cruel, unreasonable, hypocritical and unaccountable.

Like you could have a tyranical father, it's not exclusive to Gulags

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

#318

Post by beepbooptheory »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #206
bb88 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the CIA destroyed the torture video tapes to prevent embarrassment and further prosecutions of it's employees. So it kinda goes both ways.

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…

Even on your own terms, why is this a "scary" moral confusion? If its just a matter of being in a different country with the wrong economics to end up being surveiled and harrased and ultimately dead in the jungle with the rest of my family, out of as you say U.S. "National interest", that's much more arbritrary than it is moral. Not everyone is American.

But I guess, those countries "shouldn't have been doing it in the first place" right?

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

#319

Post by pessimizer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #296
di456 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] https://news.sccgov.org/n…

Cool. I'm going to stop calling the guy who killed one of my friends a murderer, or the Sacklers. It's really disrespectful to the people who were killed by Hitler or Pol Pot.

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

#320

Post by pessimizer »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #269
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…

> 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. It's kind of weird that we've turned formerly ephemeral things into "evidence" just because they…

> If it was a few decades ago, the kind of things happening in these chats would have happened in person or on the telephone with nobody necessarily recording it.

Or on paper, maybe by memo. And they would have destroyed the paper evidence just the same, and claimed helplessness in the face of so much paper that had to be kept, and that the suspicion of their motives amounts to being convicted before trial. Same sort of arguments, except for the people handling paper holding on to data wasn't a matter of getting a few people to click around for a few days, it was wrangling dozens of banker's boxes of paper. Trucks and warehouses.

> It's kind of weird that we've turned formerly ephemeral things into "evidence" just because they could optionally be stored.

This is literally what evidence is. It's something that you carefully collect and store to review later in connection with something else. You don't have to "store" the knife you stabbed somebody with or the gun you shot someone with (you've already got enough use out of them) but if somebody destroys them, they're destroying evidence. Even if you threw it out with the kitchen trash, and you always take out the trash on Thursdays.

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