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Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

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Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#111

Post by kentonv »

mil22 wrote: post #53

At Google in 2006, the SVP of Engineering was presenting to the entire engineering org during an all hands meeting. A question came up as regards retaining emails related to a pending lawsuit. He told everybody: "Do NOT delete any emails. . Let me say that again to make sure everyone has understood me correctly: do NOT delete any emails!" The way it was said, the chuckle, and the way it was repeated with the extra em…

Where are you getting this from? Is this from the complaint? Or a personal anecdote?

I worked there in 2006. The SVP of Eng was Alan Eustace. He's a jolly guy, he chuckles a lot. I don't remember this specific exchange but I can hear his chuckle in my head. Knowing him, the chuckle would almost certainly be laughing at what an obviously terrible idea it would be to delete the emails. Alan Eustace certainly would not have instructed people, explicitly nor implicitly, to delete messages subject to legal hold.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#112

Post by pclmulqdq »

GalenErso wrote: post #109
pclmulqdq wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as I understand it though, the SEC rules are to allow investigations (and "enforcement actions"/lawsuits) to happen quickly. I saw one of these "investigations" happening at one point and had no idea it was an investigation until I was casually informed that the strange people in the office were from the SEC and they had some questions about some trades, and that it happens all the time.

> the strange people in the office What made them strange, other than the fact you didn't know who they were?

In a 100-person company full of T-shirt wearers, ~4 random men walking around the trading floor in the middle of the day (a big no-no for any sort of guest) in suits is strange.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#113

Post by lotsofpulp »

steveBK123 wrote: post #100
wanderingmind wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering which official phone was used to get AAA ratings for the crap synthetic CDOs during 08 crisis.

Not a great example for nefarious off the records communication & coordination, as it wasn't required for this to occur. CDO credit ratings were a perverse incentive race to the bottom in terms of quality, because it was issuer-paid. The ratings agencies essentially bid on future business with the banks by issuing rosier ratings than their competitors. Also, they paid billions in fine settlements after the fact. The…

> CDO credit ratings were a perverse incentive race to the bottom in terms of quality, because it was issuer-paid.

Yet this remains unchanged.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#114

Post by kortilla »

GalenErso wrote: post #109
pclmulqdq wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as I understand it though, the SEC rules are to allow investigations (and "enforcement actions"/lawsuits) to happen quickly. I saw one of these "investigations" happening at one point and had no idea it was an investigation until I was casually informed that the strange people in the office were from the SEC and they had some questions about some trades, and that it happens all the time.

> the strange people in the office What made them strange, other than the fact you didn't know who they were?

Yes, that is the definition of “strange”.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#115

Post by steveBK123 »

dylan604 wrote: post #106
steveBK123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its rather disingenuous or modest for tech to fall back on "whats the worst that can happen, maybe you lose some pictures from the cloud" as a defense for such a light touch. There's many areas in which tech competes directly with, or has attempted to build shadow parallel systems to other more regulated industries - payments, exchanges, various medical plays, media, etc.

all of those "disruptors" just makes me cringe every time i hear it now. there have been so many bad actors. paypal still seizing accounts because some automated thing made a decision that can't be shared as to why. seems like Stripe as been in the news for similar topics. then you get the ones like Uber just flagrantly doing shady things to get that disruption. now, when i hear someone say disrupt, i immediately ass…

Tech thinks it is "disruption" when they are breaking laws they don't like / they deem outdated / they deem "unfair" / that prevent them from making more money more quickly.

Tech wanted people to think this was different from Wall St somehow, but I think the average American no longer sees the difference.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#116

Post by kevviiinn »

dylan604 wrote: post #108
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech doesn’t seem to have reached that point just yet. It's on a high speed train heading in that direction now.

Luckily for these companies, they are US based, and high speed rail doesn't really exist there.

Ouch

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#117

Post by angry_octet »

User23 wrote: post #82
nobody9999 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's incredibly dumb to explicitly discuss avoiding leading a paper trail with respect to subjects where litigation is imminent or already in progress. I'd say it's incredibly dumb to do that on a platform that can record the interaction. I never understood why folks use platforms like slack/email/etc. to discuss stuff they don't want others to know about. The ideal for that, of course, is to have in-person conversa…

> The ideal for that, of course, is to have in-person conversations in a place either known to be free of surveillance and/or difficult to surveil. Now I’m imagining tech executives having meetings in the bathroom with all the faucets going full blast whispering like the mafia dons of old.

Why doesn't Google have a sauna? Or a beach house? Seems like a win win.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#118

Post by Spooky23 »

stefan_ wrote: post #60
hackernewds wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Google will be made an example of, which surprisingly is usually the case.

I suspect nothing major will happen because as is typically the case, the judge deciding this is way way too deep into "sunk cost" territory. You can already see that in his previous findings: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23731433-23-03-28-go... "The court has already declined to issue terminating sanctions against Google" "the Court would like to see the state of the evidence at the end of fact discovery"…

It happens. The Feds changed the rules of civil procedure back in 2006-2008 to eliminate most excuses to produce information.

Prior to that, you could go the court and say your Exchange backup restorations would be difficult or impractical to do at reasonable cost and try to get the other party to pay or share cost. Now, the judge would laugh at you if you responded that way.

Google culturally has a small company mindset about this stuff, plus they are really rich so they can buy their way out of trouble. Now that HN people are talking about these issues, you can be sure some attorney or regulator will find a way to screw the company over good, as things like this are dumb.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#119

Post by Spooky23 »

jmole wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this is particularly surprising I am not a vengeful type. But people need to be punished to a shocking degree until this is fixed. It should be surprising. And it should have terrible, if not horrific, consequences.

who in particular would you punish? All this behavior is required by company policy, presumably set by Google's legal department: "Google employees are instructed that chatting “‘off the record’” is “[b]etter than sending . . . email” specifically because Google destroys off-the-record Chats every 24 hours, whereas it retains emails to produce in litigation".

The judge can tell the jury in a jury scenario to make an adverse inference; ie assume that whatever “bad” thing in question was said in the missing communications.

This is an area where individual conduct doesn’t matter until it does. Irritating judges is a risky affair.

Re: Google CEO: “can we change the setting of this group to history-off” [pdf]

#120

Post by ocdtrekkie »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #30

I moved from an HFT firm to Google. The attitude difference with respect to document holds was hilarious. At the HFT firm, the attitude was, "we're constantly being sued (by the SEC and others), so we treat all of our records like they're under litigation holds, just in case the SEC claims they wanted them, even the off-topic slack channels." At Google, the attitude was, "we're constantly getting sued, so we treat al…

Google operates exactly like a criminal organization would. It's that simple, and we should talk about it in that way, because that is what it is. A huge portion of their business is effectively racketeering, and we should be putting Larry, Sergey, and Sundar in prison. RICO provides some tools to effectively bring in the heads of the organization based on the actions of people under their employ.

"Nice website you got there. It'd sure be a shame if your competitors all were listed above it in search even when looking for it by exact name."

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