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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]

#161
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer. When a legal hold is issued, the company is instructed not to destroy potential evidence related to the case. They don’t have to perform additional recordings and minutes. But they exist, they can’t destroy it.

Who gets to decide what is "potential evidence"? If we're going to play language games, turning the chat history off doesn't really destroy anything, just prevents the paper trail from being created.

The judge.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which in some contexts makes sense. Losing all of your Facebook pictures is never going to be as devastating as losing your retirement.

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.

Are you suggesting that you want the government to have accessible recordings of medical conversations?

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

#163
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. Why is trading via Zoom impossible, voice maybe, and text mandatory?

And trading via WhatsApp is also possible. And also illegal The point of the regulation isn’t to cover every conceivable alternative. The point is to specify what avenue you can use to accomplish a task in a regulated manner

... and by the company enforcing it the way they enforce it, they can prove the employee bypassed the rules knowingly and purposely without the company being at fault.

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

#164

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 g…

I’m far from a Google fan and find most of the products tacky - including Google search without an ad blocker.

But I wouldn’t even go that far.

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

#165
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer. When a legal hold is issued, the company is instructed not to destroy potential evidence related to the case. They don’t have to perform additional recordings and minutes. But they exist, they can’t destroy it.

Who gets to decide what is "potential evidence"? If we're going to play language games, turning the chat history off doesn't really destroy anything, just prevents the paper trail from being created.

Judges rarely care for people who think they're smart enough to play "language games".

You are expected to act in good faith as an executive or legal officer of a publicly-traded company.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, FAANG gang has no idea the level of surveillance and record keeping that bank/fund/wall st tech is under. I worked at one shop that if you said "call my cell" in a slack to someone, you'd get a call from compliance within days ask to explain why you did this, what the conversation was about, why it wasn't on a work phone.. and to never, ever, ever do it again... because you know we are watching, so we will find…

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

You may be thinking of the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal[0], which used the chat in Bloomberg terminals[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/read-the-bloomberg-chats-tha...

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

#167
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…

Sure, Jan.

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

#168
I don't think their dirty tricks and legal consequences are the main point here. The question is poorly political: Do we want a functioning market economy or not? I take only the mobile phone operating system. We have a high end walled garden segment. By its price point it will always have limited market share. And we have a all-the-rest market segment. Competition between these market segments exists but it is by nature limited to a middle spectrum, some customers that could chose either options.

Within those rather fixed segments there is zero competition. (I said I limit my consideration to mobile operating systems, on phone hardware the situation is slightly different.) Zero competition is not market economy, so for me that means that Google's Android business must be regulated in an unprecedented way. Whether they gained their monopoly completely legally or not is just side topic. In practice that would probably mean that the Android business needs to be separated from the rest of the company and run as an utility or a non-profit until serious competition has developed again. I don't have the ready solution. The monopoly is unprecedented in history, so the solution needs to be so, too.

I am European, so the situation is even worse. Europe just waits and sees how US politics is busy with nearly losing democracy. A monopoly in the mobile operating system market is not very high on this agenda.

So what should Europe do? Create another Airbus? Introduce a heavy mobile operating system tax? I don't have good solutions, but just standing by is worse.

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

#169

Would MicroSoft Teams meetings (including 1:1 private calls between individual employees) be converted from Voice to Text and stored? Could those turn up in FOI's or SEC requests one day, or even just be viewed by higher-ups at the company with access? I'd guess what's said in 1 on 1 calls could be quite sensitive

[deleted]

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

#170

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…

This was my experience as well. (Well I didn't come from an HFT company but on arriving at Google and then seeing some "dubious" things get diverted to ephemeral media, because possibile suits, was a thing.)

What I found interesting was the rationalization that "people would just cherry pick data and use it against us." Which belied the idea that if you saved all of it, you would be able to reconstruct it.

Also the storing of live traffic not to "look at" but to have a model of live traffic to test changes against. I once asked "why not create a statistical model of the traffic and use that?" and was responded "#1, people wouldn't believe you if you said this was 'just like actual traffic', and #2 we get live traffic for free with no engineering effort so its a win to use it instead."

They weren't wrong but they didn't really prioritize privacy or safety either.

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