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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]

#211

Post by ethbr0 »

sharedbeans wrote: post #175
refurb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's not just "hey let's be careful", it's "hey, screw all that legal hold stuff, lol!" What kind of legal guidance were these people getting? When I worked at a big corp, we had regular meetings with legal that were reminders of how to treat sensitive subjects and it was taken very seriously.

Very clear that Google also had lots of legal guidance and training on this issue, but their training was trying to achieve a different outcome.

>> “please do not share sensitive information here where possible . . . . Until we fix room architecture, content here is searchable/discoverable within the corp.” (Id. Ex. 27, GOOG-PLAY5-000163640.)

Exactly.

When 'fix' means ensure conversations that are already under current legal hold are destroyed, it's clear what legal guidance and training are.

I hope the court nails their execs to the wall for pulling shit like this as a matter of corporate policy.

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

#212

Post by mil22 »

astrange wrote: post #205
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…

Can't they just make it impossible to delete them or make backups?

At that time, all corporate email was already being hosted on an internal version of Gmail, so yes, both were technically possible, and external Gmail accounts were in fact backed up. To do so would have rendered any instructions not to delete any emails moot and unnecessary. Evidently they decided not to do so, and instead, tell everyone to NOT delete any sensitive emails. One can only speculate why that might have been.

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

#213

Post by ttttt444yeak »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #187
scarface74 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think we are far too afraid of upsetting tech employees to admit that it's exactly what it is. They apply somewhere near a double-digit-percentage tax to most businesses globally. They are under investigation for illegal practices in nearly every jurisdiction that has laws against certain business practices, and now their CEO has literally been caught specifically requesting to take business conversations off the r…

They absolutely belong in prison, I just don't think it should stop with the C suite.

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

#214

Post by irjustin »

karpierz wrote: post #64
irjustin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mmm i'm looking for the legal documentation/language that requires google to hold the data for this particular topic. because i'm in agreement with the grandparent comment that why is the topic subject to legal holds vs just having a meeting in person? Are in person meetings rquired to have a voice recorder present? it seems like a weird legal precedent.

You aren't required to make recordings. But if you made a recording, then you can't slate it for deletion. By disabling history, they're setting it up so records are deleted after 24 hours, instead of kept indefinitely. In the court's eyes, it's analogous to writing notes to each other, only to burn them the next day.

> routinely opted to move from history-on rooms to history-off Chats to hold sensitive conversations

The way this is worded there's no record, so there's no "slated for deletion"?

I guess the question becomes, if it exists inside computer memory, is that legally equivalent to "writing down piece of paper" and thusly is considered destroying evidence?

If I write something in disappearing ink (let's say it perfectly disappears), it's not destroying evidence? is it?

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

#215

Post by siliconc0w »

Ironically at google's scale(size and global timezone footprint) the inefficiency this default setting creates likely burns millions every day from work that gets blocked or knowledge that isn't discoverable.

Organize the world's information, except if it might make us look bad.

This is the pennywise pound foolish leadership that has taken over.

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

#216

Post by rebuilder »

Lazare wrote: post #186

This is....amazing. As I understand it: Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode. That is, Google's theory here seems to be that if you have a p…

One thing that comes to mind is that by the time a judge orders a hold, more than 24 hours will have elapsed since any chats that hold applies to. That is, if such a hold only applies to records created before the hold - do these orders apply to future records as well?

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

#217

Post by Spivak »

kyrra wrote: post #209
CydeWeys wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these settings were chosen specifically to destroy evidence, and the courts are increasingly unhappy with that. All conversations involving people on legal holds (such as the CEO!) should be retained indefinitely.

In-person and video/audio/phone conversations do not have the same requirements. What makes text chat that is meant to be ephemeral to be different than an in person chat?

I'm kinda sympathetic to Google in this case because the law makes it basically impossible to communicate with writing in a way that doesn't leave a paper trail. Messages being at minimum temporarily stored so you can read them is inherent to the medium.

It does seem reasonable that there should be some way, (outlined by the courts) to ephemerally text that gives it the same protections as an unrecorded phone call. Because in a world where it's not the 60s and business is done over text instead of phones we lost a lot of privacy with no change in the law itself.

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

#218

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Lazare wrote: post #186

This is....amazing. As I understand it: Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode. That is, Google's theory here seems to be that if you have a p…

FRCP 37

...

(e) Failure to Preserve Electronically Stored Information. If electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court:

(1) upon finding prejudice to another party from loss of the information, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice; or

(2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation may:

(A) presume that the lost information was unfavorable to the party;

(B) instruct the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party; or

(C) dismiss the action or enter a default judgment.

Google has been accused of violating FRCP 37(e). USA and State AGs have moved for sanctions in another case against Google in DDC:

https://ia802501.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.22...

https://ia802501.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.22...

In the Epic case the court did not believe that the steps taken to preserve chats were reasonable.

"Consequently, on the record as a whole, the Court concludes that Google did not take reasonable steps to preserve electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)."

https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.cand.364325/gov.us...

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

#219

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

squirtle24 wrote: post #42
dataflow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why isn't [...] Was there a case against Google already that bans this or something? According to [1], "The DOJ maintains Google should have suspended its auto-delete practices by 2019, when it was clear litigation was coming." I found more details in [2] on the legal topic of evidence spoliation that might be interesting, though I'm not a lawyer and don't know what which law(s) are relevant in this case. > And cou…

> Yes, but there's presumably a difference between deleting evidence vs. not having it in the first place. In the article it seems Google's "history off" feature isn't really history-off so much as it simply auto-deletes after 24h. If the chats were never logged, would they have avoided this? Also how far does the law go regarding deletion - I mean if a message was stored in memory and then released/garbage collected…

Phone calls and video chat are real time communication. They are expected to be ephemeral. Asynchronous text chat is not.

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

#220

Post by [deleted] »

Lazare wrote: post #186

This is....amazing. As I understand it: Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode. That is, Google's theory here seems to be that if you have a p…

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