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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]

#221

Post by cornstalks »

irjustin wrote: post #214
karpierz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

There is a record. It exists for 24 hours. It’s not in just your local computer’s memory. It’s in the cloud, and you can see that history on any of your devices.

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

#222

Post by pyuser583 »

lazyeye wrote: post #37
habitue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint details the reason it was not allowed in this case, though would be normally: the topics were subject to legal holds. > Like Mr. Pichai, other key Google employees, including those in leadership roles, routinely opted to move from history-on rooms to history-off Chats to hold sensitive conversations, even though they knew they were subject to legal holds. Indeed, they did so even when discussing topics…

Quite ironic...when you consider the lengths Google goes to, to retain everybody else's data.

Google has been getting a lot better.

They let you change collection settings and delete your data.

It’s a lot better than most companies do.

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

#223

Post by Paul-Craft »

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…

This is just Google up to their old tricks again. They used to have an internal practice to add company lawyers to emails in order to try and make them privileged and undiscoverable: https://archive.is/1Bwgs

I don't know what the aftermath of the DoJ action mentioned in the link was, but I hope they were sanctioned in some way for it, just like I hope they get sanctioned for what they're trying to do here.

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

#224

Post by Paul-Craft »

siliconc0w wrote: post #215

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.

Seriously. It's hard enough for me to find stuff in my company's Slack instance, never mind if everything auto-deleted after 24 hours or 30 days.

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

#226

Post by Paul-Craft »

pyuser583 wrote: post #222
lazyeye wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite ironic...when you consider the lengths Google goes to, to retain everybody else's data.

Google has been getting a lot better. They let you change collection settings and delete your data. It’s a lot better than most companies do.

How do you know they actually honor your requests? What about any of your data that's gone into training one of their ML models? You can't just delete the effects of training data from your model weights.

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

#227

Post by atian »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #218
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…

> a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it

There is nothing reasonable about turning an existing system that was never designed to keep chats at all, to do on a whim, where would cause irreparable damage to the common offering both internally and externally.

Once is a pass, but 24 hours is not nearly an established window that a medium can/should be made arbitrarily compliant. It would be a large precedent.

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

#228

Post by tempestn »

rebuilder wrote: post #216
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?

Yes, they apply to future records while the hold is in effect.

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

#229

Post by pyuser583 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #89
aikinai wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you allowed to have in-person meetings? Do you have to record and preserve them? If you are allowed to be off the record only in person, this seems like the perfect commercial real estate subsidy program from the federal government.

Yes but there's almost always someone on zoom/conference line in the meeting, which is recorded, so.. The penalties are so stiff for a lot of infractions, there is far less attempts to workaround the letter of the rules than you would immediately expect. There's also classes of in-person meetings with externals that you need pre-approval permission to attend and to write up what was discussed after the fact. Like peo…

I’ve heard stories of people saying things like “at our (highest) levels, we only talk face to face, and then as little as possible.”

It wasn’t about regulation, but protectionism. If you want to do business with us, you need to hire people to deal with us - people we approve of, or no access.

This was in an unregulated industry, with strong protectionist instincts (Hollywoods movie industry).

Couldn’t these sorts of “in person only” rules also be a protectionist gatekeeping technique?

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

#230

Post by jwalton »

glerk wrote: post #69
rawgabbit wrote: post #35

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.

> Who gets to decide what is "potential evidence"?

Ultimately, the courts do, but if something is possibly related you’re supposed to preserve it.

> turning the chat history off doesn't really destroy anything

IANAL but courts tend to view all written conversions the same way. Turning off chat history is viewed the same as throwing away all the mail you receive, and both are very much frowned upon when the court has specifically asked you not to. These rules are set through longstanding precedent.

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