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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]

#261

It's always really funny/amazing that seemingly smart people think that the legal system can be "hacked" by doing cheap stuff like deleting history. It's going to come out and it's going to look bad. In an actual case that I was involved in, the other party was an ex-lawyer and had a rigorous practise of not keeping records in case something bad was discovered. I on the other hand had (terrifyingly, in retrospect) me…

Technical people often see laws like literal programming rather than a fuzzy social construct.

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

#262

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 na…

> The monopoly is unprecedented in history, so the solution needs to be so, too. What makes you think the Android monopoly is any worse than the Windows monopoly of the 90ties?

you didn't need to pay microsoft a tax to run an application on 'their' devices.

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

#263
Wouldn’t it just be easier and more effective to run your business in way where you’re not breaking the law? This looks like they are doing illegal things to such a degree that they need very bizarre retention policies and adding lawyers to chats for client attorney privilege. If it’s not possible to run an effective large tech company without illegality then maybe the law is bad? How do Microsoft and Facebook handle things?

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

#264
post #257
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 preced…

So what you're saying is that it's evidence of illegal intent to use these systems for any conversations that a company could reasonably be expected to keep more permanent records of otherwise? Because as far as I'm aware the usual answer to "we can't make this technology comply with the laws and regulations for doing these things" is "then you can't use that technology for doing those things".

"Because as far as I'm aware the usual answer to "we can't make this technology comply with the laws and regulations for doing these things" is "then you can't use that technology for doing those things"."

Tell this to the crypto people.

Crypto: (Knowing they cannot comply with SEC regulations) "We are unclear whether SEC regulations apply to us."

SEC: "The regulations apply."

Crypto: "Unfair. We were not given advance notice."

SEC: "This constitutes notice."

Crypto: "SEC regulations do not apply to crypto." (Apparently they did know whether regulations applied to them.)

It's like the crypto people are 11 years old.

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

#265
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is that really irony though? It kind of seems like self-preservation. Based on what I merely suspect Google knows about me, it wouldn't be a surprise at all if I receive a letter of acceptance/rejection for employment there, despite having never applied nor considered doing so. "The algorithm" knows the plans that I haven't even thought about thinking about. However, these are not people that can merely speculate; th…

No, if you actually read the messages, many of the employees want to turn history on, because it’s useful, but turn it off (or are instructed to turn it off) specifically to avoid being subject to legal discovery.

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

#266
post #84

The US can't regulate the monopolies adequately. The east doesn't have the same problem to that degree but in a way their solution is probably worse. Depending on who you ask, much worse. We need a new paradigm for government. It needs to be nuanced, sophisticated, balanced and yet holistic, and integrate well with technology. Or maybe due to the incompetence of current governments, the technology itself with take ov…

The US can regulate monopolies, it just doesn't want to. When the Sherman Antitrust Act was originally passed in the 1890s, the American judicial system systematically refused to apply it to business trusts. They didn't strike them down as unconstitutional, of course - they just argued that, oh no, poor old Congress doesn't know what words mean, they really meant to ban labor unions and not the monopolistic businesse…

I don't think what I wrote disagrees with your comments. China doesn't have the same type of monopoly problem we do. It's a different kind.

The point I am trying to make is that the effectiveness of the systems are constrained by their structure. It's not that we just have some monopolies that need to be destroyed. Because we keep getting new ones that hang around.

We need to improve the structure so that there is less tendency for monopoly and for monopolies to become entrenched.

Its like I am saying, look, to deal with this flat tire, we need to design a better tire. And you are saying, no, all we need to do is keep checking our tires. But this is the 15th flat tire we have had in the last two years. We need to design a better tire.

Fundamentally the problem is that there is a lack of metacognition. Governmental structure tends to be something that becomes part of a belief system. You need to have a good metacognitive sense of the difference between belief and objective reality before you can start to regularly examine and question your beliefs. This just requires a certain amount of exposure to the idea.

What's necessary is for people to fundamentally understand what money, government, and technology are and how they relate. And all of those concepts should evolve in a high tech direction.

The most likely way that is really going to happen at this point is probably via transhumans with higher intellect and better communication built-in.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a recent supreme court case where they discussed this exact practice: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-1397 From listening to the oral arguments, the court didn't seem to think that just CC'ing a lawyer automatically made the full communication privileged.

Yup, as per my note in another thread this does not work and it's pretty dumb to think it will work. Privilege covers you providing facts so they can give advice and them giving advice. It doesn't cover anything else and adding a lawyer to a thread like that is just sketchy and looks evasive.

“If simply having a lawyer present made a conversation privileged, then every mobster would pay one to follow them everywhere and sit in the corner of the room.” ~ Opening Arguments

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

#268
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?

The brief answer is that if you know, or can "reasonably anticipate" legal action, you have to take steps to preserve evidence related to it.

So if Google has been sued about, let's say, how they negotiate Revenue Share Agreements (RSAs), then they need to 1) take active steps to ensure any records they have about RSAs are retained, including making sure they aren't caught by any document retention policies and 2) they need to preserve any future records that might be relevant. And they also need to do that if they can "reasonably anticipate" they might be sued, which means (at a minimum) that if someone sends them a formal note telling them that they're planning to sure about RSAs (or whatever) they need to start retaining evidence.

If all your communications are either unrecorded or are deleted after 24 hours, then when you get sued (or receive a notice indicating someone is preparing to sue) then:

1) You likely have almost no retained records you need to prevent being deleted.

2) And in fact you can very likely argue that it took you more than 24 hours to implement the legal hold, so actually all your existing recorded conversations will probably end up deleted.

3) But everything going forward will be covered. And since these lawsuits drag on for years, that's likely to be quite a lot of material. Unless you keep deleting most of them, of course. Which doesn't seem like a good plan, but I suppose we'll see how it works for Google.

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

#269

It's always really funny/amazing that seemingly smart people think that the legal system can be "hacked" by doing cheap stuff like deleting history. It's going to come out and it's going to look bad. In an actual case that I was involved in, the other party was an ex-lawyer and had a rigorous practise of not keeping records in case something bad was discovered. I on the other hand had (terrifyingly, in retrospect) me…

Technical people often see laws like literal programming rather than a fuzzy social construct.

It's a weird cross between the two. Too fuzzy for programmers, too technical for common sense.

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

#270

It's always really funny/amazing that seemingly smart people think that the legal system can be "hacked" by doing cheap stuff like deleting history. It's going to come out and it's going to look bad. In an actual case that I was involved in, the other party was an ex-lawyer and had a rigorous practise of not keeping records in case something bad was discovered. I on the other hand had (terrifyingly, in retrospect) me…

Growth engineering?

Uber became a unicorn doing exactly this.

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