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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]

#311

Post by jzb »

Spivak wrote: post #217
kyrra wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. B…

What’s amazing to me is that they didn’t just use a phone call or video chat.

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

#312

Post by dxdm »

vjk800 wrote: post #297
polotics wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting the feeling you are being disingenuous: a record is a record, a records that gets deleted after 24 hours was still a record. This is a truth based only on the meaning of the word "record". The chat application was not kept from preserving history, it was designed to actively delete history after 24 hours If there is a court order to not delete history, then the application was designed to do the opposite…

Everything you do on a computer is recorded, at least ephemerally, in the computer memory. Does deleting stuff from the memory count as destroying evidence? If not, how is it different from deleting stuff from somewhere else? I mean, deleting information that is not used is part of how computer operate, if you're going to disallow that, you better have a pretty huge tech infrastructure to store all those memory dumps…

> Does deleting stuff from the memory count as destroying evidence?

Maybe? The line is more blurry here, but there are probably cases where it's more or less easy to make the distinction.

If data is recorded on a permanent medium, it can be arbitrarily retrieved, an explicit delete operation is needed to get rid of it, and this deletion can be scheduled to happen at an arbitrary time - that might easily be understood as "destroying evidence".

If you want asynchronous communication, you will need to produce records of some kind, which can be evidence. That's nothing new.

Maybe if you have a system where the information must be exchanged live and falls off a cliff immediately no matter if it was observed or not, say, like a video conferencing tool - I wonder how the courts see that. It gets much closer to an interesting edge case than something with a 24-hour retention policy.

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

#313

Post by ajb »

zootboy wrote: post #236
Paul-Craft wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

You should be a bit wary of reading oral arguments as definitive, because the judges have a history of applying the more aggressive questioning to the side they ultimately agree with, just to make sure it's solid.

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

#314

Post by pnt12 »

geysersam wrote: post #291
Longhanks wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 always really funny/amazing that this exact process works flawlessly for EU politicians: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eus-von-der-leyen-cant-...

It's bizarre. Why would anyone delete their texts? It's such a transparent lie. Luckily the EU will soon go ahead with its chat control law, and the police will have access to all text and chat logs and will be able to prosecute any corruption in the parlament. At least that's what I think it's for.

Or more likely, spy on its citizens and find a loop hole to get privacy for themselves.

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

#315

Post by grncdr »

geysersam wrote: post #291
Longhanks wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 always really funny/amazing that this exact process works flawlessly for EU politicians: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eus-von-der-leyen-cant-...

It's bizarre. Why would anyone delete their texts? It's such a transparent lie. Luckily the EU will soon go ahead with its chat control law, and the police will have access to all text and chat logs and will be able to prosecute any corruption in the parlament. At least that's what I think it's for.

Are you serious? I really can't tell.

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

#317

Post by usr1106 »

IceWreck wrote: post #289
bjornsing wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In fact the Android monopoly is slightly better because you can choose to avoid using Google services and use the open source version of Android instead.

I do that in a way, I have no Google in my phone. But it gets increasingly difficult, more and more services you cannot buy without selling yourself to Google (or paying extra to be in Apple's walled garden).

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

#318

Post by aix1 »

jzb wrote: post #311
Spivak wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. B…

What’s amazing to me is that they didn’t just use a phone call or video chat.

> What’s amazing to me is that they didn’t just use a phone call or video chat.

I don't know anything about these specific conversations, but one obvious difference between phone/video and chat is that the former has to synchronous whereas the latter can be async.

Async can be more practical people who are very busy, are travelling, are located in different timezones etc.

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

vjk800 wrote: post #296
jwalton wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What is the chat happens in a software that didn't have chat history feature in the first place? I mean it's Google, surely they could cook up a separate internal chat tool just for this purpose. And if the chat history didn't exist in the first place, can the court order the company to switch to a chat software that has it? If not, how is it that different from toggling chat history on/off in a single software?

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

auggierose wrote: post #305
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…

Not familiar with the details in this case, but it makes total sense to me that an "off the record" chat doesn't need to be preserved, even by a court order to keep all records. Let's assume there is a chat app that is officially designed to be off-the-record, and everyone who uses it assumes it is off-the-record. Let's assume technology-wise, there are indeed no records kept, everything is ephemeral. Should the cour…

You are answering your own question yourself. Read carefully and notice how you use the world record in your post.

> Let's assume technology-wise, there are indeed no records kept, everything is ephemeral. Should the court order then apply to those chats?

No, there is no record to be kept.

> Now assume that the programmer of the app made an error, and accidentally records are kept for 24 hours. Should the court order now apply to those records?

Yes, the court order applies indiscriminately to all records no matter why or how they were made.

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