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

Post by auggierose » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 12:47 PM UTC

ranting-moth wrote: post #308

auggierose wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's very clear-cut. The topic is about deleting data. There's a massive difference in deleting records that did exists vs. records that never existed in the first place. The former is deleting data, the second case isn't.

Post by Linosaurus » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 12:55 PM UTC

seraphsf wrote: post #244

nightpool wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably isn't because of litigation holds, actually, this is because finance firms are under SEC record-keeping rules, which require the preservation of ALL internal written communications, regardless of whether they're currently being sued or not. It's a bit of a different beast. See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-02-02/the-se... which covers some ... interesting recent developments of this ru…

Today, we use instant messaging like we use voice conversation - especially for people who work remotely. Banning the use of ephemeral IM is sort of like saying “you need to record all of your discussions, no matter how trivial”. Levine’s article makes a great point: “It really is wild that the SEC’s official position is now that it is illegal to “use unofficial communications to do things like cut deals, win clients…

Post by Lazare » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

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…

Post by MagicMoonlight » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

Paul-Craft wrote: post #223

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.

Post by tantalor » Sun, Apr 16, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

dxdm wrote: post #312

vjk800 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…