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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]

#341

Post by devrand »

tyingq wrote: post #310
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…

The loophole for face-to-face and telephone conversations is sort of interesting. I wonder if it remains because it historically wasn't historically practical to record...or solely because of eavesdropping/consent laws. Or some combination of the two? What if you were using a 3rd party chat with no history capability at all...where does that fall?

AFAIK you have an obligation to retain records if under a legal hold, but you do not have an obligation to create records. So if your company policy is to record all phone calls, then yes, you would need to retain and provide those records as part of discovery. However, you cannot be obligated to start recording phone calls in order to make them discoverable.

> What if you were using a 3rd party chat with no history capability at all...where does that fall?

This somewhat gets to the heart of what Google was doing. There's two parts to this:

  1. There's always some amount of history with chat software as it's a async communication mechanism. Maybe it's minutes, hours, or days. But let's say there's no feature to retain messages for longer. If you're under a legal hold, are you obligated to retain these?
  2. Now let's say the software does also have a history feature but it's optional that you can switch on, but you default it to off for everyone. If you're under a legal hold, are you now obligated to turn it on? Or this is analogous to being forced to start recording phone calls.
Regardless of why Google was doing this, it's an interesting legal question and one that I'm not sure has much case law on.

> The loophole for face-to-face and telephone conversations is sort of interesting. I wonder if it remains because it historically wasn't historically practical to record...or solely because of eavesdropping/consent laws.

I think it's largely because you had to go out of your way to record a phone call. You generally needed to get an extra device, wire it up, get tapes, etc. In the modern era of video calls this is a built-in feature available at the click of a button. Which raises the question: if you're under a legal hold are you compelled to enable that by default?

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

#342

Post by denton-scratch »

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.

Don't bother deleting your texts; just delete the phone in its entirety. E.g., take a boat ride, and chuck it into the North Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagatha_Christie

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

#343

Post by the_optimist »

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…

Same thing that happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails. In fact, ”a computer technician” introduced the email deletion policy after a subpoena was issued. Remind me is how Google did something horrific here, must be some dastardly “computer technicians.”

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

#344

Post by ycombobreaker »

mil22 wrote: post #196
kentonv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting this from? Is this from the complaint? Or a personal anecdote? I worked there in 2006. The SVP of Eng was Alan Eustace. He's a jolly guy, he chuckles a lot. I don't remember this specific exchange but I can hear his chuckle in my head. Knowing him, the chuckle would almost certainly be laughing at what an obviously terrible idea it would be to delete the emails. Alan Eustace certainly would not…

Personal anecdote, personal interpretation (though shared by colleagues I discussed this with at the time who also heard the tone and phrasing of the words first hand). The SVP would never tell anyone to delete emails, and he did not do so! Did I make that clear? He did NOT do so. He definitely DID NOT want us to DELETE ANY EMAILS! No SVP would have publicly instructed anyone to do so. Unrelatedly, I would not have b…

I can see how an awkwardly-delivered statement could by misconstrued, regardless of the speaker's true intent. However, doesn't this play out pretty poorly for the rank-and-file anyhow? Anyone caught deleting emails would get thrown under the bus by management citing the explicit instruction.

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

#345

Post by okdood64 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #247
Paul-Craft wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Conversations in real life get deleted after 0s! The trick is to not use chat as documentation. Documentation as documentation is way more useful. The process of creating it is valuable to clear thinking too.

Sure, maybe in some ideal world where everyone has unlimited time to write documentation.

Sometimes it's just nice just to be like "Oh what exactly did that person say/link a few days ago? Seemed relevant to what I'm working on, let me search the chat history..."

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

#346

Post by tantalor »

polotics wrote: post #334
tantalor wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the 24 hour chats are only stored in RAM? That's not permanent.

RAM is permanent as long as you don't pull the plug. If you've been told to preserve evidence, and still pull the plug, then you did not do what you were told to do.

Silly analogy: person on lit hold writes a message in the sand on a beach with the tide out. Are they obligated to preserve the message before the tide erases it naturally?

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

#347

Post by devrand »

nolok wrote: post #326
auggierose wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I explained why it isn't that clear-cut, even when it is about deleting data. I guess that's why there are courts, and not only HN opinions.

It is clear cut. Let's give you a concrete exemple we have had rulings on without any computer involved, which are almost a 1:1 situation: you are on litigation hold, and aren't allowed to destroy any records. You do an oral meeting, with no plans to put it on paper. Unknown to you, someone took notes during the meeting, say your secretary because she didn't feel well that day and wanted to be sure to remember it the…

I'm not sure that's a comparable situation as someone explicitly took an action to make a record. In the case of Chat it's all software automation. No one is explicitly taking an action to make a record or destroy a record.

There is the whole situation of people asking to switch to the no history mode, but that's not retroactively applied and it's really no different than sending an email that says "let's talk about this over the phone".

The real open question is whether Chats can have a temporary nature to them as they are inherently a written record. But there's also other situations where you can have a written record, for example, if someone uses auto-captions on a video call. They're very short-lived, but they did exist for some duration.

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

#348

Post by scarface74 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #337
scarface74 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because the minute that someone from the “other” (whichever side you don’t like) party gets in control do you think they are going to do things that you want? Desantis just tried to push through a law that said you have to register with the state if you report on politicians. Do you like that proposed law? Do you want the government to have access to all communications between you and your coworkers? Do you want…

Does that amaze you? Because you should look at the unanswerable moneyed interests that got DeSantis elected in the first place. There's currently an investigation going on about how one particular former President may have broken the reporting law. But for that law, his "catch-and-bury" agreement to keep unpalatable stories about him out of the public eye was perfectly legal. So yes, I do want the organization with…

And we see what the people with “over site” do in Florida. Do you also believe that it was right that the government in Florida went after Disney because the company spoke out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law? Do you think the government has any right to try to have “over site” because the (Democratic) VPs wife got in a tizzy in the 80s because her little ears couldn’t handle NWA releasing a song called “Fuck the Police”?

Are you one of those people in power? Because the scenario that someone said was that I financial firms that are highly regulated was that if any employee said on chat to a friend at work, “hey give me call on my cellphone and let’s talk about where we are going after work”, you could be talked to by legal.

You are saying that you want an increase by the surveillance state. Have people learned nothing about how the government abuses power from the “War on $x”?

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

#349

Post by auggierose »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #339
auggierose wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume I said this instead: > Now assume that the programmer of the app made an error, and accidentally DATA is kept for 24 hours. As part of the error, the DATA is also automatically deleted after 24 hours. What now?

Nothing changed. You know it’s a record. That’s why it’s the word you naturally used to describe it. It’s not some kind of complex trick question.

I don't know it's a record, it's just a word I used. Now I use a different word, which is more appropriate in the context of a HN reader trying to misunderstand what I am saying. Because the question is exactly: Does this data constitute a record, or not? Just saying it does is not an answer.

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

#350

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

auggierose wrote: post #349
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing changed. You know it’s a record. That’s why it’s the word you naturally used to describe it. It’s not some kind of complex trick question.

I don't know it's a record, it's just a word I used. Now I use a different word, which is more appropriate in the context of a HN reader trying to misunderstand what I am saying. Because the question is exactly: Does this data constitute a record, or not? Just saying it does is not an answer.

It does constitute a record. You yourself spontaneously used the word record to talk about it. No one is trying to misunderstand what you are saying.

You want there to be some kind of big tricky debate to be had about what kind of data is or isn’t a record. There is none. People know what a record is and when they encounter one. If you are storing something for a time, you have a record of it. It really is that simple.

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