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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]

#231

Post by rvense »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #219
squirtle24 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but there's presumably a difference between deleting evidence vs. not having it in the first place. In the article it seems Google's "history off" feature isn't really history-off so much as it simply auto-deletes after 24h. If the chats were never logged, would they have avoided this? Also how far does the law go regarding deletion - I mean if a message was stored in memory and then released/garbage collected…

Phone calls and video chat are real time communication. They are expected to be ephemeral. Asynchronous text chat is not.

Should have used IRC!

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

#232

Post by polotics »

glerk wrote: post #176
iudqnolq wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who gets to decide what is "potential evidence"? You have an obligation to proactively figure that out yourself. There is then oversight by the court. > If we're going to play language games Judges don't play that sort of language games > turning the chat history off doesn't really destroy anything What Google called off the record chats were 24 hour history chats. So the history was deleted after 24 hours, when it…

> What Google called off the record chats were 24 hour history chats. Ah, I missed that part, that's a very compelling argument. I disagree these are not language games though. The way the chat application was kept from preserving history is an implementation detail that doesn't reflect the action the user of the chat performed in the UI. It sounds like the truth is whatever a human judge can be convinced into decidi…

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, and if a technical detail meant the application could not be changed, then the only way to respect the order would have been to stop using the chat application. Instead, there was a decision to use it more ...

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

#234

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

rvense wrote: post #231
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone calls and video chat are real time communication. They are expected to be ephemeral. Asynchronous text chat is not.

Should have used IRC!

Ytalk works without a server so even better.

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

#235

Post by nielsole »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #224
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.

I have lost maybe a dozen hours of work to Chrome's hard-coded 90 day history limit. Frustrating if you remember this internal tool from a year ago, but can't find it again. I wonder why they chose not to make it configurable.

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

#236

Post by zootboy »

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.

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.

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

#237

Post by astrange »

mil22 wrote: post #212
astrange wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they just make it impossible to delete them or make backups?

At that time, all corporate email was already being hosted on an internal version of Gmail, so yes, both were technically possible, and external Gmail accounts were in fact backed up. To do so would have rendered any instructions not to delete any emails moot and unnecessary. Evidently they decided not to do so, and instead, tell everyone to NOT delete any sensitive emails. One can only speculate why that might have…

This seems like an ineffective way to either comply or not comply, since the actual result is clearly the fault of the legal hold team for not handling it themselves.

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

#238

Post by bbor »

atian wrote: post #227
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 preced…

But it’s been years?

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

#239

Post by atian »

bbor wrote: post #238
atian wrote: 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…

But it’s been years?

“OTR” has been around for way longer. Not sure internally.

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

#240

Post by scarface74 »

sitkack wrote: post #190
scarface74 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it’s a good idea to give the government more surveillance power?

Over corporations, yes please!

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 to be questioned every time that you tell a coworker over Slack “maybe we should talk about this at lunch?”

It amazes me that people want the only organization that has a “monopoly on violence” to have more power.

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