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Guide to Slack import and export tools

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Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#481

Post by humanrebar »

criley2 wrote: post #369
humanrebar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a corporate network. It's a tech issue, cultural issue, and a legal issue, but it's harmful that we seem to be forgetting the wisdom of discretion as life become more digitized. If the law or culture says "no expectation of discretion", they're just wrong and likely hypocritical. It's healthy, normal, and appropriate to tell specific things to…

Before tech, witness testimony was the same thing. Old boys club keeps it "verbal only", but someone blows the whistle and testifies regarding the conversation. Technology didn't change anything. You can't have a private conversation at work. Period end of story. If you manage to conceal your communications, not only could you be violating laws (depending on your industry and relevant regulations) but you're likely v…

> You can't have a private conversation at work.

I was talking about discretion, not privacy. Those are two different things. Discretion is controlled sharing of thoughts, ideas, and information. Marking documents "trade secret" is an example of discretion. Trade secrets are not private information.

I'm not arguing that information should be unavailable when a warrant or subpoena requires disclosure. I'm arguing that doing the digital equivalent of bugging every conference room in the building is a toxic thing to do, culturally. If the law compels the bugged rooms, we have bad laws on the books.

Two employees need to be able to have a healthy, discrete conversation about working with the boss without having to worry about a transcript of the conversation pop up in a performance evaluation later in the year.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#482

Post by humanrebar »

amw wrote: post #433
humanrebar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a corporate network. It's a tech issue, cultural issue, and a legal issue, but it's harmful that we seem to be forgetting the wisdom of discretion as life become more digitized. If the law or culture says "no expectation of discretion", they're just wrong and likely hypocritical. It's healthy, normal, and appropriate to tell specific things to…

Note that there's also a difference between work-mandated communication channels (for which there is no "opt-in"--there is a directory with your email address, you're on the list of Slack users, etc) and channels outside of work that you can opt into and out of (you can not give your personal number when the company is big enough for that to be an option, block people when they abuse it, not reciprocate keybase follo…

> A channel that is mandated to be kept open loses some discretion for its users, and the loss of power has to be compensated in some way.

Yeah, I was hinting at that a bit. I think tools like SnapChat and encrypted chat clients are reaching for discrete and healthy digital relationships. A lot of the conversation about these tools is about privacy, which is really something else. How someone looks naked is often private. How that biopsy turned out should be shared with people, just discretely.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#483

Post by humanrebar »

LamaOfRuin wrote: post #413
ravenstine wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that it isn't. I'm not a legal expert, but it seems that it could be argued that direct messages are implied private conversations, and that laws around recording audio implies that private spoken conversations can occur in offices. The fact that direct messages leave a history is merely a side effect that does not suggest that they are any less private than a spoken conversation behind closed doors. Howeve…

You might argue that, but you'd lose in a US court (and afaik most other western countries).

The case is that the culture needs to change. Where it is now isn't healthy.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#484

Post by jerf »

darawk wrote: post #86
jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provenance. I can doctor my local logs just about as quickly as I can type. True, it's a bit harder than some people estimate to keep the whole thing coherent, but that just means that you hear about the people who get caught, but not the ones who do it successfully. If I am capable of doctoring Slack's copy of the logs with sufficient effort, it is certainly orders of magnitude harder and much legally riskier (as I…

That's easy to disprove, though. Make them log into their slack on a new computer, and they'll have no opportunity to doctor them.

The parent I was replying to said they ought to keep the Slack logs themselves. If they're logging into Slack to get them, then it is Slack doing the keeping and we're back to Slack doing the storage.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#485

Post by bspn »

iamdave wrote: post #138

I'm finding myself in a situation where this is actually kind of welcome news involving a workplace bully who operates via DM. I'm moving on very soon, but I've shared many of our interactions with management, management has even seen first hand how he openly insults other engineers. Instead of doing anything about it, management announced we had been acquired and over the course of about 12 days slowly resigned leav…

I don't understand how this feature changes anything? If he operates via DM them you and his other victims can pretty easily share the evidence with management today. I don't think this feature is going to a be a magic cure-all where management pro-actively monitors communications for this type of behavior - it will still require individual(s) to escalate a complaint that management can then investigate.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#486

Post by TremendousJudge »

dsacco wrote: post #231
afastow wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the material difference between having employees save DM logs in an auditable, authenticated way and being able to view employee DMs? > When you are reviewing an auditable log of information related to an employee, you don't necessarily want to have to ask the employee for that information, nor do you necessarily want them to know you're reviewing it. You just answered your own question. You might not want…

> You might not want them to know you're reviewing it but they most certainly do want to know that you are. Of course they want to know. Everyone wants to know. But if they committed a crime, or at least are complicit in a lawsuit the company is facing, their desire for privacy on an information channel they don't own is irrelevant. I don't understand why this is controversial. When the SEC, FBI, local police, opposi…

up until now I was acting under the belief that my Slack logs were as private as my WhatsApp logs

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#487

Post by mindcrime »

zdragnar wrote: post #128
mindcrime wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, unless your work environment is sophisticated enough to fiddle with the certificates on your machine, and run a MITM proxy, you should be safe using something like GMail over https. Now I'm sure some companies do manage to intercept outgoing https traffic, but I doubt that most companies do. OTOH, I still think being paranoid is the safest policy, so if you're plotting to overthrow your boss, or sell se…

If your Gmail account is through work (i.e. not a personal one) they already have access to it.

Agreed. I was referring to the parent post's comment about using personal accounts at work. That might be safe, to some extent. But again, I would lean on the side of paranoia if you're talking about anything that could get you (fired|put in jail).

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#490

Post by iamdave »

bspn wrote: post #485
iamdave wrote: post #138

I'm finding myself in a situation where this is actually kind of welcome news involving a workplace bully who operates via DM. I'm moving on very soon, but I've shared many of our interactions with management, management has even seen first hand how he openly insults other engineers. Instead of doing anything about it, management announced we had been acquired and over the course of about 12 days slowly resigned leav…

I don't understand how this feature changes anything? If he operates via DM them you and his other victims can pretty easily share the evidence with management today. I don't think this feature is going to a be a magic cure-all where management pro-actively monitors communications for this type of behavior - it will still require individual(s) to escalate a complaint that management can then investigate.

In our unique case, it would have meant we could have exported old DMs from users who have since left the company after a recent merger.

I'm using my example to think forward: an employee leaves due to workplace conflicts, and later (not to intimate this is the path I'm taking, I'm merely walking out the door, as my issue was a mere personality conflict not something that I can seek damages over) pursues civil action, a responsible export and archive policy from HR the way IT departments may sometimes be required to retain email messages for a period of time can be a benefit if the departed employee cites their interactions with an abusive manager for their departure and subsequent litigation.

Other commenters have referenced this as well.

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