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Define deleted. Do you mean the data itself is purged, or simply marked as deleted and rendered inaccessible? If you mean purged, then do you also mean that it

Define deleted. Do you mean the data itself is purged, or simply marked as deleted and rendered inaccessible? If you mean purged, then do you also mean that it is zeroed off of the disk by a multiple low-level pass? This would be hard to prosecute for perjury as the definition of "deleted" can be construed in many ways.

Silhouette 9y ago
This is the sort of word game that surely wouldn't last ten seconds in any courtroom. "Did you delete the data or not?" "Yes, we deleted the data." "Then how is it that we're all sitting here looking at it?" This modern fiction of pretending something is deleted just because someone set a flag called "deleted" has about as much relevance to actual deletion as the evil bit in an IPv4 header has to actual Internet security. It's not deleted in any technical sense, nor in the common English meaning of the word.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Thank you. Judges and Senators are not happy when you try to play these word games with them. And you don't want to make a judge or a senator unhappy.
- bhhaskin 9y ago
  But the reality is that is exactly what is happening when you delete a file. It sets a flag as deleted in the file system. The data reminds there until overwritten. Computers have worked this way since forever. Also if you look at the definition of delete it matches this. To remove by striking out or canceling, not to remove all remove all traces.
  - bithive123 9y ago
    The point people are trying to make is that properly practiced law can't be circumvented by these kinds of arguments. If there was a requirement to do something with the data and it was not done then you failed, technical jargon and implementation details are irrelevant.
    - Blahah 9y ago
      I really do not think this is accurate. I have been in a courtroom when a file was described as 'deleted' and then an expert witness 'recovered' the 'deleted' file, which was entered as evidence. Delete is a technical word that has a specfiic meaning. Unlike most language, technical terms are (to some degree) clearly defined and should not change over time or with common usage. Whether people misinterpret the word arbitrarily is not important when experts are being consulted - they use the word as defined. The word delete means what it means, and any expert giving testimony about it would use the same definition. It certainly doesn't mean removing information completely from existence with no possibility of it surviving in any way or ever being retrieved.
      - Silhouette 9y ago
        Delete is a technical word that has a specfiic meaning. Respectfully, if that were true, we wouldn't all be having this discussion.
        Blahah 9y ago
        Respectfully, the fact that we're having this discussion means some participants aren't adhering to the technical definition. There's a meandering, geographically and socialogically heterogeneous definition that is non-technical. In court, I believe a technical expert would use the former, not the latter (unless specifically required to do otherwise).
        Silhouette 9y ago
        What do you think that definition is? I've never seen a single, authoritative, technical definition of the term, nor anyone with the authority to write one.
        DanBC 9y ago
        English courts don't like to give specific technical meanings to words. They prefer to use the everyday meaning as understood by the reasonable person. I understand this is perhaps a cultural difference to the US.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    But the reality is that is exactly what is happening when you delete a file. It sets a flag as deleted in the file system. Sure, but no-one is testifying before a senior government committee that such files were "deleted" in a context where deletion is clearly understood to mean making permanently irretrievable. If the committee called any IT expert to give evidence and asked if data had really been deleted under those conditions, surely no-one who understood the technicalities would say yes. Computers have worked this way since forever. A lot of things have been done "since forever" in the computer age. The fact that some of those things might not be good ideas and public awareness has finally reached the point where something might actually be done about it is rather the point here.
  - chopin 9y ago
    But the file system overrides the (former) file content eventually. You don't have a guarantee you can retrieve the content anymore. You'd need to use forensic tools for that anyway. I think any jury can understand this. Setting a flag in a database column is a big difference, as the data never becomes purged eventually.
- drb91 9y ago
  Well, you could also encrypt the data with a per-user key and throw that away when you delete the user. No the data was not deleted, but access to it is. There are ways to design data retention around deletable constraints like this. The bigger question is more like “do we trust facebook to agree with us on what deleting an account acually means?” For isntance, i’m curious if you delete your account whether they still do the shadow account tracking. I’m betting they do.
  - cjhopman 9y ago
    But what does it mean to "throw [the key] away"? Are you operating at scale? I hope you have a very robust backup system (including enough that you can even recover from something like the Sony hack), and so you're going to need to ensure that you delete it from those systems. And then, you're dealing with 100s (1000s? 10000s?) of these deletions a day. Do you want that to be instant? Are you really that confident in your deletion that you want it instantly overwriting your backups? How are you resistant to the Sony hack in that case? ...
    - drb91 9y ago
      I don’t know about a general purpose system for this, but it’s generally easier to proactively delete or make inaccessible something in a singe data store. Encryption reduces the problem to a single element in a single data store. You’re not wrong, but it’s a problem worth solving for the ability to not have to solve the problem 1000 times over for each bit of user data.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
serf 9y ago
The question: "Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the statement that there was 'no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton,' was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?" "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," Clinton responded. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/tbt-clinton-grand-jury-testimony/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/tbt-clinton-grand-ju...

Silhouette 9y ago

This is the sort of word game that surely wouldn't last ten seconds in any courtroom. "Did you delete the data or not?" "Yes, we deleted the data." "Then how is it that we're all sitting here looking at it?" This modern fiction of pretending something is deleted just because someone set a flag called "deleted" has about as much relevance to actual deletion as the evil bit in an IPv4 header has to actual Internet security. It's not deleted in any technical sense, nor in the common English meaning of the word.

Balgair 9y ago
Thank you. Judges and Senators are not happy when you try to play these word games with them. And you don't want to make a judge or a senator unhappy.
bhhaskin 9y ago
But the reality is that is exactly what is happening when you delete a file. It sets a flag as deleted in the file system. The data reminds there until overwritten. Computers have worked this way since forever. Also if you look at the definition of delete it matches this. To remove by striking out or canceling, not to remove all remove all traces.
- bithive123 9y ago
  The point people are trying to make is that properly practiced law can't be circumvented by these kinds of arguments. If there was a requirement to do something with the data and it was not done then you failed, technical jargon and implementation details are irrelevant.
  - Blahah 9y ago
    I really do not think this is accurate. I have been in a courtroom when a file was described as 'deleted' and then an expert witness 'recovered' the 'deleted' file, which was entered as evidence. Delete is a technical word that has a specfiic meaning. Unlike most language, technical terms are (to some degree) clearly defined and should not change over time or with common usage. Whether people misinterpret the word arbitrarily is not important when experts are being consulted - they use the word as defined. The word delete means what it means, and any expert giving testimony about it would use the same definition. It certainly doesn't mean removing information completely from existence with no possibility of it surviving in any way or ever being retrieved.
    - Silhouette 9y ago
      Delete is a technical word that has a specfiic meaning. Respectfully, if that were true, we wouldn't all be having this discussion.
      - Blahah 9y ago
        Respectfully, the fact that we're having this discussion means some participants aren't adhering to the technical definition. There's a meandering, geographically and socialogically heterogeneous definition that is non-technical. In court, I believe a technical expert would use the former, not the latter (unless specifically required to do otherwise).
        Silhouette 9y ago
        What do you think that definition is? I've never seen a single, authoritative, technical definition of the term, nor anyone with the authority to write one.
        DanBC 9y ago
        English courts don't like to give specific technical meanings to words. They prefer to use the everyday meaning as understood by the reasonable person. I understand this is perhaps a cultural difference to the US.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  But the reality is that is exactly what is happening when you delete a file. It sets a flag as deleted in the file system. Sure, but no-one is testifying before a senior government committee that such files were "deleted" in a context where deletion is clearly understood to mean making permanently irretrievable. If the committee called any IT expert to give evidence and asked if data had really been deleted under those conditions, surely no-one who understood the technicalities would say yes. Computers have worked this way since forever. A lot of things have been done "since forever" in the computer age. The fact that some of those things might not be good ideas and public awareness has finally reached the point where something might actually be done about it is rather the point here.
- chopin 9y ago
  But the file system overrides the (former) file content eventually. You don't have a guarantee you can retrieve the content anymore. You'd need to use forensic tools for that anyway. I think any jury can understand this. Setting a flag in a database column is a big difference, as the data never becomes purged eventually.
drb91 9y ago
Well, you could also encrypt the data with a per-user key and throw that away when you delete the user. No the data was not deleted, but access to it is. There are ways to design data retention around deletable constraints like this. The bigger question is more like “do we trust facebook to agree with us on what deleting an account acually means?” For isntance, i’m curious if you delete your account whether they still do the shadow account tracking. I’m betting they do.
- cjhopman 9y ago
  But what does it mean to "throw [the key] away"? Are you operating at scale? I hope you have a very robust backup system (including enough that you can even recover from something like the Sony hack), and so you're going to need to ensure that you delete it from those systems. And then, you're dealing with 100s (1000s? 10000s?) of these deletions a day. Do you want that to be instant? Are you really that confident in your deletion that you want it instantly overwriting your backups? How are you resistant to the Sony hack in that case? ...
  - drb91 9y ago
    I don’t know about a general purpose system for this, but it’s generally easier to proactively delete or make inaccessible something in a singe data store. Encryption reduces the problem to a single element in a single data store. You’re not wrong, but it’s a problem worth solving for the ability to not have to solve the problem 1000 times over for each bit of user data.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

serf 9y ago

The question: "Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the statement that there was 'no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton,' was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?" "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," Clinton responded. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/tbt-clinton-grand-jury-testimony/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/tbt-clinton-grand-ju...