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Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? The only difference I can think of is traditionally document

Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? The only difference I can think of is traditionally documents are destroyed after they are no longer needed. Now they can see “deleted” documents and document change history. i.e. emails stored locally on a personal or company server can be permanently destroyed. Traditional email systems won’t have a change history of the email writing process) (I imagine all sorts of games could be played by lawyers with access to this additional types of information.)

keanzu 7y ago
Quality of the record keeping is vastly higher. Imagine a subpoena for every paper mail you sent in a year. You can't get that from the US Postal service.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. Prior to that, it was possible to have that information manually logged. If you corresponded with people in a Warsaw Pact country in the 1960s, that mail was recorded and sometimes opened.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    Knowing a letter was delivered by USPS doesn't yield the contents. The state would have to subpoena each individual recipient - and they may have destroyed or lost the letter. It would only be equivalent if every letter was opened and recorded so that all the contents would later be available because this subpoena covers not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts. This isn't metadata the government is coming for, it is the full content.
    - Daneel_ 7y ago
      Sometimes the contents almost don't matter. For example, if you saw multiple letters from an oncology department to a household, followed by letters from government departments and a funeral home, it wouldn't be hard to figure out what was going on. It's the exact same problem with phone metadata. The connections can be made to tell the story, and are even easier to manipulate into whatever narrative the prosecution wants to sell. In my example, you probably thought "person has cancer, household receives letters from the government post-death, bill from the funeral home", which is exactly how it could be sold. But it could just as easily be "person beating cancer, household receives government forms related to healthcare subsidies, funeral home letter was a condolence letter sent one year after the death of their parent." This is why metadata is so dangerous, it's far too easy to spin.
      - Johnny555 7y ago
        Just the same, I would feel a lot less violated if the government had header information for every email I received in the past year, than if they had the full email.
        GhettoMaestro 7y ago
        I believe this is a fallacy (not trying to be a dick). Why? They can accomplish 90% of their high level dragnet-ish surveillance goals via metadata snooping only (today at least)
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    >USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. If this was of any doubt at all - they’ve made this accessible over email. If you enable “informed delivery” you get an email of the scan before it hits your mail box.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      > USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. You mean those emails I get that the USPS claims it doesn't have an image for? Oh don't worry they always have images of the blanket spam everyone gets. But actual mail with bills or letters? It's more usual to get "A piece of mail that we do not have an image for is included in today's mail."
      - Spooky23 7y ago
        Usually those are things that run late for the batch system they use to send the emails. Usually when I get those it’s in the portal.
Spooky23 7y ago
No. The only difference is that you typically don’t put papers in the custody of a third party. My dad at one point was an inspector general at a government agency. They would use records and “physical metadata” like building logs and receipts for the purposes of their work. The difference today is that your allowing many third parties to gather that data. That’s the key thing. If you store data in the custody of a third party, it isn’t yours.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Well, people do typically put papers in the custody of a third party. Always have. Pretty much every paper that is involved in discovery is classified by the "custodian". Also of course, all the digital information, but traditionally it's paper. If you use and/or have a dispute with a lawyer, a doctor, a contractor, an accountant, whatever, they're going to have papers pertaining to you.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I’m talking about an individual, not a business scenario. Your papers in your custody in your home are only accessible via warrant, as opposed to your online stuff that requires as little as an administrative subpoena. Your doctor and attorney are unique in that professional relationship is legally privileged.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I'm just saying the fact that everything in the legal business is classified by "custodian", without any more context, kind of indicates that the default is not to assume ownership in the manner you're suggesting. Like, when something is legally disputed, there's a good chance people are hiding things, giving them to others, intermingling evidence with other things, etc. The system couldn't work if it assumed that everybody followed the rules. No, I'm not a lawyer, but come on.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? Just that the measure of recorded data is perhaps several orders of magnitude larger that it was merely ~20-30 years ago. I think back to my life in the 90s, and what information was recorded about me as I went about my day-to-day life, and it was minuscule compared to today. You could track who I called, but not what I said. You could track some of my purchases, but I used electronic forms of payment much less then. Now, I text or message much more than I voice call, so that is all recorded. Every now and then if I want to get really freaked out I go to myactivity.google.com (I've got an Android phone and am otherwise "all in" on Google services) and, say, playback my location history, search history, or everything I've said to Google assistant. I think we are really just coming to terms with the fact that "ephemera" no longer really exists, and the deep impact this will have on society.
- ip26 7y ago
  Of course, all that stuff could still have been recorded with a warrant 20-30 years ago. Though it's true it would have required foresight & more effort.
raldi 7y ago
Google's actually really good at truly destroying deleted things within something like 35 days. If it's sitting on a backup tape in a vault somewhere, they delete all copies of the corresponding one-time personal decryption key instead.
- avionicsguy 7y ago
  So is Microsoft, at least, on Linked-In. I tested it last year and deleted my profile. Had a friend check and everything was gone...Everything including public posts. LinkedIn has a remorse period of something like 21 days. And I had plan to test recovery process also. Then got busy with a contract and was too late to recover. It's awesome! I think any global IT company must deal with GDPR kind of like most automakers in U.S. follow California emission standards. It's easier to create a policy for all than create "one off" policies for a geopolitical region.

keanzu 7y ago

Quality of the record keeping is vastly higher. Imagine a subpoena for every paper mail you sent in a year. You can't get that from the US Postal service.

Spooky23 7y ago
USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. Prior to that, it was possible to have that information manually logged. If you corresponded with people in a Warsaw Pact country in the 1960s, that mail was recorded and sometimes opened.
- keanzu 7y ago
  Knowing a letter was delivered by USPS doesn't yield the contents. The state would have to subpoena each individual recipient - and they may have destroyed or lost the letter. It would only be equivalent if every letter was opened and recorded so that all the contents would later be available because this subpoena covers not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts. This isn't metadata the government is coming for, it is the full content.
  - Daneel_ 7y ago
    Sometimes the contents almost don't matter. For example, if you saw multiple letters from an oncology department to a household, followed by letters from government departments and a funeral home, it wouldn't be hard to figure out what was going on. It's the exact same problem with phone metadata. The connections can be made to tell the story, and are even easier to manipulate into whatever narrative the prosecution wants to sell. In my example, you probably thought "person has cancer, household receives letters from the government post-death, bill from the funeral home", which is exactly how it could be sold. But it could just as easily be "person beating cancer, household receives government forms related to healthcare subsidies, funeral home letter was a condolence letter sent one year after the death of their parent." This is why metadata is so dangerous, it's far too easy to spin.
    - Johnny555 7y ago
      Just the same, I would feel a lot less violated if the government had header information for every email I received in the past year, than if they had the full email.
      - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
        I believe this is a fallacy (not trying to be a dick). Why? They can accomplish 90% of their high level dragnet-ish surveillance goals via metadata snooping only (today at least)
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  >USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. If this was of any doubt at all - they’ve made this accessible over email. If you enable “informed delivery” you get an email of the scan before it hits your mail box.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    > USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. You mean those emails I get that the USPS claims it doesn't have an image for? Oh don't worry they always have images of the blanket spam everyone gets. But actual mail with bills or letters? It's more usual to get "A piece of mail that we do not have an image for is included in today's mail."
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Usually those are things that run late for the batch system they use to send the emails. Usually when I get those it’s in the portal.

Spooky23 7y ago

No. The only difference is that you typically don’t put papers in the custody of a third party. My dad at one point was an inspector general at a government agency. They would use records and “physical metadata” like building logs and receipts for the purposes of their work. The difference today is that your allowing many third parties to gather that data. That’s the key thing. If you store data in the custody of a third party, it isn’t yours.

perl4ever 7y ago
Well, people do typically put papers in the custody of a third party. Always have. Pretty much every paper that is involved in discovery is classified by the "custodian". Also of course, all the digital information, but traditionally it's paper. If you use and/or have a dispute with a lawyer, a doctor, a contractor, an accountant, whatever, they're going to have papers pertaining to you.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I’m talking about an individual, not a business scenario. Your papers in your custody in your home are only accessible via warrant, as opposed to your online stuff that requires as little as an administrative subpoena. Your doctor and attorney are unique in that professional relationship is legally privileged.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I'm just saying the fact that everything in the legal business is classified by "custodian", without any more context, kind of indicates that the default is not to assume ownership in the manner you're suggesting. Like, when something is legally disputed, there's a good chance people are hiding things, giving them to others, intermingling evidence with other things, etc. The system couldn't work if it assumed that everybody followed the rules. No, I'm not a lawyer, but come on.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

> Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? Just that the measure of recorded data is perhaps several orders of magnitude larger that it was merely ~20-30 years ago. I think back to my life in the 90s, and what information was recorded about me as I went about my day-to-day life, and it was minuscule compared to today. You could track who I called, but not what I said. You could track some of my purchases, but I used electronic forms of payment much less then. Now, I text or message much more than I voice call, so that is all recorded. Every now and then if I want to get really freaked out I go to myactivity.google.com (I've got an Android phone and am otherwise "all in" on Google services) and, say, playback my location history, search history, or everything I've said to Google assistant. I think we are really just coming to terms with the fact that "ephemera" no longer really exists, and the deep impact this will have on society.

ip26 7y ago
Of course, all that stuff could still have been recorded with a warrant 20-30 years ago. Though it's true it would have required foresight & more effort.

raldi 7y ago

Google's actually really good at truly destroying deleted things within something like 35 days. If it's sitting on a backup tape in a vault somewhere, they delete all copies of the corresponding one-time personal decryption key instead.

avionicsguy 7y ago
So is Microsoft, at least, on Linked-In. I tested it last year and deleted my profile. Had a friend check and everything was gone...Everything including public posts. LinkedIn has a remorse period of something like 21 days. And I had plan to test recovery process also. Then got busy with a contract and was too late to recover. It's awesome! I think any global IT company must deal with GDPR kind of like most automakers in U.S. follow California emission standards. It's easier to create a policy for all than create "one off" policies for a geopolitical region.