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This was probably posted because Matt Levine discussed it yesterday (https://archive.ph/nYHax https://archive.ph/nYHax). The regulation requiring brokers to kee

This was probably posted because Matt Levine discussed it yesterday (https://archive.ph/nYHax https://archive.ph/nYHax). The regulation requiring brokers to keep records of all written communication goes back to 1948, when writing something down was fairly significant, and most discussions were face to face. Now all of these firms are being fined because their employees discussed work over WhatsApp. > As technology changes, lots of forms of written electronic communication become substitutes not for memoranda, but for face-to-face conversation. So the SEC’s requirements constantly become broader. If you just talk to your colleagues in person, the SEC does not expect you to preserve that. Once you move that chat to WhatsApp, it does.

bombcar 4y ago
I wonder what was not done because of technical limitations and what wasn’t done for other reasons. If Microsoft develops a building-wide speech to text device will it be required to be installed?
shapefrog 4y ago
Furthermore: If you just talk to your colleagues in person, the SEC does not expect you to preserve that. Once you move that chat to telephone or video call, it does.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink”
- yuhs 4y ago
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Go to the compliance office and explain yourself, if you cant prove your innocence you will be fired, your previous 5 years bonuses claimed back and banned from ever working in finance ever again.
    - SkipperCat 4y ago
      Honest question - no snark... How can a company claim back your bonuses? Bonuses are wages and I just don't see how anyone could take that back without a court order. Typically, the law has been very clear that businesses cannot mess with your pay. I would assume that applies to the $15/hr person and those with the $500k salary.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - nulbyte 4y ago
        The bonus might be subject to a clawback provision in an employment agreement. Or it might be a legitimate overpayment.
  - yuhs 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - yuhs 4y ago
- MarkSweep 4y ago
  Maybe this is part of the reason Goldman Sachs wants people back in the office…
steveBK123 4y ago
Yup, the regulations in place with todays technology create some interesting incentives. If you work at a bank: * all phone calls & voicemails are recorded 7+ years (if you've worked at one long enough you know the distinct background noise/beep the recorded lines make) * all emails are kept 7+ years * all chat logs (slack/teams/etc) are saved 7+ years Emails & chats are easier to NLP/search/flag. Drop an f-bomb, or use a word like "scam" in chat casually ("that f-bomb dinner last night was a rip-off, what a scam!") is 100% going to get auto-flagged and reviewed by compliance and/or your boss. Saying that verbally on the phone is not, because the tech isn't there to transcribe and auto-flag calls. Recorded calls are more kept in evidence to produce in the event of an investigation triggered by something else. So a lot of senior people end up nudging conversations to the phone. They don't plan to do any crimes, and they certainly don't plan to get caught. The next level is that for a lot of senior people, they operate almost entirely in the in-person verbal realm. There are no rules requiring any recording or record keeping of verbal discussions/meetings/etc, and implementing them would be hard if there were. This is why in big cases, its always some low level guy or middle manager who goes down for the "crime", because they are the most senior person involved in the activity to actually commit any of it to writing. 1000% his boss, and his bosses boss were aware / in on it / even ordering the activity to happen.. they just never put that down anywhere.. Examples of this are the LIBOR "London Whale" scandal, some of the "rogue traders" like at SocGen, "Fabulous Fab", and many more. I bet at most banks once you hit the MD level, the vast majority of outgoing emails you would see going out are simple one-word "yes/no/approved" or variations of "lets discuss offline / call me / lets meet about this". And 0.0% of them use any chat apps at work. WhatsApp is a thorny issue because most places stopped giving out work devices but make you download all the work apps. You develop personal friendships with coworkers and feel that out-of-hours non-work chat should happen in places like WhatsApp. Sometimes innocently out of laziness, some people end up commingling a bit. A minority of cases you'll have guys actually using private apps to evade monitoring. No one wants their personal messaging off their personal devices being recorded by their workplace. Maybe the right outcome here is mandatory personal & work device segregation, companies issue "work phones" and thats the end of it.
- pxx 4y ago
  Hobbyhorse: Verbal communication is communication in words, which also includes written communication. You mean oral or in-person communications.
erwinh 4y ago
At the day job they have configured Teams to delete direct messages within a couple of days already. Curious how that would be looked at… (although I wouldn’t be surprised if msft keeps a copy still because of this reason)

bombcar 4y ago

I wonder what was not done because of technical limitations and what wasn’t done for other reasons. If Microsoft develops a building-wide speech to text device will it be required to be installed?

shapefrog 4y ago

Furthermore: If you just talk to your colleagues in person, the SEC does not expect you to preserve that. Once you move that chat to telephone or video call, it does.

steveBK123 4y ago
“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink”
yuhs 4y ago
- shapefrog 4y ago
  Go to the compliance office and explain yourself, if you cant prove your innocence you will be fired, your previous 5 years bonuses claimed back and banned from ever working in finance ever again.
  - SkipperCat 4y ago
    Honest question - no snark... How can a company claim back your bonuses? Bonuses are wages and I just don't see how anyone could take that back without a court order. Typically, the law has been very clear that businesses cannot mess with your pay. I would assume that applies to the $15/hr person and those with the $500k salary.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - nulbyte 4y ago
      The bonus might be subject to a clawback provision in an employment agreement. Or it might be a legitimate overpayment.
- yuhs 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - yuhs 4y ago
MarkSweep 4y ago
Maybe this is part of the reason Goldman Sachs wants people back in the office…

steveBK123 4y ago

Yup, the regulations in place with todays technology create some interesting incentives. If you work at a bank: * all phone calls & voicemails are recorded 7+ years (if you've worked at one long enough you know the distinct background noise/beep the recorded lines make) * all emails are kept 7+ years * all chat logs (slack/teams/etc) are saved 7+ years Emails & chats are easier to NLP/search/flag. Drop an f-bomb, or use a word like "scam" in chat casually ("that f-bomb dinner last night was a rip-off, what a scam!") is 100% going to get auto-flagged and reviewed by compliance and/or your boss. Saying that verbally on the phone is not, because the tech isn't there to transcribe and auto-flag calls. Recorded calls are more kept in evidence to produce in the event of an investigation triggered by something else. So a lot of senior people end up nudging conversations to the phone. They don't plan to do any crimes, and they certainly don't plan to get caught. The next level is that for a lot of senior people, they operate almost entirely in the in-person verbal realm. There are no rules requiring any recording or record keeping of verbal discussions/meetings/etc, and implementing them would be hard if there were. This is why in big cases, its always some low level guy or middle manager who goes down for the "crime", because they are the most senior person involved in the activity to actually commit any of it to writing. 1000% his boss, and his bosses boss were aware / in on it / even ordering the activity to happen.. they just never put that down anywhere.. Examples of this are the LIBOR "London Whale" scandal, some of the "rogue traders" like at SocGen, "Fabulous Fab", and many more. I bet at most banks once you hit the MD level, the vast majority of outgoing emails you would see going out are simple one-word "yes/no/approved" or variations of "lets discuss offline / call me / lets meet about this". And 0.0% of them use any chat apps at work. WhatsApp is a thorny issue because most places stopped giving out work devices but make you download all the work apps. You develop personal friendships with coworkers and feel that out-of-hours non-work chat should happen in places like WhatsApp. Sometimes innocently out of laziness, some people end up commingling a bit. A minority of cases you'll have guys actually using private apps to evade monitoring. No one wants their personal messaging off their personal devices being recorded by their workplace. Maybe the right outcome here is mandatory personal & work device segregation, companies issue "work phones" and thats the end of it.

pxx 4y ago
Hobbyhorse: Verbal communication is communication in words, which also includes written communication. You mean oral or in-person communications.

erwinh 4y ago

At the day job they have configured Teams to delete direct messages within a couple of days already. Curious how that would be looked at… (although I wouldn’t be surprised if msft keeps a copy still because of this reason)