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Unless you are working in a literal Top Secret government agency, and even then, this request from management is "extremely sketchy" at best.

bhouston 4y ago
100%, something sketchy is going on there. Someone is probably getting screwed over via illegal behavior and they don't want records.
- mkipper 4y ago
  I dunno. Sometimes it’s just Hanlon’s Razor. In some industries (e.g. defense contracting), getting a concrete answer for where you can and can’t store certain information can be a nightmare. And often times there isn’t even a definitive answer. So from a risk perspective, it’s easier to have a policy of minimizing the things you write down in emails and documents. You obviously need to write some things down and need a policy for those things, but if you’re just conveying a few paragraphs of information, a brief face-to-face conversation is much lower risk than writing the same notes down in SharePoint somewhere and hoping that you don’t screw up the security markings. I guess I’ve never seen this as an official directive from management, but it’s been the reality at a few places where I’ve worked and it was never because anything shady was going on.
trillic 4y ago
When Everything Everywhere Is Securities Fraud, this is the corporate environment that results.
- danaris 4y ago
  If it seems to you that everything is securities fraud, this may be an indication that you a) are in a very shady company, or b) have a very skewed view of what should be considered acceptable. Even for officers of publicly-traded companies, it should not be difficult to avoid committing securities fraud if you're not actually attempting to make money in ways you shouldn't.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    The way Matt Levine explains it is that something bad happens, but investor communications implies that it doesn’t happen. So, for example, the company has publicly disclosed that it has a policy against sexual harassment, but sexual harassment happened, so having a policy is seen as lying to investors that everything is okay. So, this isn’t about committing securities fraud, it’s about writing something that shows that the company knows that something bad is going on. It’s about evidence. Also it is very common and easy for people to speculate wildly about what might be going on, to make jokes, and to use legal terms they don’t really understand. This is Hacker News; you know this. In court, such nonsense may make it look like you actually knew something.
- insaneirish 4y ago
  Since I can’t seem to reply to danaris… This seems to be an allusion to Matt Levine’s writing that “everything is securities fraud”. It’s not as cynical against companies as you think. The overall point is that sometimes there’s a lot blurrier line between legitimate activities and what someone could interpret as securities fraud than you’d expect.
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    I think the other critical point is that some naive readers might think that regulators are interested in the pursuit of the truth. That they go in and weigh the information and make an honest attempt to figure out what happened. This is not the case. They can and will take any information in the worst possible light. They want fine and convictions not for the fair decision to be made.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      > They can and will take any information in the worst possible light You are saying they want slam dunk cases, but are apparently obtaining these outcomes using evidence that can go either way? You don't see the contradiction there?
    - refurb 4y ago
      All you need to do is read a press release the DOJ puts out to know this is true. Especially the cases they lose. The judicial system is adversarial by nature. The goal of the prosecution is to put forward its best possible case that basically means assuming the worst of any piece of evidence.
patentatt 4y ago
Standard practice at law firms these days. Almost every email I ever sent to a partner was "what's a good time that we can talk?"
refurb 4y ago
It's not really. The training included a case study where a drug company was sued for side effects. The key piece of evidence? A company lawyer just happened to write in an email "maybe we got the dose wrong?". The lawyer had zero medical training, zero access to any of the data and frankly was completely unqualified to make such a statement. But this email was presented during the trial to the jury and the company lost the suit. The point is - you won't get a chance to provide context for things written in emails. They will be taken at face value and framed in the worst possible light. Seems like a pretty good policy to not make a permanent record of conjecture and half-baked theories that could come back to bite you later?
QuarterReptile 4y ago
You've got this pretty backwards. In top secret documents, you need exhaustive documentation because there's no calling to ask, "wait, what did you mean?" You have to find the likely nameless person recording, hope they still work at the same place or somewhere with scif access, hope their read-in is still active, find a way to communicate securely to them, and on and on.

bhouston 4y ago

100%, something sketchy is going on there. Someone is probably getting screwed over via illegal behavior and they don't want records.

mkipper 4y ago
I dunno. Sometimes it’s just Hanlon’s Razor. In some industries (e.g. defense contracting), getting a concrete answer for where you can and can’t store certain information can be a nightmare. And often times there isn’t even a definitive answer. So from a risk perspective, it’s easier to have a policy of minimizing the things you write down in emails and documents. You obviously need to write some things down and need a policy for those things, but if you’re just conveying a few paragraphs of information, a brief face-to-face conversation is much lower risk than writing the same notes down in SharePoint somewhere and hoping that you don’t screw up the security markings. I guess I’ve never seen this as an official directive from management, but it’s been the reality at a few places where I’ve worked and it was never because anything shady was going on.

trillic 4y ago

When Everything Everywhere Is Securities Fraud, this is the corporate environment that results.

danaris 4y ago
If it seems to you that everything is securities fraud, this may be an indication that you a) are in a very shady company, or b) have a very skewed view of what should be considered acceptable. Even for officers of publicly-traded companies, it should not be difficult to avoid committing securities fraud if you're not actually attempting to make money in ways you shouldn't.
- skybrian 4y ago
  The way Matt Levine explains it is that something bad happens, but investor communications implies that it doesn’t happen. So, for example, the company has publicly disclosed that it has a policy against sexual harassment, but sexual harassment happened, so having a policy is seen as lying to investors that everything is okay. So, this isn’t about committing securities fraud, it’s about writing something that shows that the company knows that something bad is going on. It’s about evidence. Also it is very common and easy for people to speculate wildly about what might be going on, to make jokes, and to use legal terms they don’t really understand. This is Hacker News; you know this. In court, such nonsense may make it look like you actually knew something.
insaneirish 4y ago
Since I can’t seem to reply to danaris… This seems to be an allusion to Matt Levine’s writing that “everything is securities fraud”. It’s not as cynical against companies as you think. The overall point is that sometimes there’s a lot blurrier line between legitimate activities and what someone could interpret as securities fraud than you’d expect.
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  I think the other critical point is that some naive readers might think that regulators are interested in the pursuit of the truth. That they go in and weigh the information and make an honest attempt to figure out what happened. This is not the case. They can and will take any information in the worst possible light. They want fine and convictions not for the fair decision to be made.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    > They can and will take any information in the worst possible light You are saying they want slam dunk cases, but are apparently obtaining these outcomes using evidence that can go either way? You don't see the contradiction there?
  - refurb 4y ago
    All you need to do is read a press release the DOJ puts out to know this is true. Especially the cases they lose. The judicial system is adversarial by nature. The goal of the prosecution is to put forward its best possible case that basically means assuming the worst of any piece of evidence.

patentatt 4y ago

Standard practice at law firms these days. Almost every email I ever sent to a partner was "what's a good time that we can talk?"

refurb 4y ago

It's not really. The training included a case study where a drug company was sued for side effects. The key piece of evidence? A company lawyer just happened to write in an email "maybe we got the dose wrong?". The lawyer had zero medical training, zero access to any of the data and frankly was completely unqualified to make such a statement. But this email was presented during the trial to the jury and the company lost the suit. The point is - you won't get a chance to provide context for things written in emails. They will be taken at face value and framed in the worst possible light. Seems like a pretty good policy to not make a permanent record of conjecture and half-baked theories that could come back to bite you later?

QuarterReptile 4y ago

You've got this pretty backwards. In top secret documents, you need exhaustive documentation because there's no calling to ask, "wait, what did you mean?" You have to find the likely nameless person recording, hope they still work at the same place or somewhere with scif access, hope their read-in is still active, find a way to communicate securely to them, and on and on.