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Thanks. The law is kind of silly. A chat system that doesn't store history is functionally equivalent to an unrecorded call, but I'm guessing they would not con

Thanks. The law is kind of silly. A chat system that doesn't store history is functionally equivalent to an unrecorded call, but I'm guessing they would not consider an unrecorded call destruction of evidence.

dataflow 4y ago
It does record "history" - if it didn't, the recipient would see it appear and then immediately vanish in the next refresh of the screen, which is not the case. The thing is, it only keeps the history for a short period of time (hours/days). That's not the same thing as an unrecorded call, which isn't recorded for any period at all.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  That is understood. However the medium begets a conversation around how most communication isn't recorded anyways, in this example if it were a phone call.
  - dataflow 4y ago
    I don't think I understand what you're trying to say. Could you please rephrase/clarify?
  - macintux 4y ago
    Most communication isn’t recorded? I suspect that’s not accurate. Mail, messages, chat, ticketing systems…phone calls are definitely an outlier in my world. Even face to face is rare.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    But it’s not, which is the point. It’s a chat with a recorded history, whose history gets deleted after some time.
barry-cotter 4y ago
If you have two internal phone systems, one of which logs calls and is the default, the legal system would look on moving to the other unrecorded system in the middle of a call with the same kindness. Intent matters in law and the intent was to evade evidence rules.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > the legal system would look on moving to the other unrecorded system in the middle of a call with the same kindness. I don’t know about that. Not producing evidence and destroying evidence are very different actions, even though the intent (of not leaving evidence) is similar. In the US, moving conversations from a recorded to an unrecorded medium would likely be covered under the 5th. Having conversations on a recorded medium then destroying the record, not so much.
iudqnolq 4y ago
No, the chat system recorded history for 24 hours and then deleted it. Google had a legal obligation to proactively find and turn off all the automatic deletion system that could delete potentially relevant records. That's just how the law works, every big corp knows how to do it.

dataflow 4y ago

It does record "history" - if it didn't, the recipient would see it appear and then immediately vanish in the next refresh of the screen, which is not the case. The thing is, it only keeps the history for a short period of time (hours/days). That's not the same thing as an unrecorded call, which isn't recorded for any period at all.

hackernewds 4y ago
That is understood. However the medium begets a conversation around how most communication isn't recorded anyways, in this example if it were a phone call.
- dataflow 4y ago
  I don't think I understand what you're trying to say. Could you please rephrase/clarify?
- macintux 4y ago
  Most communication isn’t recorded? I suspect that’s not accurate. Mail, messages, chat, ticketing systems…phone calls are definitely an outlier in my world. Even face to face is rare.
- masklinn 4y ago
  But it’s not, which is the point. It’s a chat with a recorded history, whose history gets deleted after some time.

barry-cotter 4y ago

If you have two internal phone systems, one of which logs calls and is the default, the legal system would look on moving to the other unrecorded system in the middle of a call with the same kindness. Intent matters in law and the intent was to evade evidence rules.

masklinn 4y ago
> the legal system would look on moving to the other unrecorded system in the middle of a call with the same kindness. I don’t know about that. Not producing evidence and destroying evidence are very different actions, even though the intent (of not leaving evidence) is similar. In the US, moving conversations from a recorded to an unrecorded medium would likely be covered under the 5th. Having conversations on a recorded medium then destroying the record, not so much.

iudqnolq 4y ago

No, the chat system recorded history for 24 hours and then deleted it. Google had a legal obligation to proactively find and turn off all the automatic deletion system that could delete potentially relevant records. That's just how the law works, every big corp knows how to do it.