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Can a legal-hold require you to wear a wire 24/7 and record everything you say? Can they require that you do not speak in person to anyone else at your company

Can a legal-hold require you to wear a wire 24/7 and record everything you say? Can they require that you do not speak in person to anyone else at your company unless it is by email, and each email is cc’d to Epic Games? Those would be my naive tests for whether a judge can require you to use instant-messaging with permanent history over ephemeral history. Edit: my armchair lawyering doesn’t add nearly as much to this discussion as the other responses here. Deliberately going on record as saying “let’s hook the email printer up to the auto shredder and claim innocence winking-smiley-emoji” when a judge has told you not to is indeed the kind of behaviour of which a court should take a very dim view.

Groxx 4y ago
A wire will also record anything around you that is not necessarily directly related to your actions... so in some potentially-important ways they are significantly different. Though the argument for "I was not aware, being in X group does not mean I follow all messages" is also entirely reasonable, e.g. I'm in several hundred slack channels at work but I only closely follow like a dozen. But yeah, I think "let's go off-record" is almost equivalent to "let's destroy evidence" when you are informed you're being monitored for legal purposes. Innocent until proven guilty is deeply critical, but when you're informed those suspicious actions are doubly suspicious and there must be some kind of room for suspicion or criminals will always be able to avoid conviction.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > But yeah, I think "let's go off-record" is almost equivalent to "let's destroy evidence" Almost but not quite: the legal system very strictly segregates not creating evidence and destroying existing evidence. You can’t be compelled to create incriminating evidence, but you can absolutely be compelled to maintain and turn it over. Failure to do so is considered confession in and of itself.

Groxx 4y ago

A wire will also record anything around you that is not necessarily directly related to your actions... so in some potentially-important ways they are significantly different. Though the argument for "I was not aware, being in X group does not mean I follow all messages" is also entirely reasonable, e.g. I'm in several hundred slack channels at work but I only closely follow like a dozen. But yeah, I think "let's go off-record" is almost equivalent to "let's destroy evidence" when you are informed you're being monitored for legal purposes. Innocent until proven guilty is deeply critical, but when you're informed those suspicious actions are doubly suspicious and there must be some kind of room for suspicion or criminals will always be able to avoid conviction.

masklinn 4y ago
> But yeah, I think "let's go off-record" is almost equivalent to "let's destroy evidence" Almost but not quite: the legal system very strictly segregates not creating evidence and destroying existing evidence. You can’t be compelled to create incriminating evidence, but you can absolutely be compelled to maintain and turn it over. Failure to do so is considered confession in and of itself.