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"Google was accused of enacting a policy instructing employees to turn chat history off by default when discussing sensitive topics, including Google's revenue-

"Google was accused of enacting a policy instructing employees to turn chat history off by default when discussing sensitive topics, including Google's revenue-sharing and mobile application distribution agreements." They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place. Not leaving sensitive information in logs, backups etc is quite reasonable, even if it would have been useful to justice here.

colechristensen 2y ago
Regulated industries just require saving of communications. It seems like maybe that should be the standard.
- ceinewydd 2y ago
  Do you think that should extend to recording some or all meetings at a company? A group of executives meets. Should that meeting be recorded, even if it’s not a “hybrid” meeting and entirely happened in person? A group of engineers meets. How about that one? This seems like a hard issue. If the court creates a precedent here, I expect any sensitive discussions that might have any sort of future liability will just go back to verbal conversations (if allowed), and then aren’t we back to where we are today, with no record?
  - bawolff 2y ago
    There does seem a big difference between requiring things to be recorded and simply requiring that people don't actively take action to prevent recording.
  - stale2002 2y ago
    > Do you think that should extend to recording some or all meetings at a company? That depends. Did the court order that to happen? (Like in this situation!) If so, then yes, the company should follow the lawful order of the court. And if such an order is unlawful, then they should appeal it, and do what the appeal court orders them to do.
  - joojgojegaw 2y ago
    actively taking steps to destroy data is very different from simply not creating the data in the first place. I get that you're eager to create a slippery slope, but you're just showing your ass.
  - bdd8f1df777b 2y ago
    If that becomes true, both remote work AND offshoring may soon be increasingly rare at Google.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > A group of executives meets. Should that meeting be recorded, even if it’s not a “hybrid” meeting and entirely happened in person? If they are discussing matters related to the company, then it should at least be minuted. The counterpart to "don't take notes on a criminal conspiracy" is "why, if you're not involved in a criminal conspiracy, are you not taking notes?" (This has become absolutely endemic in UK government where all kinds of things happen in encrypted whatsapp groups .. which are then selectively leaked by one of the attendees.)
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Regulated industries just require saving of communications This isn't a regulated industries issue: all parties to actual or reasonably anticipated litigation are required to preserve evidence.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    That is not the same thing. Stock brokerages are simply required to store every bit of written communication for years, for example. As I understand it there are also circumstances where they’re forced to record things if they’re not written. Not as a “reasonably anticipated” but just always. I think companies that manage lots of private user data should probably be held to the same standards.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Yes, both things exist. But the Google issue being discussed is not about being in a highly-regulated industry, it's about reasonably anticipated litigation where they had actual notice of an investigation of particular issues with the potential for litigation, and even an explicit notice that this triggered a requirement to preserve all relevant communication and documents, and there specific actions with that knowledge.
fyrn_ 2y ago
Under 18 U.S.C. § 151 "Concealment" is obstruction of justice, and almost certainly illegal in this case. There is a wide body of legal precedent on the topic, for example moving an email to the trash does not count, but "delete forever" (called "double delete" in the opinion) does. Have your chat setup to autodelete does not get you out of that. Especially when they have well documented how they only instructed to do that for legally sensitve topics.
- radium3d 2y ago
  That's interesting, but how is that any different at all from discussing a topic in person in which it is immediately discarded so long as it is not recorded? Seems identical and it should not be considered concealment in any way, even if it's for "sensitive" meetings, as they could have just as easily been done in person verbally with no recordings. This really feels like authorities overstepping because they want to know things they weren't meant to know and are just personally offended.
  - airspresso 2y ago
    Doing potentially illegal business verbally with no written trail is a well-known strategy. It is still concealment if those participating do not tell when interrogated. Bottom line is that companies should assume that the government has a right to audit their practices at any time for any reason, and avoid intentionally destroying potentially valuable information.
    - ameister14 2y ago
      >Bottom line is that companies should assume that the government has a right to audit their practices at any time for any reason, and avoid intentionally destroying potentially valuable information. No. When a company reasonably anticipates litigation, which is more than just knowing litigation is possible, that's when they need to avoid destroying information relating to the litigation. Examples of situations that fit are: 1. when they know a suit has been filed 2. when the company is contemplating litigation - i.e. when they have asked for a legal opinion, started doing some groundwork, looked into feasibility of suit etc.
oatmeal1 2y ago
> They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place. It certainly sounds like destruction. The words are written, then the words are encoded as text, stored, and sent, and then at the end, discarded.
- nl 2y ago
  If the chat is E2E encrypted this isn't really the case. There is no storage.
  - EMIRELADERO 2y ago
    There is storage, it's just that what's stored is encrypted with a key that only the clients possess. A court could very well order the party involved to turn over the encryption keys.
    - yau8edq12i 2y ago
      And before someone pops in with "but what if they deleted the key?" - well, then for all intents and purposes, they've also deleted the document, in violation of the legal hold.
  - jsiepkes 2y ago
    This is about Google Chat (in Google Workspace) which doesn't have E2E.
EMIRELADERO 2y ago
This comment[1] provides a good explanation on why this analogy is absurd: > Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode. > That is, Google's theory here seems to be that if you have a policy to destroy certain letters and memos 24 hours after receiving or creating them, then you don't need to stop doing that and preserve them even if under a court ordered legal hold. But if your policy is to destroy certain documents 30 days after creating them, then you must stop deleting them and retain them if ordered by a court. > Which is....a.....theory! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35587100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35587100
- _huayra_ 2y ago
  I haven't worked at Google, so maybe there are better channels than "chat that's holding everything together", but I can't imagine that being unable to search a chat and look at who said what and when is useful. I use it all the time to look up some random useful command a coworker told me long ago that I neglected to write down, for instance, or to follow up with a long-stale thread to revive it. I suppose that's what email and design docs are for, but I feel a lot of that "organizational glue" in chat is quite valuable. How do Googlers live without it?
  - mike_d 2y ago
    Everyone bitches about it when they first start and eventually learns a better way. The culture is about creating explicit artifacts of knowledge (design docs, documentation, commit/review messages, etc) rather than trying to dig around in streams of consciousness hoping to find the bits of info you need later.
    - rwiggins 2y ago
      Exactly this. It's not uncommon to ask a coworker how to do something, get a response, and then send them a follow-up CL adding that information to a playbook or doc somewhere so others can reference it. Heck, sometimes I responded to questions with a CL adding that info to docs. The internal search engine helps drive a lot of this, too - if you want to know how to do something, docs (via search) are like the #1 choice. So, everyone's pretty incentivized to make it a good resource.
ruined 2y ago
no. they were under legal obligation to retain that evidence, and were lying in court and claiming that they were retaining that evidence. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.512.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... >All this time, Google falsely told the United States that Google had "put a legal hold in place" that "suspends auto-deletion." Indeed, during the United States' investigation and the discovery phase of this litigation, Google repeatedly misrepresented its document preservation policies, which conveyed the false impression that the company was preserving all custodial chats. Not only did Google unequivocally assert during the investigation that its legal hold suspended auto-deletion, but Google continually failed to disclose—both to the United States and to the Court—its 24-hour auto-deletion policy. Instead, at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications.
- pylua 2y ago
  A legal hold is very serious and I can’t believe they would be so negligent or untruthful. This is a very bad look.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Bingo. What Google did here is sanctionable. It's not something the courts tend to look favorably on and could ultimately end up getting a default judgement. And this isn't the first case of Google burying evidence to try and complicate legal proceedings. They had, for example, the policy of "any email with sensitive stuff should cc legal" policy to try and shield potential criminal behavior with attorney client privilege.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The important part is it is only sanctionable. The boss is shown, in writing, to violate court orders, and the worst that will happen is having to pay an insignificant fee. So why not violate the court order?
    - cogman10 2y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place." Once a company knows its going to be sued it has a legal obligation under federal rules to preserve evidence. Google deliberately ignored that requirement. Nice try.
- codedokode 2y ago
  Maybe they are required to preserve existing documents, but not required to create new evidence against themselves.
  - ngetchell 2y ago
    No, they are required to retain the records pertaining to the litigation. This isn't a loophole. Google is in the wrong here.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Maybe they are required to preserve existing documents, but not required to create new evidence against themselves. When they do a chat, that creates evidence. When the chat is deleted, evidence is destroyed. (This isn't the first case they’ve been sanctioned over this behavior, either.)
  - TheCleric 2y ago
    Don’t want to create evidence? Stop chatting about how to potentially violate the law.
busterarm 2y ago
Stringer Bell said it best: "is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"
- p3rls 2y ago
  Google always had more of stanfield vibes to me.
  - rendall 2y ago
    Stringer Bell or maybe Mayor Carcetti.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place. Once evidence exists, not retaining it involves deleting it. So you’ve simply rephrased what they are accused of and framed it as if that is a denial. Which, you know, is kind of all there is to spin with when there are no favorable facts, but why spin for Google?
pyrale 2y ago
> Not leaving sensitive information in logs, backups etc is quite reasonable We have evidence that Google execs instructed their relations to turn off chat specifically to avoid future discovery [1]. Excerpt from this document : > In one Chat, Mr. Pichai began discussing a substantive topic, and then immediately wrote: “also can we change the setting of this group to history off.”1 Then, nine seconds later, Mr. Pichai apparently attempted (unsuccessfully) to delete this incriminating message. [1]: https://ia601707.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.cand.364454/gov.uscourts.cand.364454.385.0.pdf https://ia601707.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.cand.3...

colechristensen 2y ago

Regulated industries just require saving of communications. It seems like maybe that should be the standard.

ceinewydd 2y ago
Do you think that should extend to recording some or all meetings at a company? A group of executives meets. Should that meeting be recorded, even if it’s not a “hybrid” meeting and entirely happened in person? A group of engineers meets. How about that one? This seems like a hard issue. If the court creates a precedent here, I expect any sensitive discussions that might have any sort of future liability will just go back to verbal conversations (if allowed), and then aren’t we back to where we are today, with no record?
- bawolff 2y ago
  There does seem a big difference between requiring things to be recorded and simply requiring that people don't actively take action to prevent recording.
- stale2002 2y ago
  > Do you think that should extend to recording some or all meetings at a company? That depends. Did the court order that to happen? (Like in this situation!) If so, then yes, the company should follow the lawful order of the court. And if such an order is unlawful, then they should appeal it, and do what the appeal court orders them to do.
- joojgojegaw 2y ago
  actively taking steps to destroy data is very different from simply not creating the data in the first place. I get that you're eager to create a slippery slope, but you're just showing your ass.
- bdd8f1df777b 2y ago
  If that becomes true, both remote work AND offshoring may soon be increasingly rare at Google.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > A group of executives meets. Should that meeting be recorded, even if it’s not a “hybrid” meeting and entirely happened in person? If they are discussing matters related to the company, then it should at least be minuted. The counterpart to "don't take notes on a criminal conspiracy" is "why, if you're not involved in a criminal conspiracy, are you not taking notes?" (This has become absolutely endemic in UK government where all kinds of things happen in encrypted whatsapp groups .. which are then selectively leaked by one of the attendees.)
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Regulated industries just require saving of communications This isn't a regulated industries issue: all parties to actual or reasonably anticipated litigation are required to preserve evidence.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  That is not the same thing. Stock brokerages are simply required to store every bit of written communication for years, for example. As I understand it there are also circumstances where they’re forced to record things if they’re not written. Not as a “reasonably anticipated” but just always. I think companies that manage lots of private user data should probably be held to the same standards.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Yes, both things exist. But the Google issue being discussed is not about being in a highly-regulated industry, it's about reasonably anticipated litigation where they had actual notice of an investigation of particular issues with the potential for litigation, and even an explicit notice that this triggered a requirement to preserve all relevant communication and documents, and there specific actions with that knowledge.

fyrn_ 2y ago

Under 18 U.S.C. § 151 "Concealment" is obstruction of justice, and almost certainly illegal in this case. There is a wide body of legal precedent on the topic, for example moving an email to the trash does not count, but "delete forever" (called "double delete" in the opinion) does. Have your chat setup to autodelete does not get you out of that. Especially when they have well documented how they only instructed to do that for legally sensitve topics.

radium3d 2y ago
That's interesting, but how is that any different at all from discussing a topic in person in which it is immediately discarded so long as it is not recorded? Seems identical and it should not be considered concealment in any way, even if it's for "sensitive" meetings, as they could have just as easily been done in person verbally with no recordings. This really feels like authorities overstepping because they want to know things they weren't meant to know and are just personally offended.
- airspresso 2y ago
  Doing potentially illegal business verbally with no written trail is a well-known strategy. It is still concealment if those participating do not tell when interrogated. Bottom line is that companies should assume that the government has a right to audit their practices at any time for any reason, and avoid intentionally destroying potentially valuable information.
  - ameister14 2y ago
    >Bottom line is that companies should assume that the government has a right to audit their practices at any time for any reason, and avoid intentionally destroying potentially valuable information. No. When a company reasonably anticipates litigation, which is more than just knowing litigation is possible, that's when they need to avoid destroying information relating to the litigation. Examples of situations that fit are: 1. when they know a suit has been filed 2. when the company is contemplating litigation - i.e. when they have asked for a legal opinion, started doing some groundwork, looked into feasibility of suit etc.

oatmeal1 2y ago

> They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place. It certainly sounds like destruction. The words are written, then the words are encoded as text, stored, and sent, and then at the end, discarded.

nl 2y ago
If the chat is E2E encrypted this isn't really the case. There is no storage.
- EMIRELADERO 2y ago
  There is storage, it's just that what's stored is encrypted with a key that only the clients possess. A court could very well order the party involved to turn over the encryption keys.
  - yau8edq12i 2y ago
    And before someone pops in with "but what if they deleted the key?" - well, then for all intents and purposes, they've also deleted the document, in violation of the legal hold.
- jsiepkes 2y ago
  This is about Google Chat (in Google Workspace) which doesn't have E2E.

EMIRELADERO 2y ago

This comment[1] provides a good explanation on why this analogy is absurd: > Chats at google by default have 24 hours of chat history. (That is, after 24 hours, the chat history is delelted.) You can opt in to having 30 days of chat history instead. And when under a legal hold, Google continues to delete chats in the 24 hour history mode, but will not delete chats in the 30 day history mode. > That is, Google's theory here seems to be that if you have a policy to destroy certain letters and memos 24 hours after receiving or creating them, then you don't need to stop doing that and preserve them even if under a court ordered legal hold. But if your policy is to destroy certain documents 30 days after creating them, then you must stop deleting them and retain them if ordered by a court. > Which is....a.....theory! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35587100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35587100

_huayra_ 2y ago
I haven't worked at Google, so maybe there are better channels than "chat that's holding everything together", but I can't imagine that being unable to search a chat and look at who said what and when is useful. I use it all the time to look up some random useful command a coworker told me long ago that I neglected to write down, for instance, or to follow up with a long-stale thread to revive it. I suppose that's what email and design docs are for, but I feel a lot of that "organizational glue" in chat is quite valuable. How do Googlers live without it?
- mike_d 2y ago
  Everyone bitches about it when they first start and eventually learns a better way. The culture is about creating explicit artifacts of knowledge (design docs, documentation, commit/review messages, etc) rather than trying to dig around in streams of consciousness hoping to find the bits of info you need later.
  - rwiggins 2y ago
    Exactly this. It's not uncommon to ask a coworker how to do something, get a response, and then send them a follow-up CL adding that information to a playbook or doc somewhere so others can reference it. Heck, sometimes I responded to questions with a CL adding that info to docs. The internal search engine helps drive a lot of this, too - if you want to know how to do something, docs (via search) are like the #1 choice. So, everyone's pretty incentivized to make it a good resource.

ruined 2y ago

no. they were under legal obligation to retain that evidence, and were lying in court and claiming that they were retaining that evidence. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.512.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... >All this time, Google falsely told the United States that Google had "put a legal hold in place" that "suspends auto-deletion." Indeed, during the United States' investigation and the discovery phase of this litigation, Google repeatedly misrepresented its document preservation policies, which conveyed the false impression that the company was preserving all custodial chats. Not only did Google unequivocally assert during the investigation that its legal hold suspended auto-deletion, but Google continually failed to disclose—both to the United States and to the Court—its 24-hour auto-deletion policy. Instead, at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications.

pylua 2y ago
A legal hold is very serious and I can’t believe they would be so negligent or untruthful. This is a very bad look.
cogman10 2y ago
Bingo. What Google did here is sanctionable. It's not something the courts tend to look favorably on and could ultimately end up getting a default judgement. And this isn't the first case of Google burying evidence to try and complicate legal proceedings. They had, for example, the policy of "any email with sensitive stuff should cc legal" policy to try and shield potential criminal behavior with attorney client privilege.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The important part is it is only sanctionable. The boss is shown, in writing, to violate court orders, and the worst that will happen is having to pay an insignificant fee. So why not violate the court order?
  - cogman10 2y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place." Once a company knows its going to be sued it has a legal obligation under federal rules to preserve evidence. Google deliberately ignored that requirement. Nice try.

codedokode 2y ago
Maybe they are required to preserve existing documents, but not required to create new evidence against themselves.
- ngetchell 2y ago
  No, they are required to retain the records pertaining to the litigation. This isn't a loophole. Google is in the wrong here.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Maybe they are required to preserve existing documents, but not required to create new evidence against themselves. When they do a chat, that creates evidence. When the chat is deleted, evidence is destroyed. (This isn't the first case they’ve been sanctioned over this behavior, either.)
- TheCleric 2y ago
  Don’t want to create evidence? Stop chatting about how to potentially violate the law.

busterarm 2y ago

Stringer Bell said it best: "is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"

p3rls 2y ago
Google always had more of stanfield vibes to me.
- rendall 2y ago
  Stringer Bell or maybe Mayor Carcetti.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> They didn't ask employees to destroy evidence but to avoid retaining evidence in the first place. Once evidence exists, not retaining it involves deleting it. So you’ve simply rephrased what they are accused of and framed it as if that is a denial. Which, you know, is kind of all there is to spin with when there are no favorable facts, but why spin for Google?

pyrale 2y ago

> Not leaving sensitive information in logs, backups etc is quite reasonable We have evidence that Google execs instructed their relations to turn off chat specifically to avoid future discovery [1]. Excerpt from this document : > In one Chat, Mr. Pichai began discussing a substantive topic, and then immediately wrote: “also can we change the setting of this group to history off.”1 Then, nine seconds later, Mr. Pichai apparently attempted (unsuccessfully) to delete this incriminating message. [1]: https://ia601707.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.cand.364454/gov.uscourts.cand.364454.385.0.pdf https://ia601707.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.cand.3...