9 ms·

If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizatio

If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded. There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable. I don't wish to facilitate corporate crime, and it's obvious that some of Google's anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
> But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment. They could not commit crimes. They could not conspire to commit crimes in the future. They could be happy with having won business and stop committing crimes.
Mistletoe 2y ago
Is something like Signal disappearing messages illegal? I remember when Mark Cuban tried to make his CyberDust app.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  google made internal chat messages disappeared after N days, which was disclosed in one of the trials, but I do not recollect any following punishment.
  - simoncion 2y ago
    Like many US big companies, Google activated the court-sanctioned evidence destruction machine. (AKA "Document Retention Policies") Because this form of evidence destruction is viewed as legal by the courts if you're not a "highly regulated" business like a bank, unless you've been specially and specifically ordered by the courts to preserve evidence there is no punishment for destroying evidence in this way. A few years back, Google execs did choose to continue to destroy evidence after a court ordered them to preserve evidence and turn off their evidence destruction machines. I do not remember whether or how severely they were punished. (If they were, surely the punishment was far less than it would have been for we mere peons.)
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      They explicitly weren't punished as Google lost the anti-trust lawsuit. I'm not too sure it's the best decision to let all the individuals that intentionally either deleted or in Sundar's case attempted to delete evidence (legal hold overrides right click -> delete) completely off the hook.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      > Because this form of evidence destruction is viewed as legal by the courts if you're not a "highly regulated" business like a bank, [..…] Which is exactly the crux of the problem. Why do we have two completely opposite regimes for arguably not very different types of organizations? Intentionally short data retention policies should be illegal – but obviously that's completely infeasible in the US with its incredibly expensive legal discovery process, so that would be the first thing to fix. On the flip side, even regulated industries should get to have a digital equivalent of an unmonitored "conversation on the golf course/in the elevator" etc. – or do we seriously want to incentivize that in a world where we're rethinking physical offices?
- smsm42 2y ago
  Not illegal per se, but if you're under a preservation order and specifically instruct someone to use disappearing messages to evade it, it can get a bit iffy.
lancesells 2y ago
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded. > There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Wow. This is the opposite of how I feel. Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business. The things that have come out in court show how they manipulated their customers (advertisers). Regardless of how you feel about advertising a portion of those companies are small mom and pop shops trying to get by. If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  “ If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.” I’m surprised to see someone advocating for “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to hide” on HN. The cognitive dissonance must be in overdrive here!
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    It's not that, though, I understand the temptation to `sed` what they said into that. It's easier, more fun, and its much more work to come with curiosity.
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      There's nothing here to be curious about, just the usual "corporations bad". It's easy to mistake an emotion for an idea but it isn't. I'd normally pass it by entirely with an eye roll, I just thought it was funny that it's the opposite of how they'd feel if talking about people in their personal lives, completely unaware that these are the same people at just a different time of day.
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        > There's nothing here to be curious about, just the usual "corporations bad" I'm sorry to be abrupt, but thats not true. We can see that empirically. For instance, you are talking to someone who read it and thinks that's a simplistic caricature of what they said. So we can dispense with the idea your rephrasing is equivalent. That's indisputable. There's a good quote about this in Rand, something something faced with a contradiction check your premises. When we jump to these kind of reactions, it's an annoying responsibility to pause and sigh, and engage on some level beyond "I'm sick of people saying (something they didn't say)"
Retric 2y ago
It ends up as evidence when routine business operations are breaking the law. Everywhere I’ve worked hasn’t had an issue with this stuff being tracked and several places actively preferred when stuff was recorded. Most companies don’t have an issue with clear communication because they’re not worried about what’s being said will end up part of a criminal investigation. So this is something that’s almost exclusively going to harm criminal organizations by making them less efficient. That sounds like a win win.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > Most companies don’t have an issue with clear communication because they’re not worried about what’s being said will end up part of a criminal investigation. Only if you count "most companies" by company, i.e. most companies are therefore small businesses. And of course they're not worried because they're small and not subject to these kinds of investigations. They're not profitable enough to be targets. But if you count "most companies" by where most people work, you're talking about medium-to-large corporations. And it's standard these days to have policies exactly like Google's, to not retain instant messages for example, and delete e-mails after a short number of years. Because they're big juicy targets for frivolous lawsuits. So no, this isn't a win-win. People say dumb stuff all the time that a lawyer can take out of context. That doesn't mean a corporation is a criminal organization, as you suggest. Corporations sue each other all the time, not because the corporation being sued is criminal, but because the corporation suing thinks it'll be able to get away with it. But you seem to be ignoring that.
  - Retric 2y ago
    I’ve worked at and seen multiple companies with 10+k employees that have the attitude I was talking about, it’s not just a small or mid sized company thing. I have also been told internal communication is more likely to be beneficial in lawsuits. It’s not because you’re intentionally hiding stuff, but because your employees have a viewpoint that is more likely to align with your interests than a 3rd party. > People say dumb stuff all the time that a lawyer can take out of context. Stuff taken out of context is rarely very persuasive when you can provide that context. It’s far more damaging to their credibility than your case.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
alexey-salmin 2y ago
> There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication Funny really that it was Eric Schmidt who said on the topic of privacy: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." "... except if you're a corporate employee in a routine business conversation" – added Schmidt after some additional consideration.
- lubujackson 2y ago
  But.. but.. ethics will degrade if you can't do illegal things! Call me jaded, but if my 8 person company could say " maybe we should get legal advice before doing that" I am not going to wring my hands over poor, persecuted Google. They've become an ad company with some web tools on top.
laweijfmvo 2y ago
having worked at a tech company subject to a “legal hold” just in case the government wanted to sue us in the future, i agree that it’s absolutely asinine. have to save every device, every file, every email, every chat, every document, forever, indefinitely? what does it even mean to “preserve a document”? can it be edited?
to11mtm 2y ago
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded. Most orgs I've been at with this concern either on a large or silo'd level, will either change policies to fit, whether that be retention times for chat messages or guidelines to not record certain types of meetings/etc. > There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable. Mixed bag. Not every org will be OK with someone bringing up various regulations known in a recorded meeting, or even saying the potential number of impacted risk cases on a call raised with an issue in production. OTOH I've been at shops where I asked about the legality of something and it was thanked for being on the record (Thankfully that org was super-compliant and it was never about production, only design.)
mullingitover 2y ago
As cheap as storage is, we're going to end up in a situation where every business with >100 employees is expected to have cameras and microphones recording and transcribing every conversation just in case people might be communicating outside email and chat.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  yes except that in a third of companies, it will be HR agents and senior management that watches those things, with AI now of course
bane 2y ago
Many of the senior mandatory corporate trainings I've been to, often led by lawyers, basically state that "e-mail is evidence-mail" and to watch what you send.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"Google produced 13 times as many emails as the average company per employee did before it was a decade old, Kent Walker, Google's top lawyer, testified in the Epic trial. Google felt overwhelmed, he said, and it was clear to the company that things would only become worse if changes weren't made." According to Google's own testimony this is a Google problem not a problem shared by the other average companies that produce 13 times less email per employee than Google.^1 A reasonable person might suggest that the company's employees try to produce less email (and instant messages) like other companies. Instead, a crook might agree that the company destroy email (and instant messages), potential evidence, immediately after being created. But Google does not do that by default for the public with Gmail and its instant message services. Maybe because the average user is not a crook. 1. Google probably has far more than 13 times the amount of storage capacity than the average company. Destroying potential evidence at a company is what it is. It is not like there are multiple ways to interpret it. Google did it even after they knew they were being inestigated.
- Fluorescence 2y ago
  > Google produced 13 times as many emails Feels like a suss statistic. Counting the emails I have sent/received is as meaningful as counting network packets. Which dev working on services hasn't accidentally sent themselves 40k email alerts? Well, a few I imagine, but certainly not this one!
snowwrestler 2y ago
This comment would make sense if all companies communicated like Google does, but they don’t. Most companies have remarkably open internal conversations.
zzz999 2y ago
[dead]
mmooss 2y ago
> in the current legal environment Has somthing changed? The current legal environment seems to favor corporations and deep-pocketed litigants. The US Supreme Court keeps giving them more and more power, including free speech, freedom of religion, unlimted political donations, etc. It's not journalists that have weaponized the law, it is corporations. The assertion that the overwhelmingly powerful are victims is awesome propaganda - attack the other side (with what you are guilty of), change the subject, etc. With the likely coming war on journalism, I'm sure this will be a popular talking point. Maybe it's being previewed now?
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer Just pick up the phone or meet in person and speak plainly.
smsm42 2y ago
I don't know, looking back in over two decades of my career in the industry, I can hardly think of any communication that, if it ended in evidence, would constitute any trouble. Sure, some would be embarrassing for me personally, revealing me asking stupid questions, making wrong decisions and being responsible for some failures, but that's life. There would be some commercial secrets, sure. But noting that I would need to work hard to conceal. Maybe that's because I am a low level code monkey and communications in the higher spheres are full with nefarious plans about how to do illegal stuff and suppress competitors - but honestly I never observed anything close to a picture that you are painting.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

> But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment. They could not commit crimes. They could not conspire to commit crimes in the future. They could be happy with having won business and stop committing crimes.

Mistletoe 2y ago

Is something like Signal disappearing messages illegal? I remember when Mark Cuban tried to make his CyberDust app.

riku_iki 2y ago
google made internal chat messages disappeared after N days, which was disclosed in one of the trials, but I do not recollect any following punishment.
- simoncion 2y ago
  Like many US big companies, Google activated the court-sanctioned evidence destruction machine. (AKA "Document Retention Policies") Because this form of evidence destruction is viewed as legal by the courts if you're not a "highly regulated" business like a bank, unless you've been specially and specifically ordered by the courts to preserve evidence there is no punishment for destroying evidence in this way. A few years back, Google execs did choose to continue to destroy evidence after a court ordered them to preserve evidence and turn off their evidence destruction machines. I do not remember whether or how severely they were punished. (If they were, surely the punishment was far less than it would have been for we mere peons.)
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    They explicitly weren't punished as Google lost the anti-trust lawsuit. I'm not too sure it's the best decision to let all the individuals that intentionally either deleted or in Sundar's case attempted to delete evidence (legal hold overrides right click -> delete) completely off the hook.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    > Because this form of evidence destruction is viewed as legal by the courts if you're not a "highly regulated" business like a bank, [..…] Which is exactly the crux of the problem. Why do we have two completely opposite regimes for arguably not very different types of organizations? Intentionally short data retention policies should be illegal – but obviously that's completely infeasible in the US with its incredibly expensive legal discovery process, so that would be the first thing to fix. On the flip side, even regulated industries should get to have a digital equivalent of an unmonitored "conversation on the golf course/in the elevator" etc. – or do we seriously want to incentivize that in a world where we're rethinking physical offices?
smsm42 2y ago
Not illegal per se, but if you're under a preservation order and specifically instruct someone to use disappearing messages to evade it, it can get a bit iffy.

lancesells 2y ago

> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded. > There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Wow. This is the opposite of how I feel. Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business. The things that have come out in court show how they manipulated their customers (advertisers). Regardless of how you feel about advertising a portion of those companies are small mom and pop shops trying to get by. If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.

mattmaroon 2y ago
“ If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.” I’m surprised to see someone advocating for “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to hide” on HN. The cognitive dissonance must be in overdrive here!
- refulgentis 2y ago
  It's not that, though, I understand the temptation to `sed` what they said into that. It's easier, more fun, and its much more work to come with curiosity.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    There's nothing here to be curious about, just the usual "corporations bad". It's easy to mistake an emotion for an idea but it isn't. I'd normally pass it by entirely with an eye roll, I just thought it was funny that it's the opposite of how they'd feel if talking about people in their personal lives, completely unaware that these are the same people at just a different time of day.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      > There's nothing here to be curious about, just the usual "corporations bad" I'm sorry to be abrupt, but thats not true. We can see that empirically. For instance, you are talking to someone who read it and thinks that's a simplistic caricature of what they said. So we can dispense with the idea your rephrasing is equivalent. That's indisputable. There's a good quote about this in Rand, something something faced with a contradiction check your premises. When we jump to these kind of reactions, it's an annoying responsibility to pause and sigh, and engage on some level beyond "I'm sick of people saying (something they didn't say)"

Retric 2y ago

It ends up as evidence when routine business operations are breaking the law. Everywhere I’ve worked hasn’t had an issue with this stuff being tracked and several places actively preferred when stuff was recorded. Most companies don’t have an issue with clear communication because they’re not worried about what’s being said will end up part of a criminal investigation. So this is something that’s almost exclusively going to harm criminal organizations by making them less efficient. That sounds like a win win.

crazygringo 2y ago
> Most companies don’t have an issue with clear communication because they’re not worried about what’s being said will end up part of a criminal investigation. Only if you count "most companies" by company, i.e. most companies are therefore small businesses. And of course they're not worried because they're small and not subject to these kinds of investigations. They're not profitable enough to be targets. But if you count "most companies" by where most people work, you're talking about medium-to-large corporations. And it's standard these days to have policies exactly like Google's, to not retain instant messages for example, and delete e-mails after a short number of years. Because they're big juicy targets for frivolous lawsuits. So no, this isn't a win-win. People say dumb stuff all the time that a lawyer can take out of context. That doesn't mean a corporation is a criminal organization, as you suggest. Corporations sue each other all the time, not because the corporation being sued is criminal, but because the corporation suing thinks it'll be able to get away with it. But you seem to be ignoring that.
- Retric 2y ago
  I’ve worked at and seen multiple companies with 10+k employees that have the attitude I was talking about, it’s not just a small or mid sized company thing. I have also been told internal communication is more likely to be beneficial in lawsuits. It’s not because you’re intentionally hiding stuff, but because your employees have a viewpoint that is more likely to align with your interests than a 3rd party. > People say dumb stuff all the time that a lawyer can take out of context. Stuff taken out of context is rarely very persuasive when you can provide that context. It’s far more damaging to their credibility than your case.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

alexey-salmin 2y ago

> There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication Funny really that it was Eric Schmidt who said on the topic of privacy: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." "... except if you're a corporate employee in a routine business conversation" – added Schmidt after some additional consideration.

lubujackson 2y ago
But.. but.. ethics will degrade if you can't do illegal things! Call me jaded, but if my 8 person company could say " maybe we should get legal advice before doing that" I am not going to wring my hands over poor, persecuted Google. They've become an ad company with some web tools on top.

laweijfmvo 2y ago

having worked at a tech company subject to a “legal hold” just in case the government wanted to sue us in the future, i agree that it’s absolutely asinine. have to save every device, every file, every email, every chat, every document, forever, indefinitely? what does it even mean to “preserve a document”? can it be edited?

to11mtm 2y ago

> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded. Most orgs I've been at with this concern either on a large or silo'd level, will either change policies to fit, whether that be retention times for chat messages or guidelines to not record certain types of meetings/etc. > There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable. Mixed bag. Not every org will be OK with someone bringing up various regulations known in a recorded meeting, or even saying the potential number of impacted risk cases on a call raised with an issue in production. OTOH I've been at shops where I asked about the legality of something and it was thanked for being on the record (Thankfully that org was super-compliant and it was never about production, only design.)

mullingitover 2y ago

As cheap as storage is, we're going to end up in a situation where every business with >100 employees is expected to have cameras and microphones recording and transcribing every conversation just in case people might be communicating outside email and chat.

mistrial9 2y ago
yes except that in a third of companies, it will be HR agents and senior management that watches those things, with AI now of course

bane 2y ago

Many of the senior mandatory corporate trainings I've been to, often led by lawyers, basically state that "e-mail is evidence-mail" and to watch what you send.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"Google produced 13 times as many emails as the average company per employee did before it was a decade old, Kent Walker, Google's top lawyer, testified in the Epic trial. Google felt overwhelmed, he said, and it was clear to the company that things would only become worse if changes weren't made." According to Google's own testimony this is a Google problem not a problem shared by the other average companies that produce 13 times less email per employee than Google.^1 A reasonable person might suggest that the company's employees try to produce less email (and instant messages) like other companies. Instead, a crook might agree that the company destroy email (and instant messages), potential evidence, immediately after being created. But Google does not do that by default for the public with Gmail and its instant message services. Maybe because the average user is not a crook. 1. Google probably has far more than 13 times the amount of storage capacity than the average company. Destroying potential evidence at a company is what it is. It is not like there are multiple ways to interpret it. Google did it even after they knew they were being inestigated.

Fluorescence 2y ago
> Google produced 13 times as many emails Feels like a suss statistic. Counting the emails I have sent/received is as meaningful as counting network packets. Which dev working on services hasn't accidentally sent themselves 40k email alerts? Well, a few I imagine, but certainly not this one!

snowwrestler 2y ago

This comment would make sense if all companies communicated like Google does, but they don’t. Most companies have remarkably open internal conversations.

zzz999 2y ago

[dead]

mmooss 2y ago

> in the current legal environment Has somthing changed? The current legal environment seems to favor corporations and deep-pocketed litigants. The US Supreme Court keeps giving them more and more power, including free speech, freedom of religion, unlimted political donations, etc. It's not journalists that have weaponized the law, it is corporations. The assertion that the overwhelmingly powerful are victims is awesome propaganda - attack the other side (with what you are guilty of), change the subject, etc. With the likely coming war on journalism, I'm sure this will be a popular talking point. Maybe it's being previewed now?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer Just pick up the phone or meet in person and speak plainly.

smsm42 2y ago

I don't know, looking back in over two decades of my career in the industry, I can hardly think of any communication that, if it ended in evidence, would constitute any trouble. Sure, some would be embarrassing for me personally, revealing me asking stupid questions, making wrong decisions and being responsible for some failures, but that's life. There would be some commercial secrets, sure. But noting that I would need to work hard to conceal. Maybe that's because I am a low level code monkey and communications in the higher spheres are full with nefarious plans about how to do illegal stuff and suppress competitors - but honestly I never observed anything close to a picture that you are painting.