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That's absolutely the best part, and that's why Zimmermann's comment almost seems naive. "...before justice comes calling" is exactly what they're talking abo
by ibejoeb 13y ago
That's absolutely the best part, and that's why Zimmermann's comment almost seems naive. "...before justice comes calling" is exactly what they're talking about here. What is contemplation, and when does it begin?
I learned from Hanni Fakhoury of EFF that a proposed defense in this kind of action is to have had in place a strict data retention policy. For example, prior to beginning operations, the policy would state something like "we will retain all data aged 6 weeks or less; older data will be destroyed." Now, you adhere to that policy, perhaps with some activity record around the procedure itself, and your argument is something like, "it is not obstruction and not anticipatory obstruction because we defined and abided by the policy before anything happened, before any event warranting an investigation could occur, and, therefor, before contemplation of an investigation could occur."
- Amadou 13y agoI could swear I read an article a couple of years ago about a wall street bank losing an obstruction charge specifically because of an email retention policy just like you described. Bigger picture, we all know that the reason companies implement email retention policies is to minimize the risk of the discovery process in any potential lawsuit - practically the cost of storage is nil so any savings there is a drop in the bucket. The policies are huge productivity killers for all employees -- everyone I know who has worked under such conditions has had at least one case where they needed information from an expired email that they had not personally archived. The only reason for a company to shoot itself in the foot with a policy like that is because it is easy to imagine a one-shot potential million dollar liability loss compared to the essentially unmeasurable productivity loss spread across the entire company on a daily basis.