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Off topic: The name Office of Legal Compliance immediately made me think of 1984's Ministry naming. Similarly to how the Ministry of Truth's job is to spread pr

Off topic: The name Office of Legal Compliance immediately made me think of 1984's Ministry naming. Similarly to how the Ministry of Truth's job is to spread propaganda and falsify history in the novel, this Office of Legal Compliance department's job is to ask themselves, "How far can we push the envelope toward being illegal, but still remain within legal boundaries?" Essentially their job is dealing with things that border on being illegal. Determining how far you can get to illegality, while remaining technically inside legality. For the first time the notion of "newspeak" in real life has clicked for me. I'd never grokked the idea from the novel, other than as some fear mongering fantasy that Orwell invented for the sake of compelling irony. But now I see, names actually make sense, from a certain angle. They weren't purely ironic devices. For the record, I'm NOT comparing Microsoft to Big Brother. Just funny to draw that parallel in naming choices.

character 13y ago
(from regular Microsoft employee perspective): this article does make them seem like that. Usually, in my interactions with Legal Compliance, they make sure everything we do is 100% legal, and prevent us from even coming close to the border of legality. They assume that we programmers don't think about complicated legal matters, so they go over a lot of the projects we work on and make us adhere to very strict privacy compliance that most of our competitors breeze over.
- talklittle 13y ago
  Thanks for chiming in. I'm sure that's how legal departments work in most companies, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Yes, just in this case TFA is talking about an isolated situation where my comment happens to be pertinent.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    I have no experience with Microsoft, but my experiences with equivalent legal departments in other big tech. companies matches his view - they play it safe to the point of being insanely anal about it. These guys aren't there to make sure the company can do as much as possible, they're there to make sure there's no way anything can go wrong legally, and given its their asses on the line if they take too big a risk, they'll always stray way away from the edge.
unethical_ban 13y ago
"Legal" and "compliance" offices are not unusual in large organizations; they do exactly what they sound like they do. Legal is the lawyers. Compliance is the group that audits the organization and ensures all relevant legal and industry regulations are being met. Alternatively, the "office of Trustworthy Computing" over which Scott Charney[1] presides does sound creepy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfSp5SnKL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfSp5SnKL0
- Retric 13y ago
  'Legal's' advice tends to be extremely conservative because the cost of court cases are high even if you win.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    I think it goes beyond that: internal Legal Offices' advice tends to be even more conservative than that would explain because: 1) If the advice is too conservative, and the company refrains from some action that it could have undertaken safely, then leadership blames the law. 2) If the advice is insufficiently conservative, and the company undertakes some action from which it should have refrained and it blows up in their face, then leadership blames Legal for blessing the action.
    - Retric 13y ago
      Err, that explains being conservative. My point is being within the law is not quite enough. You want to be so far within the law that you can get most court cases thrown out without actual litigation. Or as a rich friend of mine put it. I like paying a little extra in taxes every year. Sure, I could take every deduction but I like knowing if I am ever audited I will end up with a nice check.
- marshray 13y ago
  (Microsoft employee here) Note that "Trustworthy Computing (TWC)", by name and mission, is intentionally distinct from the "Trusted Computing" initiatives. It's a subtle but essential distinction between trust meaning "to rely upon another party" and trustworthy meaning basically "reliable". (my own definitions)
prawn 13y ago
I liked "Trustworthy Computing Investigations".
encoderer 13y ago
That's nothing! " Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Investigations department" is quintessentially Orwellian!
anigbrowl 13y ago
"How far can we push the envelope toward being illegal, but still remain within legal boundaries?" This would be better phrased as 'how far can we go in pursuit of our employer's legitimate interests, but still remain within legal boundaries.' As phrased, you're treating illegality as a goal in itself, but this isn't the case. All companies have interests, but the most obvious and efficient means of pursuing those interests may be odds with any of the many regulations governing corporate activity. Compliance departments specialize in making sure firms stay on the right side of that line, and in a complex economy with complex regulatory regimes that's a full time job. As far as naming choices go, 'compliance' is the standard term in industry for ensuring that a firm's behavior is lawful, and it doesn't carry any connotation of pushing boundaries or circumventing the law. There's no 'newspeak' here except in your own mind, unless you actually believe that companies aspire to illegal behavior as a matter of course.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Companies like Microsoft leave the legality of their actions to the compliance team. They have interest in pursuing both legal and illegal actions and their compliance department has the task of ensuring even the illegal stuff can be bent into comformance to the letter of the law. It's not aspiring to illegal behavior for the illegality of it. It's only that the closer you get to the edge, the more advantages you squeeze out of the situation.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    I think you're pursuing a fantastical notion here. It's more like, "hey we can get a great business deal and corner a market by doing this, this and this - legal team: are we doing anything wrong here?" They aren't cackling in a corner somewhere thinking about opportunities to toe the line. They're legitimately trying to beat the competition and some of those ways might potentially be illegal, so they need to get the okay or not before fucking up publicly and majorly.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      More than once I witnessed questions to the effect of "how far can we go before we break the law" be asked. The person who asked had full knowledge his/her plans were illegal. He/She just needed to know where to stop.
loup-vaillant 13y ago
> For the record, I'm NOT comparing Microsoft to Big Brother. I will: Microsoft is a big corporation who spies on its users to protect its interests. Incidentally, there are many other Big Brothers like them: Facebook, Google… People should read some cyberpunk literature. Read William Gibson's Neuromancer, or play Android Netrunner. We're halfway there.
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  There's probably quite a few people who are unfamiliar when back in the day, they were working with Prodigy to verify anybody using Prodigy didn't have a counterfeit MS license on their PC. Nothing ever happened to either company, and you'd be hard pressed to find an article on it, but MS has been snooping on their users for a long, long time.
WalterBright 13y ago
There are so many laws and regulations, and the larger a company is the more such applies. A staff is required to constantly review and make sure the law is complied with. Having good intentions is hardly sufficient.
SeanDav 13y ago
Ignoring the rather dodgy legal shenanigans here, it was pretty silly to discuss doing nasty things to Microsoft, on MS controlled systems.
- aragot 13y ago
  Might I recall that competing with foreign companies using Gmail accounts is silly too, but we still do it, betting they're not organized enough yet to find the information. On the plus side, it shows that even Microsoft internal ennemies love Hotmail.
onetwofiveten 13y ago
Orwell was pointing to a very real phenomenon with "newspeak". For the best examples look to how political leaders talk about military conflicts. Language regarding conflict is very well chosen and quite misleading. Terms like "collateral damage", "area denial weaponry", "enhanced interrogation", "enemy combatants" are not exactly ironic, but they do have true meanings and implications very far from what they superficially sound like. Examples of true ironic "newspeak" can also be readily found. You may have heard leaders talk about various military, police, and spying agencies protecting your "freedom", despite the obvious roles they have in restricting your freedom. Talk about freedom often actually means "freedom to do what we want", which is, of course, the opposite of freedom. To give a common example, an invasion will often be talked about by the invading power as a "liberation". Yet the act of liberation by a foreign power always ends with that foreign power having significant local political influence and access to natural resources (and may involve permanent occupation). Or take the "war on terror" for example. Superficially, a "war on terror" should make people LESS afraid. Yet, in practise the politicians engaged in the "war on terror" have actively tried to encourage fear (in order to justify granting extraordinary powers). The irony is so blatant it's right there in the name. Being at war makes people more afraid, so declaring war on terror is automatically ironic. It's like having an orgy to promote abstinence.
- mkaziz 13y ago
  It depends on how you define terror though
  - onetwofiveten 13y ago
    That's kind of the point.

character 13y ago

(from regular Microsoft employee perspective): this article does make them seem like that. Usually, in my interactions with Legal Compliance, they make sure everything we do is 100% legal, and prevent us from even coming close to the border of legality. They assume that we programmers don't think about complicated legal matters, so they go over a lot of the projects we work on and make us adhere to very strict privacy compliance that most of our competitors breeze over.

talklittle 13y ago
Thanks for chiming in. I'm sure that's how legal departments work in most companies, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Yes, just in this case TFA is talking about an isolated situation where my comment happens to be pertinent.
- corin_ 13y ago
  I have no experience with Microsoft, but my experiences with equivalent legal departments in other big tech. companies matches his view - they play it safe to the point of being insanely anal about it. These guys aren't there to make sure the company can do as much as possible, they're there to make sure there's no way anything can go wrong legally, and given its their asses on the line if they take too big a risk, they'll always stray way away from the edge.

unethical_ban 13y ago

"Legal" and "compliance" offices are not unusual in large organizations; they do exactly what they sound like they do. Legal is the lawyers. Compliance is the group that audits the organization and ensures all relevant legal and industry regulations are being met. Alternatively, the "office of Trustworthy Computing" over which Scott Charney[1] presides does sound creepy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfSp5SnKL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfSp5SnKL0

Retric 13y ago
'Legal's' advice tends to be extremely conservative because the cost of court cases are high even if you win.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  I think it goes beyond that: internal Legal Offices' advice tends to be even more conservative than that would explain because: 1) If the advice is too conservative, and the company refrains from some action that it could have undertaken safely, then leadership blames the law. 2) If the advice is insufficiently conservative, and the company undertakes some action from which it should have refrained and it blows up in their face, then leadership blames Legal for blessing the action.
  - Retric 13y ago
    Err, that explains being conservative. My point is being within the law is not quite enough. You want to be so far within the law that you can get most court cases thrown out without actual litigation. Or as a rich friend of mine put it. I like paying a little extra in taxes every year. Sure, I could take every deduction but I like knowing if I am ever audited I will end up with a nice check.
marshray 13y ago
(Microsoft employee here) Note that "Trustworthy Computing (TWC)", by name and mission, is intentionally distinct from the "Trusted Computing" initiatives. It's a subtle but essential distinction between trust meaning "to rely upon another party" and trustworthy meaning basically "reliable". (my own definitions)

prawn 13y ago

I liked "Trustworthy Computing Investigations".

encoderer 13y ago

That's nothing! " Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Investigations department" is quintessentially Orwellian!

anigbrowl 13y ago

"How far can we push the envelope toward being illegal, but still remain within legal boundaries?" This would be better phrased as 'how far can we go in pursuit of our employer's legitimate interests, but still remain within legal boundaries.' As phrased, you're treating illegality as a goal in itself, but this isn't the case. All companies have interests, but the most obvious and efficient means of pursuing those interests may be odds with any of the many regulations governing corporate activity. Compliance departments specialize in making sure firms stay on the right side of that line, and in a complex economy with complex regulatory regimes that's a full time job. As far as naming choices go, 'compliance' is the standard term in industry for ensuring that a firm's behavior is lawful, and it doesn't carry any connotation of pushing boundaries or circumventing the law. There's no 'newspeak' here except in your own mind, unless you actually believe that companies aspire to illegal behavior as a matter of course.

rbanffy 13y ago
Companies like Microsoft leave the legality of their actions to the compliance team. They have interest in pursuing both legal and illegal actions and their compliance department has the task of ensuring even the illegal stuff can be bent into comformance to the letter of the law. It's not aspiring to illegal behavior for the illegality of it. It's only that the closer you get to the edge, the more advantages you squeeze out of the situation.
- bennyg 13y ago
  I think you're pursuing a fantastical notion here. It's more like, "hey we can get a great business deal and corner a market by doing this, this and this - legal team: are we doing anything wrong here?" They aren't cackling in a corner somewhere thinking about opportunities to toe the line. They're legitimately trying to beat the competition and some of those ways might potentially be illegal, so they need to get the okay or not before fucking up publicly and majorly.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    More than once I witnessed questions to the effect of "how far can we go before we break the law" be asked. The person who asked had full knowledge his/her plans were illegal. He/She just needed to know where to stop.

loup-vaillant 13y ago

> For the record, I'm NOT comparing Microsoft to Big Brother. I will: Microsoft is a big corporation who spies on its users to protect its interests. Incidentally, there are many other Big Brothers like them: Facebook, Google… People should read some cyberpunk literature. Read William Gibson's Neuromancer, or play Android Netrunner. We're halfway there.

at-fates-hands 13y ago
There's probably quite a few people who are unfamiliar when back in the day, they were working with Prodigy to verify anybody using Prodigy didn't have a counterfeit MS license on their PC. Nothing ever happened to either company, and you'd be hard pressed to find an article on it, but MS has been snooping on their users for a long, long time.

WalterBright 13y ago

There are so many laws and regulations, and the larger a company is the more such applies. A staff is required to constantly review and make sure the law is complied with. Having good intentions is hardly sufficient.

SeanDav 13y ago

Ignoring the rather dodgy legal shenanigans here, it was pretty silly to discuss doing nasty things to Microsoft, on MS controlled systems.

aragot 13y ago
Might I recall that competing with foreign companies using Gmail accounts is silly too, but we still do it, betting they're not organized enough yet to find the information. On the plus side, it shows that even Microsoft internal ennemies love Hotmail.

onetwofiveten 13y ago

Orwell was pointing to a very real phenomenon with "newspeak". For the best examples look to how political leaders talk about military conflicts. Language regarding conflict is very well chosen and quite misleading. Terms like "collateral damage", "area denial weaponry", "enhanced interrogation", "enemy combatants" are not exactly ironic, but they do have true meanings and implications very far from what they superficially sound like. Examples of true ironic "newspeak" can also be readily found. You may have heard leaders talk about various military, police, and spying agencies protecting your "freedom", despite the obvious roles they have in restricting your freedom. Talk about freedom often actually means "freedom to do what we want", which is, of course, the opposite of freedom. To give a common example, an invasion will often be talked about by the invading power as a "liberation". Yet the act of liberation by a foreign power always ends with that foreign power having significant local political influence and access to natural resources (and may involve permanent occupation). Or take the "war on terror" for example. Superficially, a "war on terror" should make people LESS afraid. Yet, in practise the politicians engaged in the "war on terror" have actively tried to encourage fear (in order to justify granting extraordinary powers). The irony is so blatant it's right there in the name. Being at war makes people more afraid, so declaring war on terror is automatically ironic. It's like having an orgy to promote abstinence.

mkaziz 13y ago
It depends on how you define terror though
- onetwofiveten 13y ago
  That's kind of the point.