Submitted 11 months ago by dwazou@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-antitrust-employee-messages.html
I read the article, and it’s way less bad than the title made it sound. They just set company chats to disappear after some number of days and told employees to “not speculate about legal matters until they have the facts”.
This has been the policy of every company I’ve worked at, including university IT and Amazon.
I read the article
From the shitshow that’s the comments, you’re the only one
First thing I do when I’m told to delete messages is SecureDrop them to the press
And again, that should result in jail time for all of those executives and all employees that actually destroyed messages
JAIL THEM, JAIL THEM NOW, JAIL THEM LONG
This sort of shit behavior will never end and only get worse until we, instead of hand slapping, start jailing these fuckers.
Jail a bunch of CEO’s for breaking the law and watch how fast they start behaving.
Is it illegal for them to delete messages? I had always been under the impression that FOIA only covered government.
If it’s about internal messages about illegal activities, yes. In a court case, during discovery, internal messages may be requested.
The idea for this asshat is that if those particular messages are missing, then that evidence is gone, making it tampering with evidence.
Normally that would result in a victory for them but if it comes out that they deleted relevant messages, like right now, then normally that would be very bad. If it were me, I would probably go to jail over that.
However, this is the US and it’s about some rich asshole, so probably nothing will happen
Either of us deliberately destroy data: locked up.
Company exec does the same: slap on the butt and a $2 fine.
We should all be on the same playing field!
This is why companies have data retention settings to automatically delete old emails and slack/teams/etc. and special processes a classifications to store those communications that relate to contracts and such.
I was gonna say, the SEC may as well not exist now.
Along with every other safeguard designed to protect the people from corruption.
The sundowning rapist felon traitor’s handlers made sure of that.
they weren’t feeling lucky?
Thats uh… thats a gigantic crime rofl, fucking wow.
Not quite sure exactly what that slots into, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice… but uh yeah wow dang, that’s the kinda thing that can actually lead to charges against the actual people that do this, if not at least the people that order other to.
Great job, morons!
Not quite sure exactly what that slots into, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, not complying with the discovery process.
Pretty sure that’s a hat trick
Nah, nothing will happen. At worst they get slapped on the hands with a few million dollars, and no one will care.
Jail these fuckers, jail them for long times, jail them now
Musk is still free and has been openly doing this with self driving junk for years. This is the USA where we haven’t had reasonable laws passed since the 1970s.
Just use Signal. You may be in Pete Hegseth’s next message.
He still hasn’t added me to any chats. What should I do?
Have you tried being rich and incompetent?
Did you say in your profile you’re a reporter? Ahha
These types of requests always backfire. We got a similar request when I worked for a very large corporation and the very first thing I did was create a backup of our Lotus Notes and take it home. Just in case.
And someone spoke up, right?
…
Right…?
Actually, yes. It led to a huge lawsuit and changes in legislation regarding 401k contributions.
I’ve always wondered, is this illegal? Like obviously it is if they’ve already been subpoenaed or something.
Nah it’s illegal to deliberately destroy data to impede investigations. You don’t need to have an open investigation for that to be the case.
It remains legal to get rid of old files to free up space or if you genuinely believe they aren’t necessary, though, so you need to prove intent.
If there’s a subpeona or something, their destruction is itself a crime, but under this law, its the intent to defraud the courts that’s illegal, and that intent is always illegal.
The law exists specifically for this situation. Purging important business documents preemptively is clearly not OK.
Citation: legalclarity.org/18-u-s-c-1519-destruction-altera…
Do you happen to know when the last time was that a rich company was prosecuted for this?
It seems a lot like the perjury laws: there to scare poor people into telling the truth because of almost non-existant prosecution of it.
And if it is a fine and not jail time (white collar crimes are almost never jail time) the fine would have to be much larger than the penalties they would not have to pay because of the crime, otherwise it is simply a net win for the company
Just to add, if it’s found that evidence was destroyed, beyond potential seperate charges for the destruction itself, a judge would also typically give an averse inference instruction to the jury. That means the jury should assume that the destroyed evidence would have been damning to whomever destroyed it.
What that tells me is, assuming google acted rationally in the destruction, either they thinks they have a reasonable chance that they can beat the evidence destruction charges, or that the evidence is so damning that the reality of the situation is considerably worse than whatever adverse inferences might be drawn.
(I am not a lawyer, so please take my interpretation with a grain of salt.)
It’s white collar crime. They’ll pay a fine which will mean nothing to them, and nobody will go to jail. That’s how it works.
It’s illegal if antitrust action is anticipated, according to the article. That said, I know that most places I’ve worked have had a document retention policy that called for automatic deletion of most documents after some time period, like a year.
It’s illegal if antitrust action is anticipated
That seems like something that would be difficult to prove.
Nationalize google and incarcerate their board.
Are you kidding?? They are way more accountable now to Wall Street and what’s left of US federal regulators and still-useful regulators like the EU. If nationalized they would answer to no one.
I read this as “incinerate”. A principled, pragmatic opposition to the death penalty in any case I can think of is the only reason I would disapprove.
Eh, you sure we want to give control of that shit to Trump and his people?
I’m not sure whether it could be worse.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 11 months ago
This is probably why my company sets 90 day retention on emails and chats