[HN Gopher] Federal judge sanctions Seattle officials for deleti...
___________________________________________________________________
Federal judge sanctions Seattle officials for deleting texts
Author : Pigalowda
Score : 118 points
Date : 2023-02-17 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seattletimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seattletimes.com)
| rayiner wrote:
| > For that reason, Zilly said that when the case goes to trial
| he'll instruct the jury that it may presume the text messages
| were detrimental to the city's legal position and that there's
| significant circumstantial evidence they were deleted
| intentionally.
|
| This is a common and fitting, though usually devastating,
| sanction for spoliation of evidence.
| evil-olive wrote:
| > Zilly said that when the case goes to trial
|
| this article is about a month old; the case recently settled
| [0] (at least, a preliminary notice of settlement was filed,
| it's not finalized yet, and none of the details are public)
|
| it seems very likely that these sanctions convinced the city to
| settle instead of going to trial, or at a minimum forced them
| to settle for less favorable terms than they were hoping for.
|
| 0: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-
| justice/seattl...
| a_e_k wrote:
| "Adverse inference"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
| next_xibalba wrote:
| To which side is it usually devastating? I would assume it
| would be for the destroyer of evidence, but maybe good lawyers
| can explain that away and seed sufficient doubt?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > To which side is it usually devastating?
|
| To the obvious one.
|
| "Assume there was evidence so bad they risked criminal
| charges to get rid of it" makes instilling doubt a lot
| harder.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| It's a terrible result for everyone, plaintiff, defendant
| and court.
|
| Plaintiff because, culpable or not, those texts may be the
| best explanation for whatever happened. Losing them means
| they're framing their arguments a bit in the dark. It's
| easier to persuade if you land pretty close to an actual
| truth, and that's harder without complete discovery of
| executive communications.
|
| For defendants, because the explanations are actually
| pretty plausible for a municipal IT operation, and it's
| dumb for big liability to ride on some stupid, irrelevant
| IT gaffe on some peripheral technology.
|
| The court because there isn't a good answer and deciding
| big cases on questionable legal presumptions and fictions
| that themselves turn on irrelevant technical arcana-- these
| are the things people dislike about lawyers.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "the explanations are actually pretty plausible for a
| municipal IT operation"
|
| Nah.
|
| > The former mayor has offered a number of explanations
| for the missing messages, including that she dropped her
| phone in water, that she inadvertently changed the
| phone's deletion settings and that "someone" set a new
| phone to delete messages older than 30 days, resulting in
| a rolling deletion of previous messages.
|
| Individually, sure. Combined? That's an unlikely set of
| circumstances. This, too:
|
| > The order notes that Best's phone at some point was
| also set to delete text messages after a month, despite
| her obligation to keep them due to pending litigation.
| Zilly noted that _the former chief apparently deleted
| more than 27,000 of those text messages by hand_.
|
| All this while subject to a litigation hold looks very
| bad. Letting them wiggle out of it would encourage such
| behavior in the future.
| sva_ wrote:
| Compare that to when the president of the European Commission
| gets away with deleting her texts.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/28/von-der-leyen-text-messa...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/29/european-commi...
| myko wrote:
| Similarly the trump admin/campaign deleting texts to hide
| from Mueller (Stone, Flynn, Bannon, etc.)
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/national-
| security/454580-mueller-...
| treeman79 wrote:
| You do know that they just found that the FBI official
| investigating him for Russian collusion was taking bribes
| from Russia?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what to think about that. Do you see it as a
| sign of corruption of the FBI in general, or of one
| official being paid by Russia-affiliated actors to look
| the other way?
|
| How does it tie in with what we know about the pressure
| from the FBI's New York field office to reopen the HRC
| email investigation right before the 2016 election? Comey
| was pretty sure that they were going to leak to the press
| if he didn't speak out himself. That does seem indicative
| of a rogue agency, but not exactly one that is pro-
| Democratic or pro-Clinton.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Aside from apparently excusing evidence destruction, it's
| not even accurate.
|
| The FBI agent in question was was taking bribes from Oleg
| Deripaska, not "from Russia". Deripaska paid Trump's
| campaign manager, Paul Manafort, $10 million dollars and
| was receiving private briefings and confidential polling
| data from him. I really don't think it's a point in favor
| of "the FBI was out to get Trump" when one of the guys
| investigating the wrong-doing was being paid by one of
| the campaign's allies.
| mc32 wrote:
| Oh, did they use bleach bit or did they wipe them with a
| rag?
| vuln wrote:
| You're getting downvoted from what I can only assume is
| your inaccurate quoting.
|
| "What? Like with a cloth?"
|
| Is the full quote here's the video.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/hillary-clinton-
| jokes-...
|
| BleachBit's Response
|
| https://www.bleachbit.org/news/bleachbit-stifles-
| investigati...
| mc32 wrote:
| You're right! I'm sure readers of the parent poster
| appreciate the poster's completeness and their refusal to
| tell half truths as well as not omit details, so one can
| only conclude that its my manner of speaking which
| betrayed my class and thus the disapproval of the Oxford
| educated. The other one that gets me constantly is drapes
| instead of drapery.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| The drapery drapes on curtain rods.
| water-your-self wrote:
| > The former mayor has offered a number of explanations for the
| missing messages, including that she dropped her phone in water,
| that she inadvertently changed the phone's deletion settings and
| that "someone" set a new phone to delete messages older than 30
| days, resulting in a rolling deletion of previous messages.
|
| I would expect this from a middle schooler, not a mayor.
| colpabar wrote:
| How do we allow these people in government? Why are such
| statements that are obvious bullshit to anyone who has ever
| used a smartphone not immediately ridiculed and barred from any
| position of power for their rest of their lives?
|
| How are we supposed to trust our government when this is what
| they do?
| buildbot wrote:
| It was extremely intentional - she is a prosecutor and would
| know exactly what she was doing.
| mrandish wrote:
| Further, she had the experience to understand exactly how
| damaging the text messages would be AND she would know that
| the fact she deleted them would be revealed in discovery and
| severely punished by most judges YET decided to delete them
| anyway. _That 's_ how damaging they must have been.
|
| Also, the texts were sent to someone and both parties had to
| delete them for deleting to work - so... conspiracy too.
| evil-olive wrote:
| > she is a prosecutor and would know exactly what she was
| doing
|
| yes, but it's even worse than that
|
| > Jenny Durkan is a partner and co-founder of the Seattle
| office of global law firm Quinn Emanuel. Her practice focues
| on cybersecurity issues, white collar investigations and
| litigation. [0]
|
| and
|
| > Durkan served for two years on Attorney General Holder's
| original Attorney General Advisory Committee, and has chaired
| his advisory Subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual
| Property Enforcement since 2009. [1]
|
| of all the federal prosecutors (US Attorneys) in the country,
| she _chaired_ the cybercrime subcommittee. and her private
| practice focused on cybersecurity issues and white collar
| crime.
|
| and she committed a white-collar cybercrime.
|
| 0: https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-
| edition/2015/11/20...
|
| 1: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/us-attorney-jenny-
| durka...
| mr_beans wrote:
| Summer of love!
| Jun8 wrote:
| Interesting note; the NYT profile linked in this article
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-...)
| was by Nellie Bowles. She left NYT in Nov 2021 and revealed that
| she was bullied to leave. Articles that went against the NYT
| grain like these probably were the main cause. BTW, a similar
| bullying is underway on the topic of trans care, see this letter
| by NYT staff targeting a small group of journalists:
| https://nytletter.com/
|
| Interesting fact about Bowles that's relevant to HN: Years ago
| she did a profile of Jessica Livingston that ticked pg off:
| https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/8/21/11630108/ycs-jess...
| lumpit wrote:
| That letter sure does like to smear gender critical folks, or
| even just those concerned about standards of medical care, as
| "anti-trans hate groups" and "far right hate groups". No wonder
| the NYT told them thanks but no thanks.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| This article is out of date. CHS has a more up-to-date article on
| the status of the lawsuit:
| https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2023/02/city-settles-chop...
| Steltek wrote:
| I dunno about you guys but I'm pretty sick of the word
| "sanction". What's next? "My kids didn't clean their room before
| bedtime so I had to impose crippling sanctions"? "CEO enacts
| sanctions on employees after poor quarterly results"?
| [deleted]
| pc86 wrote:
| It's a term of art, not sure why it bothers you on such a
| personal level.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My issue with the word sanction is that it is not really
| defined other than "cripiling" so I have no idea what it is
| actually doing. It also means that the individuals are not
| directly being punished. I have the same feeling towards
| Congress when they censure someone. Ooooohh, you've used a
| big word to say you didn't like something someone did/said.
| Big whoop. It means nothing. It's not even as scary as being
| sent to timeout.
|
| Then again, the website told me "Your browser is set to
| private mode. To continue reading, log in or subscribe." so I
| was unable to read the full article. Whether I'm in private
| mode or not is none of their damn business.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > My issue with the word sanction is that it is not really
| defined other than "cripiling" so I have no idea what it is
| actually doing.
|
| They explain the sanctions directly in the article.
|
| "For that reason, Zilly said that when the case goes to
| trial he'll instruct the jury that it may presume the text
| messages were detrimental to the city's legal position and
| that there's significant circumstantial evidence they were
| deleted intentionally."
|
| "He also ordered the city to pay the attorneys fees for
| those who showed city leaders destroyed significant
| evidence about their decision-making during CHOP, including
| their move to abandon the Police Department's East
| Precinct."
|
| Instructing the jury to assume the evidence of wrongdoing
| existed is indeed a crippling sanction; that's an immensely
| high bar for the lawyers to have to jump over now.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >They explain the sanctions directly in the article.
|
| Maybe you missed where is stated: >>Then again, the
| website told me "Your browser is set to private mode. To
| continue reading, log in or subscribe." so I was unable
| to read the full article. Whether I'm in private mode or
| not is none of their damn business.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I was unable to read the full article.
|
| Then it is rather odd to complain that the article lacks
| information.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just like you not reading where arguments have already
| been stipulated. what's your point?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The point was to provide you with the information you
| were looking for.
| dylan604 wrote:
| with attitude about my being unable to read the article
| pc86 wrote:
| More like unwilling, but sure.
|
| Honestly your tone this entire thread isn't conducive to
| any sort of constructive discussion. It seems like you're
| just having a bad day and lashing out at this article for
| whatever reason.
| [deleted]
| Wyoming23 wrote:
| Doesn't the service provider (AT&T or whoever) have a copy of the
| messages they could subpoena?
|
| It seems shocking to me that deleting the messages off the phones
| makes them inaccessible to prosecution, when presumably there are
| backups on multiple servers controlled by telecom companies and
| other government entities.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a difference between police investigations and
| civil/normal entities.
|
| The key thing is to have a policy or practice. If your policy
| is to purge texts after 7 days, that's a defensible position.
| If your behavior is to throw your phone in the river around the
| time of your communicating about a matter of interest to a
| litigant, that reflects poorly.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| All TelCos in all countries have backup of the SMS messages.
| The key part is for how long and what details.
|
| In the US, for example AT&T is only a couple of days; Verizon,
| 3-10 days for SMS _contents_. Everything else like subscriber
| info, call history, tower location, tower dumps, range-to-tower
| can be years.
|
| In EU similar patchwork.
|
| (source: me half century in field)
| chasil wrote:
| They are certainly able to do so.
|
| The only tool that I know of that can encrypt SMS messages is
| Silence. The source code is quite stale.
|
| The fifth amendment allows an individual to refuse to disclose
| a password in criminal trials (they can be compelled to open
| biometric locks, hwoever). I don't know if these protections
| would extend to civil proceedings such as occurred here; if
| not, the judge could hold such witnesses in contempt.
|
| https://silence.im
| degrees57 wrote:
| I don't think they keep them for very long. I know that my
| organization looked at purchasing Smarsh, which hooks in to the
| API that providers present so that Smarsh can do it's
| archiving. IIRC, there was a short time limit (not a whole lot
| of days) on being able to retrieve the messages from the
| providers.
|
| Also, if I'm a provider, keeping all those text messages is
| going to be a more of a liability than a benefit. It's an
| expense for storage and retrieval. I'm not sure they would
| really make any money off of maintaining a long history; it
| would be super rare that this would pay off. Better to just
| state that "after n days, they are gone, we're done. Archiving
| is up to you, the customer."
| Rimintil wrote:
| It makes no sense that a telcom would be 'backing up' your SMS
| (or maybe not even SMS -- could all be iMessage which the
| telcom doesn't see) texts. What reason would they have to do
| so? Where's the business value of storing all of that data,
| supporting the infrastructure, supporting restore requests from
| customers?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Training data for machine learning. Targeted ads. Punishing
| your enemies.
| from wrote:
| Here is a graphic from a VICE article: https://video-
| images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1634930279896-r...
|
| Actual message content is kept only for a short period of
| time.
| andylynch wrote:
| Call taping and message archiving via the network is a
| somewhat popular way of handling these requirements for
| regulated staff.
| justinclift wrote:
| Some countries have legislation around this. eg telecoms
| providers must at all times keep the latest 2 days worth of
| SMS messages from all subscribers
| late2part wrote:
| Just long enough to be quickly copied off if appropriate
| filters exist.
| chaostheory wrote:
| The carriers themselves likely wouldn't do it. The government
| just needs a data hose
|
| https://www.dhs.gov/fusion-center-locations-and-contact-
| info...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Do _you_ want your cell phone provider keeping a history of
| everything you 've ever texted?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I might actually see the value in opting into this,
| especially if they provide a service where they can notarize
| SMS message logs. Someone says you texted them something
| inappropriate, or harassing, and you can grab the logs and
| expose them to be either mistaken or dishonest.
| rationalist wrote:
| No, but I would be surprised if they weren't.
| dubcanada wrote:
| You're implying they don't already, when that has been
| largely proved to be in fact true, they do keep history of
| every text message.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Actually, this case is an excellent example of why that is
| probably a conspiracy theory that does not align with
| reality.
| orangepurple wrote:
| The term "conspiracy theory" is a psyop to auto-discredit
| anything labeled as one.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That notion is just a conspiracy theory by Big Conspiracy
| to push more conspiracy theories. ;)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Hilariously, this is a conspiracy theory.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_an
| d_U...
|
| > The earliest known usage was by the American author
| Charles Astor Bristed, in a letter to the editor
| published in The New York Times on January 11, 1863.
|
| > The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a
| conspiracy theory, which posits that the term was
| popularized by the CIA in order to discredit
| conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the
| Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule.
| testTED wrote:
| > the term was popularized by the CIA in order to
| discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics
| of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of
| ridicule.
|
| Who popularized it is subjective.
|
| What _isn 't_ subjective: the CIA indeed sent out a memo
| about this. It marked an increase in the use of the term
| in popular media publications. You can find it and read
| it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I just love that you lopped off half a sentence to invert
| its meaning to support your conspiracy theory. That's
| just beautiful.
|
| > the CIA indeed sent out a memo about this
|
| Wow, the CIA noticed something and sent a memo?
| testTED wrote:
| It noticed people questioning an official story, and it
| referred to them as conspiracy theorists.
| testTED wrote:
| Yes, all those drives in Utah are just for appearances.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| AT&T and the NSA are not the same thing.
|
| AT&T is almost certainly not storing every text message
| long-term. The NSA likely is. It wouldn't be surprising
| if that's via a direct PRISM-style integration, but it
| still means subpoenaing AT&T for old texts is likely to
| not be productive. (As it was not productive in this
| particular case.)
|
| Subpoena the NSA and they'll say "no, for national
| security reasons".
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not even sure we can extrapolate that the NSA is
| storing anything like every text message long-term (as
| opposed to metadata, or samples, or the full transcripts
| of individuals targeted for investigation, or a machine
| learning trained weights set to flag messages that
| indicate someone should go on the targeted-for-
| investigation list).
|
| 6 billion text messages are sent per day in the US.
| That's about the volume of Google web searches, and I
| know from experience Google doesn't have the capacity to
| log every search or the logs of evaluation of every
| search. If Google lacks the capacity, I suspect the NSA
| lacks the capacity.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Google absolutely does have the capacity to log every
| search query, and does - and I say this as someone who
| has worked with that dataset, if only for training
| purposes.
|
| 6 billion SMS messages, at a max length of 160
| characters, is 1 terrabyte of raw text. I think that the
| NSA has the cash to shell out $100 for a new 1TB hard
| drive every day... (not even including compression, of
| which it is highly, highly compressible)
| bombcar wrote:
| I could certainly see it being a regulated option for
| government officials.
|
| I already operate on the assumption that all text messages
| (like all emails) are scanned and stored somewhere to my
| detriment.
| the_doctah wrote:
| If I was murdered and it would help the investigation,
| absolutely.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That is a big (and vanishingly rare) if, to be balanced
| against the much wider spread harm.
| [deleted]
| uxp100 wrote:
| This happened a month ago. The case settled, afaik.
| Jacobinski wrote:
| How do these types of settlements usually work? Do the
| offending officials help pay for the settlement or are all the
| costs paid for using taxpayer money?
| degrees57 wrote:
| Yes, generally the taxpayer pays. I work for a County local
| government. When we lose a case, we have our litigation
| insurance pay. Then the insurance policy rate immediately
| goes up.
|
| Sometimes the government employee does something so agregious
| that we say "we cannot defend you: you are on your own" but
| that is really rare.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Typically the defendant is the City/ an agent of the City so
| the defendant (the City) pays.
|
| Cities get a lot of money through taxes so one could say that
| it's paid for by taxpayers although it wouldn't be completely
| accurate as they have other revenue sources (fines, Federal
| money, etc).
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| [dead]
| lesuorac wrote:
| It settled literally 2 days ago! That's pretty recent.
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17292181/hunters-capita...
| bell-cot wrote:
| It really feels as if "Never outgrew junior high school" was an
| unwritten requirement to be a municipal official in the U.S.
|
| Fond fantasy: Judges send such idiot officials to prison for ~50
| years. And that is repeated _so_ often that we start seeing
| occasional grown-ups in municipal offices.
| favaq wrote:
| Well, I don't know about the US, but here in the south of
| Europe the municipal government is nothing but a jobs programme
| for the lazy and the mentally deficient.
| ngc248 wrote:
| Its almost the same everywhere. 90/10 rule, 80% incompetent
| and 10% somewhat competent
| margorczynski wrote:
| Same here, I'm yet to meet someone with any sort of
| ambition that would want to work there. Usually the people
| working there either didn't find anything better or simply
| want a low-effort, stable job.
|
| Politicians the same - most of them could dream of making
| the kind of money they're making as higher govermental
| officials with their skills, most of them are slimy
| opportunists that simply want live off taxpayer money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It really feels as if "Never outgrew junior high school" was
| an unwritten requirement to be a municipal official in the U.S.
|
| That's because the people doing their job properly don't get
| noticed, except maybe by the people directly served (and most
| of them just take it for granted) while the ones like those
| under discussiom get covered in national news and discussion
| sites with a global audience.
| pc86 wrote:
| As someone who, in a previous life/career, routinely worked
| with municipal officials, I'd love to see many of them spend
| the rest of their lives in prison. As would many people who had
| to work with them day to day.
|
| But, if you think it's hard to get good people to do thankless
| work for $40k/yr _now_ , just try doing it when the last couple
| people in that chair are in prison for a few decades right now.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...good people to do thankless work for $40k/yr...
|
| True...though (at least in my part of the US) there seem to
| be plenty of junior-high-escapee municipal officials making
| vastly more than that.
|
| Another Fond Fantasy: People who get really nasty with
| bottom-tier civil servants, over decisions which are
| obviously made much further up the org chart, face mental
| competence hearings. If you're screaming anger at a part-time
| retail postal clerk, over stamp prices that are set by
| officials in Washington DC...maybe we need to X-ray you head,
| before it's too late.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Everyone wants higher quality public servants. Nobody wants
| to pay taxes.
| edgyquant wrote:
| We already pay taxes and not a small amount of them. More
| money isn't the solution here.
| ejb999 wrote:
| plenty of public employees get paid a ton of money - that
| hasn't gotten us any better people in those positions.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Depending on your education and role you could end up
| earning more in the private sector, but at least public
| sector gigs used to have strong protections until 2008.
| After 2008, an entire generation of public sector
| employees were laid off.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Market for lemons.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| It just depends on the job. Looks like many make
| substantially more than me, though I'm an "apprentice"
|
| https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/hundreds-of-
| seatt...
| alephnerd wrote:
| Every single one of those "high salary" jabs includes
| Insurance and Pension contributions and force overtime.
| That's the equivalent of saying an employee earning
| $90,000 is actually earning around $200,000 because of
| UI, Healthcare, and 401k plan spend by an employer.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| This article disagrees with you
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
| news/politics/374-seatt...
|
| "The median gross pay among SPD's more than 2,000
| employees last year was about $153,000, not including
| benefits, with 374 employees grossing at least $200,000
| and 77 making at least $250,000, according to a Times
| analysis"
| xnyan wrote:
| As far as I know, police are are the only government
| employees in the US with a strong union and lobbying
| effort. Salary can get relatively high, especially with
| overtime and side benefits of employment like
| moonlighting as private security.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Most public sector unions are quite strong (and I support
| that btw). My mom's union for special education teachers
| was able to negotiate an additional $15k out of the
| school district she works at, and same with some family
| friends of ours who are municipal workers (city
| accountants, sanitation workers, etc). And my own friends
| who work in the Federal Govt on the GSA pay scale have a
| strong union as well.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yep. The highest-paid officers also tend to be soon-to-
| retire officers. They get thrown a bunch of overtime by
| their bosses towards the end because their pension is
| based on their last x years of pay.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newyork-
| pension/public-wo...
|
| > For example, a police officer with a history of zero
| overtime worked more than 800 hours of overtime in his
| last years on the job, the Democratic gubernatorial
| candidate said in a report.
| [deleted]
| alephnerd wrote:
| From the article you linked:
|
| "The gross pay numbers cloak some details, because they
| combine regular and overtime pay; SPD uses overtime to
| staff emphasis patrols, sports events and other special
| events, such as parades and protests. It spent more than
| $34 million in overtime pay in 2019.
|
| Last year's gross numbers are also somewhat skewed,
| because members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild
| (SPOG) received lump-sum retroactive raises from
| 2015-2018, when they worked under an expired contract.
|
| The retroactive payments help explain why SPD's median
| gross pay rose from about $105,000 in 2017 and $104,000
| in 2018 to $153,000 in 2019, and why 20 employees
| leapfrogged Best in gross pay from 2017 to 2019."
|
| The $153k median is skewed due to - median backpay of
| around $35k for 3 years, so in reality median base pay is
| around $115k.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| I'm right there with you. The destruction of the public records
| themselves should be a jailable offense.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm right there with you. The destruction of the public
| records themselves should be a jailable offense.
|
| It is a felony with a punishment of imprisonment for up to 10
| years and/or fines of up to $5,000, but that is a separate
| issue from the civil suit. RCW 40.16.020
|
| https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=40.16.020
| zephrx1111 wrote:
| I'm from China. This reminds me the often seen CCP--ish
| operations.
|
| Surveillance cameras are everywhere on street. But if asked the
| footage to against themselves, the usual answers are cameras
| broken, storage broken, or even server is missing.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| [dead]
| tssva wrote:
| Buried near the bottom of the article is the fact that one of the
| main plaintiffs purposely deleted texts and was also sanctioned.
| cxf12 wrote:
| "The former mayor has offered a number of explanations for the
| missing messages, including that she dropped her phone in water,
| that she inadvertently changed the phone's deletion settings and
| that "someone" set a new phone to delete messages older than 30
| days, resulting in a rolling deletion of previous messages."
|
| Could the writers of this piece not come up with a more lurid and
| entertaining headline?
| layer8 wrote:
| That one bit seems unlikely though:
|
| > the former chief apparently deleted more than 27,000 of those
| text messages by hand.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Can you see what's been deleted by hand or not?
| lesuorac wrote:
| No. Part of the reasoning provided by the judge as to why
| the sanctions were limited was that the plantif's own
| efforts could not determine which of the deletions by the
| defendants were manual or automatic.
| [deleted]
| lesuorac wrote:
| That part isn't a great quote, The actual explanation is all of
| the above.
|
| The mayor dropped their phone in water and it stoped working
| and after they received a new phone it had the 30d retention
| setting set (and this all being city equipment, the mayor
| didn't set their own phone up). Also pretty much everybody in
| the case (defendent + plantif) had deleted some messages ...
|
| [1]: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17292181/166/hunters-
| ca...
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