[HN Gopher] JP Morgan fined by SEC for deleting email records
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       JP Morgan fined by SEC for deleting email records
        
       Author : jjgreen
       Score  : 325 points
       Date   : 2023-06-26 10:31 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | YChacker100 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | lockhouse wrote:
       | What, like with a cloth?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | gunapologist99 wrote:
         | hahaha took a second.
         | 
         | (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaoNDzZ8Mw)
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | "accidentally"
       | 
       | Of course they did! /s
        
       | eddyzh wrote:
       | The accident is not the deleting but the not having sufficient
       | backups.
        
         | TheNewsIsHere wrote:
         | A lack of backups designed for "just such an occasion," of
         | course.
        
         | gizmo wrote:
         | Aggressively deleting all records the moment it's legally
         | allowed is the name of the game. Records are a real liability
         | for banks so the moment they can go they're gone.
         | 
         | Unless the fines become existential or the c-suite goes
         | straight to jail this won't change.
        
       | ranting-moth wrote:
       | IANAL but in many countries the judge might draw adverse
       | inference and effectively assume what was in that evidence.
       | 
       | That wouldn't be in the deleters interest.
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | > assume what was in that evidence
         | 
         | So, what you're saying is that if the actual evidence shows
         | something _worse_ than what the judge will assume it says, then
         | you should  'accidentally' delete it.
         | 
         | I think there are plenty of cases of this happening.
        
         | minorninth wrote:
         | I believe that can still happen. This was just a fine from the
         | SEC, the legal consequences could come later.
         | 
         | Basically a lot of that email was subject to litigation holds.
         | If that litigation ends up depending on some email that Chase
         | was supposed to retain but failed to, the judge is allowed to
         | give a "spoliation inference" instruction to the jury - the
         | jury can infer that the evidence would have been unfavorable to
         | Chase.
         | 
         | The fact that this may have been due to incompetence rather
         | than malice means this is less likely.
        
         | mikeryan wrote:
         | I can't tell from the article but JP Morgan may not be the
         | defendant or target of investigation, in which case adverse
         | interference won't apply.
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | The SEC is not in the justice business. It is a puppet of the
         | banks themselves. A $4M fine is NOTHING for a company netting
         | $12.62B a QUARTER.
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | The $4M is a slap on the wrist, but if there's evidence that
           | it was done on purpose, and the deleted data is evidence for
           | a bigger case, they'd be in much bigger trouble still.
           | 
           | But, innocent until proven guilty; if there's no indication
           | of any missing evidence, it'll stay at the failure to retain
           | data fine.
        
             | burkaman wrote:
             | > In at least twelve civil securities-related regulatory
             | investigations, eight of which were conducted by the
             | Commission staff, JPMorgan received subpoenas and document
             | requests for communications which could not be retrieved or
             | produced because they had been deleted permanently.
             | 
             | That is proof of missing evidence.
        
             | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
             | > Worse still, the stuffup meant that it couldn't produce
             | evidence that that the SEC and others subpoenaed in their
             | investigations. "In at least 12 civil securities-related
             | regulatory investigations, eight of which were conducted by
             | the Commission staff, JPMorgan received subpoenas and
             | document requests for communications which could not be
             | retrieved or produced because they had been deleted
             | permanently," the SEC says.
             | 
             | That would seem to be an indication of missing evidence
        
             | chaostheory wrote:
             | No one went to jail for the 2008 crisis, and most of the
             | regulatory bodies are private corporations masquerading as
             | a public entity. To add salt to the wound, the SEC is very
             | discerning as to when to enforce the law
             | 
             | It doesn't matter whether or not the above paragraph is
             | reality, because masses perceive it as reality, and trust
             | in public institutions continues to dive. If confidence
             | isn't restored soon, then things might start to destabilize
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > if there's evidence that it was done on purpose
             | 
             | Nobody (who isn't a moron) is going to send an email about
             | intentionally doing this, or talk about it with someone who
             | wouldn't also be implicated if discovered. If you saw
             | everything, kept careful notes, and decided to become a
             | whistleblower, your career would be destroyed and your life
             | might even be in danger.
        
             | gmd63 wrote:
             | I think corporations of "too big to fail" stature should
             | have different legal protections than what are offered to
             | humans.
             | 
             | Innocent until proven guilty is not quite fair to apply to
             | corporations that get bailed out by taxpayers when the
             | policemen are driving bicycles trying to enforce the speed
             | limit on a highway full of McLarens.
             | 
             | When a company has positioned itself to be a critical organ
             | of society, it should be required to function properly. The
             | rules of nature do not forgive a well meaning hare that
             | didn't intend to be eaten by a lion.
        
               | pnemonic wrote:
               | _The rules of nature do not forgive a well meaning hare
               | that didn 't intend to be eaten by a lion._
               | 
               | I love this. Consider yourself quoted.
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | Thank you for the kind words.
        
           | chollida1 wrote:
           | > It is a puppet of the banks themselves.
           | 
           | This is ofcourse false. But given how little effort you made
           | on this comment i assume nothing will change your mind:(
           | 
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/business/banks-fined-
           | text...
           | 
           | https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-174
           | 
           | https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-206
        
             | deelly wrote:
             | Fact that SEC sometimes fine some banks doesn't mean that
             | SEC completely safe from influence from big banks. As usual
             | its not a black and white picture.
        
             | idiot900 wrote:
             | Who works in the SEC? Former bank/finance employees. Where
             | will these employees go work if they decide to leave the
             | SEC?
        
               | meepmorp wrote:
               | What sort of work experience do you think the applicants
               | for the jobs at the SEC ought to have?
               | 
               | If you need people people with experience in banking and
               | finance, especially the legal and regulatory/compliance
               | areas, where would you do your recruiting?
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | Do you think that only experienced murderers should
               | adjudicate murder cases? Should all cops be expected to
               | have extensive criminal experience, and should we expect
               | them to return to crime after they retire from the
               | police?
        
               | chollida1 wrote:
               | What you wrote is so far away from a good faith argument
               | that it's pretty hard to see it as anything other than
               | low effort trolling.
        
               | salawat wrote:
               | They are actually making a very powerful point. A
               | regulator is expected to at some point operate from an
               | "external to industry" perspective. Much like a test
               | framework or testing harness must exist out_of_band of
               | the system under test.
               | 
               | A regulator that regularly pulls exclusively from
               | industry insiders _should_ raise eyebrows. Now whether
               | the SEC actually pulls the majority of hires from
               | industry insiders, that 's another question I can't
               | readily answer. Don't have those figures.
        
               | salawat wrote:
               | This. If anything, insider experience tends to dull
               | willingness to enforce because "it's how everyone does
               | it". As a regulator, the public in a real way depends on
               | you to be the lever that looks at how everyone does it,
               | and be willing to say "not good enough"
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _Who works in the SEC? Former bank /finance employees_
               | 
               | Source? There is a revolving door, but it's as much
               | between industry and the SEC as it is between it and the
               | rest of the public sector.
        
       | kris_lujanovic wrote:
       | As someone who worked in finance I call b.s.
       | 
       | When you need to do any infrastructure change not to mention data
       | manipulation it takes million signatures and meetings. Like 13
       | meetings to deal with one ex employee corporate cloud folder.
       | 
       | Unless they end up in court. Then somehow million things happen
       | on their own in their benefit.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | justrealist wrote:
         | Yes it takes a million meetings, but at the end of the day it's
         | just one IT guy making the change.
         | 
         | It's exponentially expensive to eliminate the base-rate of a
         | "whoops", and not everyone has NASA-level money to waste on IT.
        
           | Libcat99 wrote:
           | JP Morgan does, though.
           | 
           | They likely spend all of it on the million meetings full of
           | people who wouldn't actually be executing the change, next to
           | none of it on the team and infrastructure where the change
           | will be made, and then fire the team who made the change.
        
           | toth wrote:
           | Maybe not everyone, but if JPM doesn't then who does?
        
         | hdidvdksv wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
         | gmd63 wrote:
         | JP Morgan and other similarly acting agents in finance have
         | become literal economic cancer tumors, attracting undue
         | angiogenesis and convincing the body that excision is fatal all
         | while leading it to its demise.
         | 
         | We haven't figured out how to cure cancer in humans because we
         | turn a blind eye to it when we create it ourselves.
        
         | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
         | Also backups.
         | 
         | This is just corporate "The IT dept ate my homework."
         | 
         | It's a ridiculous excuse, "punished" with a trivial fine.
        
           | lwkl wrote:
           | Backing up the email database is probably a bad idea for an
           | org like this, because they have data that isn't allowed to
           | be backed up.
           | 
           | I had a customer that got accidentally sent confidential data
           | to the wrong email address and it was backed up for multiple
           | months. In the end we left it in there but they considered
           | deleting all the backups that contained this email.
           | 
           | That is a good reason for having short lived backups and an
           | archiving solution with retention policies emails.
        
         | Cpoll wrote:
         | As someone who has done support for finance's IT departments,
         | the "this was broken for years and no-one noticed" idea sounds
         | bang-on. I've watched the millions of signatures and meetings,
         | but none of that matters when someone screws up the
         | implementation (but not badly enough that anyone cares to
         | complain).
        
           | rossjudson wrote:
           | So many people want to be "the person who orders the thing be
           | done" and not "the person who does the thing".
           | 
           | Dysfunctional organizations have (somebody-else-is-doing-it /
           | im-doing-it) ratios that get way out of control. There's also
           | (talking-about-doing-it / doing-it), where dysfunctional orgs
           | lose the ability to experiment.
        
           | cirgue wrote:
           | Seconding this. You can have all the meetings you want, but
           | at the end of the day the core competency of bank management
           | is managing money and not managing IT, and banks suck at
           | managing IT when it isn't directly in the critical path of
           | cash flow, and even then they get it wrong more often than
           | anyone wants to admit.
        
           | agentgumshoe wrote:
           | That was part of a legal case or publicly reported failure?
        
       | A_Venom_Roll wrote:
       | Reminds me of the Dutch government who "accidentally" deleted
       | confidential documents that were related to the formation of a
       | new government. The process is under investigation, and the
       | documents containing transcripts of conversations could be used
       | as evidence against some political figures. This is even more
       | remarkable, since government bodies are typically very sloppy if
       | it comes to document retention.
        
       | nostrfanboi wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | cosmiccatnap wrote:
       | Can we stop using accident to describe the haphazard and often
       | disingenuous policies of multi billion $ international
       | corporations as though they are freshman writing a merge sort or
       | something. It's not an accident when a company does it... it's a
       | crime
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | wonderingyogi wrote:
       | $4 million feels like chump change. I'd imagine JP Morgan
       | globally earns that amount in less than an hour.
        
         | ilyt wrote:
         | 177 B in 2022 so ~484 mil/day, 20 mil/hour.
         | 
         | So like the amount of money they earn on coffee break
        
       | timcavel wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | hospitalJail wrote:
       | Anyone know what the US law says about stuff like this?
       | 
       | Even if it was a genuine mistake, if anything legal came up, does
       | a court need to accept that the evidence is gone and that the
       | data was probably guilt-free? (getting some obstruction of
       | justice vibes that I had in the US in 2019.......)
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | I believe them
        
         | tsukikage wrote:
         | This, but unironically.
         | 
         | When a law requires data to be retained for X time, risk-averse
         | companies interpret this as an instruction to immediately
         | delete said data as soon as time X passes, and use automated
         | tools to this end. Sadly, these tools tend to be ad-hoc
         | software written and maintained by internal teams, and thus
         | about as buggy as you'd expect.
         | 
         | I've worked in such places, and - in addition to all the other
         | issues - the continuous collective loss of corporate knowledge
         | makes life pretty miserable.
        
           | EGreg wrote:
           | I also meant it unironically, btw. My intuition said the same
           | thing
        
           | blitzar wrote:
           | I consider retaining documents beyond X time to be
           | incompetence at best, negligence at worst.
           | 
           | Tech and their, deleted means we keep it forever but mark it
           | as deleted, should take notice.
        
           | duckmysick wrote:
           | Are there off-the-shelf solutions for legally mandated data
           | retention and deletion? If not, who are the typical go-to
           | players in this area?
        
             | subpar wrote:
             | We're in the early days of building this over at
             | phaselab.co. We've been taking more of a data privacy
             | angle, but the product helps folks operationalize all of
             | their data lifecycle / governance tasks. There are some
             | existing players who work with email/comms, but for
             | internal technical systems & user data most orgs are
             | rolling their own deletion pipelines.
        
           | vxNsr wrote:
           | Additionally it looks like they farmed out the project to a
           | third party that was working with FINRA to ensure compliance,
           | apparently that consulting agency failed at their task
           | miserably.
        
             | djbusby wrote:
             | Task failed successfully.
        
           | nashashmi wrote:
           | big companies like JPM just don't have the secret networks of
           | bad actors at an administrative level to carry out nefarious
           | activities like this without someone blowing the whistle.
        
             | ilyt wrote:
             | Or the data was in just in a directory of some guy that
             | then got shared to everyone else in the project, instead of
             | using per-project share.
             | 
             | Then he removed it and everyone else had it gone because of
             | that.
        
         | TheNewsIsHere wrote:
         | I've been insinuating otherwise playfully in this thread.
         | 
         | But, it is unfortunately absolutely realistic that companies
         | are throwing away data the moment they can justify it.
         | Ironically, it's not the ones we'd like to forget about us
         | most.
         | 
         | Data retention is a liability as much as it is an asset, and
         | it's challenging regardless.
         | 
         | If you're a large enough company you will eventually come to be
         | frustrated by whatever policies you have (either they're too
         | conservative or too liberal). And understandably when you've
         | been caught being shady enough, even an honest deletion will
         | look shady.
        
       | ProllyInfamous wrote:
       | Didn't we just have a hedge fund's physical records warehouse
       | burn down, too, under such similar accident(s)?
        
         | rekoil wrote:
         | Yes, supposedly a shelf fell and knocked the fire-suppression
         | system out. I forget if that was the cause of the fire or
         | simply the excuse for why the fire-suppression system didn't
         | put the fire out and save the documents.
         | 
         | It was TD Ameritrade documents mostly it seems, but it was
         | located close to a Citadel-owned building as well.
        
           | RobotToaster wrote:
           | Wow, what a "coincidence".
        
       | FreshStart wrote:
       | Anonymous cynically comically infamously deletions they happen.
       | And here I was expect yet another database definition, but got a
       | debased definition.
        
       | celtoid wrote:
       | It's hard to tell what's worse: a predatory juggernaut like JPM
       | or the useless regulators that they've captured.
       | 
       | "72 Hours Before JPMorgan Offered $290 Million to Make Epstein
       | Claims Go Away, a Lawyer Disclosed that the Bank Had Withheld
       | 1500 Documents" [0]
       | 
       | [0] https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/06/72-hours-before-
       | jpmor...
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Must be some juicy things on that pile if they were to choose to
       | accidentally delete just at particular chunk
        
       | zackmorris wrote:
       | So UBI, unions and social safety nets are bad because they
       | encourage people to be lazy and become dependent on handouts? But
       | a company can lose millions of potentially legally damaging
       | emails and pay a paltry fine that's a rounding error of its
       | profits.
       | 
       | I wonder when democracy will arrive in America. Where people
       | overpower concentrated wealth through overwhelming majority the
       | way we did when we broke from England. Collectively voting to
       | break up monopolies, tax the wealthy and imprison the corrupt.
       | 
       | I'm seeing ads on TV now for Vanguard and BlackRock, the
       | companies perhaps most responsible for sending rents into the
       | stratosphere and killing the dream of home ownership for millions
       | of people. The American Dream.
        
       | phoe-krk wrote:
       | "Accidentally".
        
       | wunderland wrote:
       | Everyone makes mistakes, it's ok. Just try not to delete evidence
       | next time.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | Meanwhile, the government seems to have accidentally deleted
         | its records of your tax payments for the past 12 years.
         | 
         | I'm sure you understand how that can happen.
         | 
         | Pay up.
        
       | scythe wrote:
       | >The vendor had apparently assured both JP Morgan and the
       | Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on multiple
       | occasions that its media storage complied with the relevant
       | Exchange Act rules regarding the 36 month retention period, and
       | therefore documents falling within that period were protected
       | from deletion.
       | 
       | If this vendor screwed up this badly, why can't we know their
       | name?
        
       | dickersnoodle wrote:
       | "Accidentally". Right.
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | Bonus points for having archival practices that make shooting
         | onself in the foot extra easy.
        
         | strangescript wrote:
         | "Oopsie Daisy"
        
       | littlestymaar wrote:
       | > Worse still, the stuffup meant that it couldn't produce
       | evidence that that the SEC and others subpoenaed in their
       | investigations
       | 
       | Oopsie, that's too bad. Totally accidental though I swear.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | If an individual does that, they get held in contempt.
         | 
         | But with a corporation all they can do is fine, so it just
         | becomes a cost of business :(
        
           | WJW wrote:
           | Getting held in contempt of court is usually punished with a
           | fine for individuals as well, so how is that different?
        
             | wkat4242 wrote:
             | In the US? Here in Europeyou're usually locked up for a
             | long until you admit wrongdoing or fix it.
        
             | r13a wrote:
             | The difference is that if you were to be held in contempt
             | of court, your fine would probably be higher than something
             | like 0.01% of your annual earnings.
        
               | andsoitis wrote:
               | >The difference is that if you were to be held in
               | contempt of court, your fine would probably be higher
               | than something like 0.01% of your annual earnings.
               | 
               | Fines are not based ad hoc on how much you're able to
               | pay. They're standard and the enforcer can't make you pay
               | more - that would be terrible.
        
               | littlestymaar wrote:
               | > Fines are not based ad hoc on how much you're able to
               | pay. They're standard and the enforcer can't make you pay
               | more - that would be terrible.
               | 
               | In socialist dictatorship like... _check notes_ ...
               | Finland and Switzerland, they are. Those countries are
               | indeed notorious for being terrible places to live... /s
               | 
               | (Well, I'm sure the multi-millionaires getting a EUR120k
               | speeding tickets hated it:
               | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-
               | busine...)
               | 
               | > Can you imagine a low wage earning getting away with
               | stuff because they can't pay?
               | 
               | But somehow this is OK if that's rich people getting away
               | with it...
               | 
               | (Sarcasm aside, nobody prevents the legislator to ad a
               | floor to the fine, to avoid this exact issues, and
               | unsurprisingly that's what the aforementioned countries
               | do)
        
               | mandmandam wrote:
               | > that would be terrible.
               | 
               | Lots of countries run fines exactly this way, and it's
               | not terrible at all... Finland, Sweden, Germany,
               | Switzerland, Denmark etc.
               | 
               | Kinda seems like you feel the concept of equality is
               | unfair. Lol.
        
             | lmm wrote:
             | Getting thrown in jail for contempt of court is pretty
             | routine for individuals.
        
       | SillyUsername wrote:
       | $4 million is a day's trading I guess? Got away lightly by the
       | sounds of it.
        
       | boffinAudio wrote:
       | Maybe Americans should be asking for the NSA's support in
       | protecting the rights and freedoms of their country, and give
       | Congress the backup they _definitely_ made of all of JP Morgans
       | data ..
       | 
       | EDIT: its amazing - not a _mention_ of the fact that JPMorgan is
       | under investigation for its relationship with Epstein ..
        
         | NickC25 wrote:
         | For sure. This is bad faith 101 from JPMC, and I don't really
         | think they'll care if they get a slap on the wrist. 4 million
         | dollar fine IIRC. The government's agencies that have this data
         | should release it to the American public as a public service.
         | 
         | JMPC is no longer under investigation for Epstein - they paid a
         | fine and that's that, sadly. Mr. Dimon doesn't want to testify
         | again, because there's a high chance the Feds knew he was lying
         | when he claimed in his first testimony that he had never heard
         | of the guy and then claimed that he had no idea what Epstein
         | was doing. Which if you follow the people involved, you know
         | was a bold-faced lie. Yet JMPC will walk away unbothered,
         | because they are untouchable.
        
           | cornercasechase wrote:
           | > JMPC is no longer under investigation for Epstein.
           | 
           | Yes they are, JPMC is still being sued by the Virgin Islands
           | government. They have a settlement that still needs to be
           | approved with the victims.
        
             | NickC25 wrote:
             | Ah, you're right about that. I thought the 200-million odd
             | settlement announced a few weeks back was the same thing.
             | It's not.
             | 
             | Hope the USVI gets all they are asking for and then some.
             | The way Dimon testified it's so obvious he knew what was up
             | - I mean, he worked with Jes Staley for nearly a decade,
             | and promoted him to the head of JPMC's investment bank.
             | There's no way in hell a guy in such a position who has a
             | personal client transacting billions of dollars with former
             | and current heads of state (including multiple former or
             | future US Presidents), Fortune 50 CEOs, famous academics
             | and also was convicted of sex trafficking in 2006 can hide
             | that all from his boss. I don't believe that for a second.
        
       | can16358p wrote:
       | "Accidentally".
        
       | agilob wrote:
       | Opsie daisy, I dropped the database! Oh no. Anyway.
        
       | say_it_as_it_is wrote:
       | How many noncompetitive contracts does JP Morgan get to provide
       | government-related services? Is there a watchdog group following
       | the money?
        
       | wonderwonder wrote:
       | Wonder if the Epstein emails were also "accidentally" deleted?
       | 
       | Edit - For those downvoting me:
       | https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/new-documents-reveal...
        
       | itiswhatitis9 wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | d0gsg0w00f wrote:
       | I work for a large bank and can confirm that I can only see the
       | last 6 months of emails.
       | 
       | I assume this archiving rule just got applied too liberally.
       | However, I doubt that will assuage the conspiracy theorists.
        
         | Kneecaps07 wrote:
         | Everyone thinks it's malicious. I'm more likely to believe it
         | was a poorly-trained IT person who thought they were in the
         | test environment, or something along those lines.
        
         | gameofcode wrote:
         | The archiving could have moved it onto another platform that
         | you don't have visibility of.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ranting-moth wrote:
       | Happened to me twice every week on average last year. I hate when
       | it happens.
        
         | orangepanda wrote:
         | I automated my accident
        
           | napsterbr wrote:
           | That's called devops!
        
             | DonHopkins wrote:
             | devoops
        
               | ilyt wrote:
               | Continuos Disaster
        
               | systems_glitch wrote:
               | Seriously underrated comment chain here.
        
       | thret wrote:
       | A $4 million fine? That's so much cheaper than the cost of
       | archiving!
        
         | crawsome wrote:
         | The price of doing | business | as usual.
        
         | DrBazza wrote:
         | It would be ironic if amongst the messages deleted was "Is $4m
         | less than what we'd be fined for that other thing we did?"
        
           | DrBazza wrote:
           | This attitude is actually common place in the industry. Can
           | we make more profit than the fine for market abuse?
        
             | KMnO4 wrote:
             | Reminds me of the infamous Fight Club scene
             | 
             | > _Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by
             | the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average
             | out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If
             | X is less than the cost of a recall, we don 't do one._
        
               | salawat wrote:
               | ...That's actually textbook business/enterprise risk
               | management calculation believe it or not. Not a facsimile
               | or artistic exaggeration.
               | 
               | If you want to know why so much shady crap happens, part
               | and parcel of that is when we fo catch malicious
               | behavior, the fines are so small as to be cost of doing
               | business.
        
         | oxfordmale wrote:
         | It is probably cheaper than the original fine if they had kept
         | the evidence.
        
         | fkarg wrote:
         | that's probably true actually
        
       | pamhalpert wrote:
       | ouch!
        
       | ssss11 wrote:
       | Whoops my bad. Oh well.
        
       | hhh wrote:
       | I've made this kind of accident before. Within my first 6 months
       | there was a massive internal investigation of someone entering
       | the building without authorization, as they had made their own
       | keycard.
       | 
       | I had been asked to analyze a machine's event log to see what
       | happened, and on a Teams meeting with a dozen people proceeded to
       | right click the event log and mistakenly hit clear, unconsciously
       | accepting the dialogue box.
       | 
       | That was embarrassing, but I was direct about it.
       | 
       | I always just pull the plug and image the disk since.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | > right click the event log and mistakenly hit clear
         | 
         | Had you immediately pulled the plug on the machine at that
         | point, you would almost certainly have been able to recover the
         | event log. Sure, it would have been many days effort, but
         | probably better than failing to get evidence of a suspected
         | evil do-er.
        
         | eviks wrote:
         | Out of curiosity, were you also the one who made the keycard?
        
           | MengerSponge wrote:
           | Whoopsie I'm such a klutz ;P
           | 
           | Look, I didn't mean to do the espionage thingy, especially in
           | public -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
           | francisofascii wrote:
           | Ha, this comment reminds me of the Robert Hanssen, the
           | infamous FBI spy. At one point he was put in charge of the
           | internal effort to find "the spy".
        
       | aziaziazi wrote:
       | This double as a great PR communication toward any businesses
       | that want their data be secured. _Secured_ as in << out of legal
       | reach >>
        
         | dghughes wrote:
         | Similar to that my provincial Conservative government and other
         | Conservative governments in the region don't write down or type
         | any meeting minutes. No notes nothing to give FOI requests.
         | Dirty tricks!
        
           | aziaziazi wrote:
           | Such inspirational, any other institutions shall learn from
           | that! Let's teach that technique in business and
           | administration schools.
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | I prefer to just store the data in /dev/null - so much cheaper
         | than using a business to do it for you.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | daneel_w wrote:
       | It's likelier that they ran the numbers of such an "accident" and
       | concluded that notwithstanding new fines and more paperwork it
       | will end up being the cheaper alternative. They are after all
       | bankers.
        
       | BLanen wrote:
       | > to a project where the company aimed to delete from its systems
       | any older communications and documents that were no longer
       | required to be retained.
       | 
       | Literally no reason to do this but for this precise goal.
        
         | billythemaniam wrote:
         | Storage costs are an excellent reason as someone else said.
         | Another reason is security, less data sitting around to be
         | leaked, either accidentally or purposely, the better. Another
         | reason is privacy, less data sitting around that can be used
         | against you.
        
         | kobalsky wrote:
         | you don't owe the information you are not required to keep IF
         | you have deleted it.
         | 
         | if you still have it and delete it after you were asked to
         | provide it, it will land you in jail.
         | 
         | this is IRS audit 101. I guess they have their own similar
         | reasons.
        
         | escapedmoose wrote:
         | I was the records retention lead for a bank for a few years.
         | Deletion projects are also conducted to reduce storage costs,
         | but yes, ensuring that you're not retaining unnecessary
         | information that you could be subpoenaed on is a large factor
         | as well.
        
       | Johnny555 wrote:
       | When I worked for an investment bank (over 2 decades ago), we
       | wrote emails to a WORM storage device (I think from EMC) so it
       | was literally impossible to accidentally delete emails without
       | physically destroying the device (which was backed up to tape and
       | replicated to an identical device on the other coast). We
       | retrieved sample emails quarterly to prove the device was
       | working.
        
       | boredumb wrote:
       | This happened because JPMorgan is under investigation for its
       | relationship with Jeffrey Epstein the person who invited wealthy
       | scientists, politicians and businessmen to come to an island
       | where he also raped kids.
       | 
       | It doesn't matter, anyone that even mentions it will eventually
       | be relegated to the "her emails" camp and disregarded. Can never
       | tell if i'm just getting older and taking more notice or the
       | blatant corruption we seem to shrug off is actually growing
       | (probably the prior).
        
       | lo_fye wrote:
       | LOL @ "accidentally".
        
       | spaceman_2020 wrote:
       | Why does it feel like general financial law and order has
       | completely collapsed in the last few years, and that you can get
       | away with pretty much anything with no real punishment?
        
       | BiteCode_dev wrote:
       | Doesn't really matter if this is a mistake or corruption.
       | 
       | When you pretend you have the legitimacy to run something as big
       | as JP Morgan then you should not be allowed to screw up that
       | much.
       | 
       | You earn that much money, you should demonstrate equal level of
       | competency.
       | 
       | They should get jail time either way.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | Indeed. Not only are these slaps on the wrist accounted for in
         | initial estimations of the cost of doing business, but then
         | they're just written off and ironically inconsequential. There
         | needs to be real consequences.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | throwawaaarrgh wrote:
       | All enterprises have shitty IT. If you want this not to happen
       | again, don't fine them, add a regulation. Regulations are
       | literally the only thing that makes enterprises confirm that
       | they've done something correctly. Only when an exec VP has their
       | bonus or freedom threatened do they take shit seriously.
        
         | boston_clone wrote:
         | There are already regulations for data retention during
         | attorney-related incidents.
         | 
         | > Only when an exec VP has their bonus or freedom threatened do
         | they take shit seriously.
         | 
         | Isn't this a fine, and not a regulation?
        
       | sensanaty wrote:
       | If it weren't so depressing it'd be incredibly hilarious how
       | blatant and open the corruption here is, as if anyone on planet
       | earth is gonna buy this BS story.
       | 
       | The fines for these types of _accidents_ should be starting with
       | the letter B and ending with illions, lets see how often these
       | types of _mistakes_ happen in the future afterwards.
        
         | FollowingTheDao wrote:
         | I say the penalty should start with J and end with ail.
        
         | latency-guy2 wrote:
         | Do establish in what way these fines are at all reasonable or
         | appropriate. I don't think you know to what level this data
         | loss is if you're being this reactionary.
        
           | sensanaty wrote:
           | > reasonable or appropriate
           | 
           | That's the point, they shouldn't be "reasonable" nor
           | "appropriate" for an entity as large and with as many
           | resources as JPM. Surely with the 300k employees they have
           | and the literal infinite well of money they have, there's a
           | few competent individuals working there to prevent these sort
           | of "mistakes" from happening, and if not then they should
           | either find some competent people, or cease to exist.
           | 
           | What's reasonable about charging them 4 million? It's not
           | even a drop in the bucket, it's a singular molecule of water
           | getting inserted into the bucket if we're talking about JPM.
        
           | agentgumshoe wrote:
           | In a regulated industry, the regulator would absolutely issue
           | fines and threats of license if gross incompetence led to
           | them not upholding their regulatory duties... Well in some
           | ideal world that would happen, but ha, not likely.
           | 
           | Instead they'll just have to have some 'extra' meetings with
           | the regulator and report on their remediations later.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | No need to fine them, if this stuff is needed in a lawsuit just
         | let the other side make adverse inferences by default whenever
         | the data could have been deleted.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Fines? You mean detention.
        
           | subsequentmask wrote:
           | Taking away many billions from billionaires is worse for them
           | than detention.
        
             | hinata08 wrote:
             | no, it's just a cost to do business. They still have
             | billions after you charged them billions.
             | 
             | And charging companies with fines is ridiculous IMO. There
             | are always humans who made decisions ultimately. And
             | charging companies (not them) is just a "get out of jail
             | and enjoy Hawaii" card for them.
             | 
             | After they cheated, they probably had the promotions,
             | money, golden parachutes, and left the company after
             | bleeding it out and hurting it anyway. So why would you
             | charge the company a second time ? Why not them ?
        
               | GolfPopper wrote:
               | Because a key element of the American corporate/justice
               | system is to avoid negative consequences for individuals
               | with wealth and connections, so long as they "follow the
               | rules" when harming the public for private profit?
        
             | DonHopkins wrote:
             | Why not both?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | aziaziazi wrote:
           | Can't you _pay_ to get out of detention in the US?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jprete wrote:
             | Do you mean bail? The only thing bail does is get the
             | defendant out of jail until the trial, and the only
             | (Constitutional) reason to jail someone before trial is to
             | make sure they show up.
             | 
             | E.g. Elizabeth Holmes got out on bail, but just recently
             | went in to serve her sentence.
        
               | aziaziazi wrote:
               | Indeed I meant bail. I always thought you can avoid jail
               | that way in that country and very pleased you taught me
               | I'm wrong, this seems a more fair system.
               | 
               | Not thankful for the downvoters although they probably
               | thought I was cynical or something... but hey better have
               | knowledge than points.
        
               | Floegipoky wrote:
               | > the only (Constitutional) reason to jail someone before
               | trial is to make sure they show up
               | 
               | Well cynicism is definitely called for wrt bail, because
               | it's regularly used for a very different purpose. It's
               | normal for people accused of crimes to have to wait over
               | a year for their trial in this country, and the courts
               | often intentionally set bail so high that the accused
               | can't possibly afford it. They are forced to choose
               | between sitting in jail that whole time while their life
               | evaporates, or they can plea guilty to a crime they may
               | or may not have committed; the actual punishment is often
               | less severe than being found innocent at trial. The
               | prosecution can repeatedly push back the trial to keep
               | the pressure on. Since healthcare access is almost always
               | tied to employment, people plead guilty to crimes they
               | didn't commit every day in this country so that their
               | kids don't lose their access to healthcare. Just the sort
               | of systemic, everyday corruption that we're supposed to
               | pretend can't happen here.
        
         | giantg2 wrote:
         | I find the story or incorrect archive settings/setup to be
         | reasonably plausible and even likely. I work in finance and
         | misconfiguration of systems are not that uncommon. Testing and
         | reviewing archive settings is often not very thorough.
         | 
         | For example, I was working on a system that handles holdings
         | and trading information at the fund level which covers AUM that
         | starts with a T and ends in rillions. There was an SQL
         | injection vulnerability with schema owner access. Luckily this
         | was an internal app, but still there are trade desk devs who
         | could accidentally paste a drop table statement with a name
         | collison. Anyways, I brought all this up to the principal. I
         | was told this isn't a real big deal because they have real-time
         | backups. I asked if they ever tested the backups... no. Do they
         | have procedures for restoring from backups... no. They go nuts
         | if there's a 5 minute outage, so how long would it take to
         | restore... no idea.
         | 
         | Trust me ignorance is _very_ believable, even in regulated
         | industries.
        
           | kindatrue wrote:
           | >I asked if they ever tested the backups... no.
           | 
           | THIS.
           | 
           | I briefly worked for a major European bank. There was a
           | system that was backed up on tape. The way they checked the
           | backups was to visually look at the tape spool - before
           | sending the tapes off to a mountain to be preserved.
           | 
           | One day, they needed something from a back up. Sure enough,
           | the tapes were simply blank due a bug in the back up script.
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | "The way they checked the backups was to visually look at
             | the tape spool"
             | 
             | Lol
        
           | 36479669thrw wrote:
           | > I find the story or incorrect archive settings/setup to be
           | reasonably plausible and even likely. I work in finance and
           | misconfiguration of systems are not that uncommon. Testing
           | and reviewing archive settings is often not very thorough.
           | 
           | GP's point stands: they should be fined to a degree that it
           | becomes clear to management that these "not uncommon"
           | practices must become very uncommon.
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | I'm not saying they shouldn't. But it's a leap to attribute
             | to malice what is easily explained by ignorance.
        
             | gmd63 wrote:
             | 100%
             | 
             | Allowing "smart" individuals to play dumb to benefit
             | themselves is not smart at all at a societal level.
             | 
             | Strategists at these companies examine the costs of failure
             | or cheating, and simply see that it's worth it to cut
             | corners or pile on risk. Just look at JP Morgans history in
             | getting fined for market manipulation.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _they should be fined to a degree that it becomes clear
             | to management that these "not uncommon" practices must
             | become very uncommon_
             | 
             | Why? Fining isn't done for fetish, it's done proportional
             | to harm.
             | 
             | The article mentions twelve civil suits (four independent).
             | JPMorgan will lose those. Any lawyer worth their salt,
             | meanwhile, will be looking for claims which could
             | reasonably involve the evidence which was deleted to file.
             | In this way, the people actually harmed get compensated
             | versus a government agency, which mitigates corruption
             | concerns.
        
               | 36479669thrw wrote:
               | Don't get stuck on the word "fine'. The fines cans be
               | judgment at court. The cost of doing business this way
               | must go up, way up, so that these critical institutions
               | are legally transparent* and motivated by a strong desire
               | to avoid drastic haircuts.
               | 
               | *for example, no more "the dog ate our homework" excuses.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _Don 't get stuck on the word "fine'. The fines cans be
               | judgment at court._
               | 
               | All fines are subject to court supervision. This sentence
               | makes no sense.
               | 
               | > _cost of doing business this way must go up, way up_
               | 
               | We want regulators thinking of the public, not randomly
               | increasing the cost of business. This seems more
               | motivated by hatred for a thriving industry than claims
               | to specific damages. Regulators who pursue this path are
               | rightfully overturned by courts for acting capriciously.
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | Regulators are not thinking of the public when they allow
               | corporate sociopaths to neglect societal best interest
               | while market fixing / mismanaging records / etc.,
               | activities that have demonstrably siphoned wealth from
               | the lower class and moved it increasingly to the ivory
               | towers of companies that do not deserve the influence
               | that makes them "too big to fail".
               | 
               | The wealth inequality gap is widening and it's due to
               | pussyfooted enforcement on white collar crime and
               | strategic negligence.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _wealth inequality gap is widening_
               | 
               | You can't fine a business just to reduce inequality. Any
               | jurisdiction that starts ruling that way fails basic
               | definitions for rule of law. (This is in part what ruined
               | Argentina.)
               | 
               | Also, in what universe would larger fines for banks
               | decrease income inequality? The history of enforcement is
               | capricious penalties increase incentives for cover-ups.
               | If a record retention mistake means personal bankruptcy,
               | you have zero incentive to correct mistakes. In practice,
               | this leads to corruption among regulators, who are now
               | the _de facto_ commanders of private business.
               | 
               | > _due to pussyfooted enforcement on white collar crime_
               | 
               | Where is the crime here? The SEC investigated and found
               | no wilful wrongdoing. Those twelve private plaintiffs are
               | going to win judgements, as will everyone else who brings
               | claims which could reasonably by covered by the missing
               | records.
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | The crime was identified, which is why JP Morgan was
               | fined. Once a corporate entity is operating at a
               | sufficient scale, it does not matter if the people inside
               | willingly mess up. The organization is required to be run
               | properly. The problem is that slaps on the wrist for
               | failure do not suffice as environmental stressors for
               | corporate evolution.
               | 
               | As for what we can do, the possibilities are endless. We
               | shape society however we like, and that is the highest
               | form of art humans engage in.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _crime was identified, which is why JP Morgan was
               | fined_
               | 
               | The SEC is a civil agency. No crimes.
               | 
               | > _organization is required to be run properly_
               | 
               | It's that easy? Just require good organization and you'll
               | get it by diktat? This entire thread seems to require a
               | reading of Argentinian and modern Egyptian and Russian
               | economic history.
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | Evidently you don't get well run organizations by simply
               | having legislation, which is my point. We do not enforce
               | that legislation appropriately.
               | 
               | I'm confused by your point regarding the SEC, how are
               | they allowed to fine a company without legal basis? If my
               | use of the word "crime" means something different to you,
               | I mean "crime" as anything that breaks the law.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _you don 't get well run organizations by simply having
               | legislation, which is my point_
               | 
               | Nobody argued as much.
               | 
               | > _I mean "crime" as anything that breaks the law_
               | 
               | This isn't what "crime" means. Painting your house the
               | wrong colour may be against code, but it isn't a crime.
               | Legally, the difference is starker, as nobody was shown
               | to have done anything wrong here beyond the benefit of
               | doubt.
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | > _Just require good organization and you'll get it by
               | diktat?_
               | 
               | This is what I was responding to. You seemed to be
               | insinuating that I didn't understand that laws or rules
               | are not sufficient deterrents.
               | 
               | > _nobody was shown to have done anything wrong here
               | beyond the benefit of doubt_
               | 
               | I'm still confused as to how the SEC was able to fine
               | someone for not committing any wrongdoing, exact
               | definition of the word "crime" which I have clarified I
               | used to mean "general rule breaking" aside.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | Deleting records that are legally required to be retained
               | is not "no wrongdoing".
        
               | gmd63 wrote:
               | I agree. From my point of view there is definite
               | wrongdoing, and it is not adequately punished. I'm trying
               | to understand the other commentor's point of view as to
               | how the bank was fined if there was no alleged
               | wrongdoing. They had earlier asked "Where is the crime
               | here?"
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > I'm confused by your point regarding the SEC, how are
               | they allowed to fine a company without legal basis?
               | 
               | There is a legal basis: retention requirements of the
               | Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
               | 
               | From the SEC order: "As a result of the conduct described
               | above, JPMorgan willfully violated Section 17(a) of the
               | Exchange Act and Rule 17a-4(b)(4) thereunder, which
               | require brokerdealers to preserve for at least three
               | years originals of all communications received and copies
               | of all communications sent relating to its business as
               | such."
        
               | ouid wrote:
               | [dead]
        
         | andsoitis wrote:
         | Do you really think JP Morgan, which has about 300,000
         | employees, has a secret network of corrupt actors at an
         | administrative level to carry out something like this on
         | purpose without someone blowing the whistle?
         | 
         | I think this is more likely: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-
         | release/2021-262
        
           | mulletbum wrote:
           | As someone who does this work, I agree. This sounds like a IT
           | Operations messed something up on its way to the people who
           | do the lawyer work. Never had it happen to us, but I could
           | see me handing something off to others in the Operations Org
           | and having accidents happen.
        
             | agentgumshoe wrote:
             | This sounds like something that would occur in an industry
             | _not_ heavily regulated. That 's not JPM.
        
               | alephnerd wrote:
               | Regulation =/= Implementation Capability
               | 
               | The implementers and auditors themselves get bogged down
               | by red tape and/or the game of telephone between various
               | departments, leading to information and Acceptance
               | Criterias falling between the cracks.
        
             | chucksta wrote:
             | Have a hard time believing you. Do you work in a area
             | requiring compliance for PCI or Sarbox? This should never
             | "just happen" with any competent team.
        
           | drowsspa wrote:
           | How relevant are the 300,000 employees? Do they all had
           | access to this information?
        
             | andsoitis wrote:
             | The scale of record keeping in a place like JP Morgan is
             | enormous. Just payments transactions are about $10 trillion
             | a day. Unless documents are ring fenced from the start and
             | not many systems and people have access to it, it is highly
             | unlikely that someone is able to destroy it in all the
             | right places without anybody noticing.
             | 
             | If you read the link in my previous comment, you'll see
             | this isn't the first time they got fined for bad record
             | keeping practices. In that instance, $125m.
        
               | 411111111111111 wrote:
               | On the one hand you're saying it can't be done without
               | some whistleblower turning up, on the other hand you
               | think that its possible to happen accidentally.
               | 
               | It's kinda either/or. It's either possible that someone
               | can get full admin privileges and deletes it off-the-
               | record or they've got enough safeguards in place that the
               | accidental deletion isn't possible either.
        
               | andsoitis wrote:
               | It seems very reasonable that 47 million messages were
               | deleted from 8,700 mail boxes by accident, but it seems
               | like a stretch of the imagination to say this resulted in
               | the intentional deletion of the EXACT evidence that they
               | were being subpoenaed for, without forgetting to delete
               | SOME of the evidence.
        
               | ImPostingOnHN wrote:
               | nobody is claiming intentional deletion of the EXACT
               | records being subpoenaed and only those records, and the
               | article makes clear that isn't what happened
               | 
               | the thing we're discussing is deleting A LOT of records
               | which INCLUDE the ones being subpoenaed, which is
               | obviously easily possible, intentionally or otherwise
               | 
               | so, no stretch of the imagination required
        
               | 411111111111111 wrote:
               | What? according to the article, all emails were deleted
               | in that given timeframe with the excuse "they thought it
               | would be impossible to delete records that were still
               | required to be kept by regulation"
               | 
               | I don't think your argument works unless the article is
               | wrong.
        
           | NBJack wrote:
           | Yes.
        
           | agentgumshoe wrote:
           | Yes
        
           | alexfromapex wrote:
           | There doesn't have to be a "network". This probably reached
           | the highest executive levels and a few of them discussed it
           | and said let's accidentally delete this and take the fine.
           | You're incredibly naive if you think this wasn't intentional.
        
             | andsoitis wrote:
             | > highest executive levels and a few of them discussed it
             | and said let's accidentally delete this
             | 
             | So you think a _few_ C-level execs went to 8,700 mail boxes
             | and deleted 47 million messages to remove the EXACT
             | evidence that was being subpoenaed?
        
               | jokowueu wrote:
               | Here Is something You Should add to your Vocabulary
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Presumably they would have gone to some low-level tech
               | and told him something to the effect of "We are looking
               | for a new team lead, you might be a good fit. Completely
               | unrelated: how difficult would it be for emails from the
               | last couple years to be 'accidentally' deleted as part of
               | routine operations".
               | 
               | I'm not saying that's what happened, I find the sequence
               | of events described by JP Morgan believable. But the same
               | process issues that allowed this to happen accidentally
               | would allow it to happen maliciously.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _they would have gone to some low-level tech and told
               | him something to the effect of "We are looking for a new
               | team lead_
               | 
               | Part of the SEC's process is peppering these people with
               | pamphlets explaining how their testifying this happened
               | is a $10+ million whistleblower payday.
        
               | jerf wrote:
               | Your mental model is broken in that you seem to think the
               | techs have independent models of what is and is not legal
               | and will "legal fact check" the executives. In specific
               | cases this may occur, but in general, if legal comes to a
               | tech and says "we need to delete this", the tech will
               | delete this. If you want to mess the tech around, you
               | don't fire a guy and promote someone else and hire a
               | private investigator to get blackmail on the database
               | operator and hire the mafia to rough up the guy holding
               | the backup tapes to make sure they get the message. You
               | just tell the tech staff that legal says this has to
               | happen. The tech staff does all sorts of things because
               | legal tells them to, totally routine thing. This would
               | not have stood out at all.
               | 
               | I mean, I live this personally. When legal tells me to
               | delete or retain something, I don't go get a law degree,
               | and then insist that they let me have all the details to
               | come to my own independent opinion about whether or not
               | we need to delete or retain something. That is every bit
               | as nonfunctional as when I tell them that the task
               | they're asking for will take three weeks and they go get
               | a programming degree and then come over and learn the
               | exact environment we are working in so they can verify
               | that we are telling them the correct estimate.
        
               | Supermancho wrote:
               | > Presumably they would have gone to some low-level tech
               | and told him something to the effect of "We are looking
               | for a new team lead, you might be a good fit.
               | 
               | Not a chance. NOTHING gets done at JPMorgan without a
               | mountain-load of direction and a grip of meetings. This
               | would have had to wipe out both the data and records of
               | that direction. Because the layers of tape are so thick
               | you can't travel floor to floor without an access card
               | coding and used to log your time and that even these
               | simple systems don't work all the time (which generates
               | even more busy work, yay), it's a form of friction
               | against any sort of "secret" dealings within the company.
               | If your keycard/dev env/database access/wiki edits/etc
               | are so chaotically managed, it's unlikely that you will
               | leave 0 evidence behind. Note that there was enough
               | information to reconstruct what happened, to some degree.
               | 
               | I would bet someone didn't communicate the arcane symbol
               | column that meant "do not delete for legal reasons", in
               | some SQL. It's that chaotic, which reinforces the
               | paranoia about the legal consequences that are foisted on
               | every employee, routinely. If you have a shoplifting
               | conviction (a record that hasn't been purged), you aren't
               | getting hired. Viewed from the inside, it's strangely
               | dystopian, but far from subtle.
        
               | lozenge wrote:
               | "JPMorgan hit with $200 million in fines for letting
               | employees use WhatsApp to evade regulators' reach between
               | 2018 and 2020"
               | 
               | How did the bureaucracy let this happen if it's as big
               | and bureaucratic as you claim? And there's other examples
               | too.
        
               | jon-wood wrote:
               | I just don't buy it. Even a C-level has limits, whatever
               | was being investigated currently just has the possibility
               | of some big fines and maybe losing their job. As soon as
               | they start colluding to destroy evidence that turns into
               | jail time.
        
             | crhulls wrote:
             | I run a very small public company, and can say from first
             | hand experience it would be extremely difficult to do
             | something like this let alone do it and not get caught.
             | 
             | All emails and code changes are up for discovery and I
             | don't work with individual contributors directly so I'm not
             | even sure how I would be able to give an instruction like
             | this without many people wondering what was up.
             | 
             | In the early days sure, I could go ask X person to access
             | things directly but after a couple hundred people it
             | doesn't work that way. Think about an org of hundreds of
             | thousands with the most strict compliance rules in
             | existence.
             | 
             | And doing something willful here would be jail time so why
             | would someone already wealthy risk this? Even in a corrupt
             | system people balance risk reward. A fine for the bank,
             | fine, but life ruined forever stretches credulity given the
             | limited upside.
        
           | mandmandam wrote:
           | 100% yes. [0], [1], [2], [3], [4], etc.
           | 
           | 0 - https://unlimitedhangout.com/2023/04/investigative-
           | series/cr...
           | 
           | 1 - https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/breaking-attorney-
           | general-t...
           | 
           | 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35959865
           | 
           | 3 - https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8260-20
           | 
           | 4 - https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/22/3-count-felon-
           | jpmorg...
        
             | andsoitis wrote:
             | > https://unlimitedhangout.com/2023/04/investigative-
             | series/cr...
             | 
             | Now _there 's_ a reliable source!
        
               | goodbyesf wrote:
               | You want "reliable sources"? Many of which were formed by
               | bankers themselves?
               | 
               | The problem is that most "reliable sources" aren't very
               | reliable on the important topics - war, money, culture,
               | etc.
        
               | mandmandam wrote:
               | Well, since the number of mainstream outlets
               | investigating Epstein's links to the mega-wealthy with
               | appropriate depth is precisely _zero_ , we need to adjust
               | our standards a bit.
               | 
               | If you can point out anything specific in there that's
               | provably wrong, I'd genuinely love to hear it.
        
               | andsoitis wrote:
               | > If you can point out anything specific in there that's
               | provably wrong, I'd genuinely love to hear it.
               | 
               | While there are many statements one can confirm, such as
               | "took up boxing", they are surrounding nuggets like this:
               | "After being selected by a mix of powerful businessmen,
               | many of whom shared connections to intelligence and/or
               | organized crime", a statement which is so vague as to be
               | highly suspicious.
               | 
               | And don't even get me started on the author feeling the
               | need to point out that all these organized crime and
               | banking folks are Jewish - what's the relevance? Only to
               | double down on stereotypes - the other people in the
               | story aren't called out for their ancestry or religion...
        
               | mandmandam wrote:
               | In the entire, very long article, there are only _three_
               | references to Jewishness - twice saying that people had
               | Jewish immigrant parents, and once in reference to the
               | makeup of a particular mob which also references their
               | Italian members, putting the lie to your claim that other
               | ethnic backgrounds are not mentioned.
               | 
               | Making things out to be anti-semitic when they're not,
               | such as happened to Corbyn, is a popular smear tactic.
               | It's pretty disgusting though, and many Jewish people
               | have pointed out that it's a very harmful and anti-
               | semitic thing to do.
        
               | nebula8804 wrote:
               | >Making things out to be anti-semitic when they're not,
               | such as happened to Corbyn, is a popular smear tactic.
               | It's pretty disgusting though, and many Jewish people
               | have pointed out that it's a very harmful and anti-
               | semitic thing to do.
               | 
               | That ship has long sailed in the US. I don't see this
               | behavior stopping in earnest until the greater populace
               | stops giving any credibility to the claims due to
               | repetitional damage. In fact right now they have become
               | emboldened after the 2020 elections. Meanwhile there is a
               | real rise in anti-semitism that is likely occurring among
               | the far-right.
               | 
               | Change is starting to happen online in that every single
               | thread i've been seeing on Reddit/HN that calls out
               | Israel also tends to completely swat away the anti-
               | Semitic claims thrown out when any criticism of Israel
               | typically occurs. Whether this translates into real world
               | changes remains to be seen but we are starting to see it
               | in the voting patterns of Millennials and Gen-Z(them
               | supporting comments made by "the Squad" and electing more
               | reps that don't shy away). It very will likely be a
               | generational shift as Israel continues to damage its
               | reputation in the US due to its tactics.
        
               | roflyear wrote:
               | Why mention it at all?
        
               | JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
               | She specified their ethnicities and countries of origin
               | to describe their relation to the "SuperMob," which was
               | apparently "composed mainly of Jewish and Italian
               | mobsters and businessmen who rose to power thanks to the
               | corruption within the city of Chicago before expanding to
               | other areas of the country, particularly the West Coast."
               | 
               | By only denouncing this _Dangerous Anti-Semitism_ and
               | ignoring the equally deplorable Anti-Italianism, you 've
               | outed yourself as an Anti-Italian Romanophobe whose
               | opinions may be summarily dismissed. Checkmate.
        
               | roflyear wrote:
               | You realize that isn't how it works, right? It shouldn't
               | be OK to make wild claims without evidence that need to
               | be backed up. It's the other way: you need good evidence
               | to back up wild claims.
        
           | marginalia_nu wrote:
           | I'm not even sure there needs to be a secret network of
           | corrupt actors. Investment banking is rotten to the core, has
           | been for decades.
           | 
           | https://archive.is/z6Uer
        
         | ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
         | First of all: your current society has no chance at a future,
         | AI overlords, mogul trillionaires, climate change and so on
         | being the least currently concerning of your issues.
         | 
         | Nevertheless, one counter-intuitive policy which would end
         | corporate control [1] (hence will never be implemented, again,
         | no future for you) is supra-unitary taxation: effectively, tax
         | rates above 100%, ensuring that the corporation has by default
         | a lifetime (like a person they wish to be). Once the forever-
         | in-debt corporation gets past a certain level of debt, it gets
         | liquidated. Of course, corporations affected by this would have
         | a certain scale (above $10 trillion, let's say) and a certain
         | domain of activity (embedded AI, synthetic biology, nuclear
         | fusion, asteroid mining, and similar).
         | 
         | [1] 2023, Claire Provost, Matt Kennard, _Silent Coup. How
         | Corporations Overthrew Democracy_ , Bloomsbury Academic,
         | https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/silent-coup-9781350270008
        
         | hinata08 wrote:
         | Why fines ?
         | 
         | Fines for this type of accident should be the permanent removal
         | of the banking license.
         | 
         | What kind of company can you trust if evidence can be deleted
         | "by accident" ?
        
           | yehosef wrote:
           | Governments do not just "remove the banking license" of JP
           | Morgan.
        
             | Ialdaboth wrote:
             | Yes, this is precisely the problem.
        
             | hinata08 wrote:
             | Shame
             | 
             | I have never just deleted millions of emails and pieces of
             | evidence in a listed company, especially one that falls
             | under the SOX act (it implies some governance.)
             | 
             | Did they have the IT governance or not ?
        
             | zx8080 wrote:
             | Does this sometimes lead to "we are immortals, can do
             | whatever we want"?
             | 
             | Actually not whatever. But apparently some borders are
             | quite thin.
        
           | meesles wrote:
           | JP Morgan is the very definition of 'too big to fail'. Any
           | actions against them to that degree would be self-sabotaging
           | by any country. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but that's
           | the reality right now.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _JP Morgan is the very definition of 'too big to fail'_
             | 
             | If the government revoked the license for a local lawn care
             | company on the basis of a records retention mistake, I'm
             | fairly sure they'd have a case for reversal in the courts.
             | I get we're technically minded, and so technical mistakes
             | rank up with mortal sins, but let's keep a sense of
             | perspective.
        
               | JoshuaEN wrote:
               | JP Morgan is not a local lawn care service, they have the
               | funds to not make mistakes like this. Larger companies
               | should be held to a higher standard because their actions
               | have a wider impact.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _Larger companies should be held to a higher standard
               | because their actions have a wider impact_
               | 
               | Sure. My point is this has nothing to do with too big to
               | fail.
               | 
               | Also, what is the impact of these records being deleted?
               | If you have a claim that reasonably involves them, it is
               | basically cashable due to the error. If nobody can show
               | damages, it's hard to argue this mistake had a wide
               | impact.
        
             | hinata08 wrote:
             | Why ?
             | 
             | There aren't any bank to take on their market ?
             | 
             | Individuals and companies won't stop having accounts or
             | buying home or investmenting in equipment because 1 bank
             | 'gracefully' shuts down. Another one will take on.
             | 
             | But risking a crash like Lehman Brothers, Wirecard (a
             | journalist nearly got charged with market manipulation in
             | Germany for covering what really happened in this firm),
             | FTX,... is the real self sabotaging for a country.
             | 
             | "Too big to jail" is not a service for the common good.
             | It's just protecting friends.
             | 
             | We need real investigations into how this bank is run, and
             | how others are run as well. If this was genuinely just an
             | IT incident, that's fine. But it raises questions
             | obviously.
        
             | prirun wrote:
             | That's easily corrected: split them up. Chase and JP Morgan
             | should have never been allowed to merge in the first place.
        
               | 0xCMP wrote:
               | why would anyone choose to do that? did you not notice
               | the smaller banks failing lately and everyone assuming
               | chase would buy them?
               | 
               | part of their strength is their size.
        
           | grugagag wrote:
           | Proportionl fines that dent seriously into their profits
           | ensures this does not happen again. But usually the fines end
           | up being slaps on wrists which ensures continuity of these
           | schemes
        
       | wongarsu wrote:
       | So the story is basically:
       | 
       | 1. data that has to be retained for legal reasons can't be
       | deleted by normal deletion processes
       | 
       | 2. data that should be deleted didn't delete properly
       | 
       | 3. to fix (2) they manually ran delete requests for times up to
       | about the current date (back in 2018), relying on (1) to protect
       | data
       | 
       | 4. turns out somebody forgot to configure (1) for emails send to
       | domains belonging to Chase (at that point the merger was 18 years
       | ago)
       | 
       | 5. It took 1.5 years for anyone to notice.
       | 
       | To me it seems like number 5 is the biggest problem here.
       | Mistakes happen, but had they noticed in time they likely would
       | have had those messages in backups (if they don't, that's a much
       | bigger problem). But they probably don't retain the backups for
       | long, for the same reasons they delete old emails in the first
       | place (legal discovery)
        
         | nashashmi wrote:
         | How many other lawsuits does this also affect?
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | There were "at least 12 civil securities-related regulatory
           | investigations, eight of which were conducted by the
           | Commission staff" [1]. No doubt, more will be filed.
           | 
           | [1] _Fourth paragraph_
        
             | jbverschoor wrote:
             | How... "inconvenient"
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _How... "inconvenient"_
               | 
               | For JPMorgan, sure. That missing evidence gets
               | interpreted adversely against JPMorgan, which means those
               | cases are basically won. The question is how many more
               | will arise in the coming months, perhaps years, that find
               | reasonable claim to damages arising out of evidence the
               | defendant has conceded it can't bring to its defense.
        
         | jncfhnb wrote:
         | I'm not convinced companies actually keep these records so much
         | as they retain access to inbox and outbox data And call that
         | good enough. I think in many environments if you delete an
         | email from your outbox it would become largely irrecoverable.
         | 
         | I'm curious if any IT folks can comment on what they have seen?
         | Do you actually have log records of all messages? Or do you
         | have something like a snapshot of all accounts at a given time?
        
           | technion wrote:
           | Office 365 offers message retention - our standard
           | configuration will see it set with a seven year period. So
           | you can delete from the outfox, and it goes to deleted items.
           | If you delete from there it disappears from view, but any
           | admin exporting your mailbox will include it for seven years.
        
           | aksss wrote:
           | In a "normal" operation (when things go smoothly and are well
           | designed) yes, the objects are retained, even if deleted in
           | primary mailboxes, explicitly for the accommodation of
           | discovery requests and litigation holds. The rules can get
           | more or less complex - negotiations on deals with TCV over a
           | certain threshold have keywords and parties whose relevant
           | emails are retained beyond normal policy, certain job classes
           | have data retention extended beyond normal policy, keywords
           | can trigger longer retention, information classification
           | (either manual or automated) can extend retention periods.
           | Software solutions have for many years streamlined the work
           | necessary to pull this off compared to what it would have
           | taken in an Exchange server farm 20 years ago.
           | 
           | Anyway, all these business rules are (should be) documented
           | in formal policies on data retention, litigation hold,
           | privacy, etc. If a company were going through a working
           | annual audit process for Sox or increasingly even routine
           | annual financial audits (non-sox), policies would be examined
           | for evidence that they are working with spot checks - e.g.
           | auditor selects examples of qualifying events and asks for
           | evidence that the given policy is in fact enabled/enforced
           | technically. This may test retention as well as intention
           | deletion (e.g. we should deliberately have _no_ data beyond
           | five years unless an exceptional circumstance warrants it).
        
         | barbariangrunge wrote:
         | It seems like laws about how data gets handled are pretty much
         | not real laws, due to there being almost no enforcement. So,
         | most companies handle their data in a fairly careless way
         | 
         | It might be illogical for companies to invest more into their
         | IT infrastructure if there isn't a good reason to do so. I
         | mean, even massive customer data leaks go basically unpunished,
         | so how do you justify the mitigation expenses at the board
         | meeting when shareholders are already mad about the lack of
         | growth last quarter?
        
           | johndhi wrote:
           | This would make for an interesting law review article
        
           | kccqzy wrote:
           | > due to there being almost no enforcement
           | 
           | It turns out investigation and enforcement is
           | disproportionately doled out to large corporations. Companies
           | like Alphabet and Meta have multiple teams to make sure they
           | are handling data correctly and yet there could still be
           | things that fall through the cracks.
           | 
           | This regulatory attention on large companies is advantageous
           | to startups though; until a startup gets big nobody really
           | cares about its data handling compliance.
        
       | tikk wrote:
       | anyone gonna use AI to "do something about" top-level management
       | of the SEC being an accessory to various crimes, or about
       | corruption, money laundering and all that jazz? haven't read
       | about a single startup, now that I think about it ...
        
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