[HN Gopher] How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of conc...
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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment
Author : tysone
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-11-20 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| lupire wrote:
| Is this different from retention policy at any other business
| with competent lawyers?
| infamia wrote:
| Yes, these are terrible policies, which has gotten Google in
| hot water during litigation. Overusing Attorney-Client
| Privilege is a good way to get it neutered/curtailed during a
| trial. Moreover, the company has an affirmative duty to
| preserve data. Leaving it up to individual employees to retain
| data risks adverse inferences about the lost data, sanctions,
| default rulings, and worse depending on the circumstances.
|
| > It encouraged employees to put "attorney-client privileged"
| on documents and to always add a Google lawyer to the list of
| recipients, even if no legal questions were involved and the
| lawyer never responded.
|
| > Companies anticipating litigation are required to preserve
| documents. But Google exempted instant messaging from automatic
| legal holds. If workers were involved in a lawsuit, it was up
| to them to turn their chat history on. From the evidence in the
| trials, few did.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's possible with digital tech, always on mics, and remote work
| that absolutely every communication within a company could be
| recorded forever.
|
| Would humanity be better off? Or are people stupider when they
| are thinking out loud in front of recording devices?
|
| How much do the lawyers deserve to know?
| bananapub wrote:
| you don't need to wonder, go and read up on the madness that is
| Bridgewater Associates
| josefritzishere wrote:
| wtf https://www.businessinsider.com/bridgewater-associates-
| manag...
| calmbonsai wrote:
| As much as I think Dalio's "principles" are a "good thing"
| for personal practices they don't scale to groups--let
| alone a corporation.
|
| All of these "radical transparency" and "radical honesty"
| practices are just justifications for being lackadaisical
| about the nuances of human relations.
| xnx wrote:
| > every communication within a company could be recorded
| forever.
|
| Within 15 years we will probably wear a necklace or other
| device that will record [at least the audio] of our entire
| lives. This will have a number of positive benefits (memory
| augmentation, etc.) but also as train data for AI.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Did you read The Circle? I definitely won't wear any such
| devices.
| Syonyk wrote:
| No.
|
| Some people will. Others will refuse, and very likely refuse
| to interact with people with such devices. The "gargoyles" of
| Snow Crash (people living their lives with full recording
| devices on them at all times to upload to the metaverse) were
| not well liked.
|
| And lest we forget more recent history, the term "Glassholes"
| came into existence to refer similarly to people with "I
| don't know if their camera/mic on their face is recording me
| or not!" devices on their heads.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > How much do the lawyers deserve to know?
|
| Nothing IMO. They can look at the company's actions. There's no
| need to invade the privacy of individual employees.
|
| If they were trying to confiscate my personal mobile that I use
| for work I will never go along with that.
|
| Luckily I live in Europe where the atmosphere is far less
| litigious.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > If they were trying to confiscate my personal mobile that I
| use for work
|
| That is a good reason never to use your personal mobile for
| work! If you really need a phone to do your job, your
| employer should be paying for it anyway.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| People look at me like I have two heads when I tell them
| that my work devices are for work things and personal
| devices are for personal things.
|
| There are very rare exceptions to this rule.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Luckily I live in Europe where the atmosphere is far less
| litigious.
|
| Not if your name is Google Inc.
|
| > Nothing IMO. They can look at the company's actions.
| There's no need to invade the privacy of individual
| employees.
|
| This refers to employees communicating in a work setting not
| personal communications.
| pydry wrote:
| Better to just have a website for anonymous tip offs where you
| can download a private key and collect a fat reward if it ends
| up being used for a prosecution.
|
| Or we could do the opposite and have corporate whistleblowers
| like the boeing ones mysteriously die off while everyone just
| makes jokes about it.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| https://archive.ph/T8UOD
| tqi wrote:
| These policies are in place because companies have learned that
| journalists will happily take any comment, from any employee,
| from any context, and make it Crucial Evidence(TM) of
| impropriety...
| bargainbot3k wrote:
| Milquetoast and corporatist shill take. People should be
| snooping and questioning no matter how outlandish the
| accusations. Courts are there to decide what matters.
|
| As Eric Schmidt once remarked to us, if companies have
| something they don't want journalists to know maybe they
| shouldn't do it in the first place.
| cadamsau wrote:
| Seems like there's an opportunity to build an AI B2B SaaS that
| flags companies' sketchy comms to be scrubbed.
|
| No surprises here frankly; for a public company, sticking to
| "don't be evil" conflicts with fiduciary duty, and only the
| latter is law.
| more_corn wrote:
| Google 100% provided advice for concealment specifically targeted
| at future litigation. Gchat logs were specifically reduced
| company-wide explicitly to avoid court discovery.
|
| I personally saw the advice to cc a lawyer with a legal question
| in order to bring a conversation under attorney client privilege.
|
| The penalty they're facing in now way accounts for the money they
| saved by concealing evidence, which basically means "keep doing
| it, it works!"
| changoplatanero wrote:
| It's illegal to destroy evidence of a crime but it's not
| illegal to avoid creating evidence in the first place
| especially if you genuinely believe that you're not doing
| anything wrong. Generally speaking, companies are not obligated
| to preserve every chat forever just in case they get sued later
| on.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| >Gchat logs were specifically reduced company-wide explicitly
| to avoid court discovery
|
| While heavily pushing Gchat to corporate customers.
|
| At least you can't accuse them of getting high on their own
| supply.
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