tricksterloki t1_j9wju5b wrote
Reply to comment by fastornator in US says Google routinely destroyed evidence and lied about use of auto-delete by OutlandishnessOk2452
Google was notified in 2019 that they were about to be served and to begin preserving documents, including chats created after being notified. Discovery is still ongoing, which is how they found out chats were still being deleted after 24 hrs policy as recently as 2 weeks ago.
fastornator t1_j9x3230 wrote
I don't get it, should video conferences always be recorded and stored? For how long? should all meetings be recorded?
Why is it okay to pop down the hall and talk to your co-worker but you can't ask the same question over chat?
It seems like the government is basically asking Google to record all conversations between employees and keep them indefinitely which is quite a reach.
How about text messages between executives? How long should they be retained? What about when to executives are editing a google doc? Should the whole history of all the edits for every document be retained indefinitely?
tricksterloki t1_j9x5bjb wrote
Some laws define necessary record keeping for certain tasks, such as tax info. If you have been instructed to preserve documents of a given type for a given legal case, you preserve that until after discovery at the very least. You might want to preserve it longer for your own legal purposes in that case. People can also be interviewed or subpoenad. It's not about storing it indefinitely. It's about being legally instructed to store it, saying you are, and then not storing it. Google specifically said it suspended auto-deletion but didn't. Google lying is the important part.
daveime t1_j9xnvaj wrote
> If you have been instructed to preserve documents of a given type for a given legal case
However, in this case the "given type" was "everything". But totally not overreach.
fastornator t1_j9xq1dw wrote
I assume you mean a /s
WhatTheZuck420 t1_ja1f4x8 wrote
>like the government is basically asking Google to record all conversations between employees and keep them indefinitely
they record and store all conversations within mic-shot of my phone
rootbeerdan t1_j9x2ld5 wrote
>Google was notified
Actually, they weren't. The US is saying that Google should have expected it, but they never notified Google until much later.
tricksterloki t1_j9x3yod wrote
Google was notified. Google was told to preserve records and stop auto-deletion. Google said it did. Google kept auto-deletion running during discovery. If you want to play semantics instead of discussing Google's lying and destruction of evidence, then that's up to you.
From the article:
US: Google falsely claimed to suspend auto-deletion But the DOJ says Google repeatedly provided false information to the US about its chat-retention practices:
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required Google to suspend its auto-delete practices in mid-2019, when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation. Google did not. Instead, as described above, Google abdicated its burden to individual custodians to preserve potentiall>y relevant chats. Few, if any, document custodians did so. That is, few custodians, if any, manually changed, on a chat-by-chat basis, the history default from off to on. This means that for nearly four years, Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours.
All this time, Google falsely told the United States that Google had "put a legal hold in place" that "suspends auto-deletion." Indeed, during the United States' investigation and the discovery phase of this litigation, Google repeatedly misrepresented its document preservation policies, which conveyed the false impression that the company was preserving all custodial chats. Not only did Google unequivocally assert during the investigation that its legal hold suspended auto-deletion, but Google continually failed to disclose—both to the United States and to the Court—its 24-hour auto-deletion policy. Instead, at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications.
bony_doughnut t1_ja0hdr6 wrote
So, this might be splitting hairs, but nowhere in that quote does it say that the govt told Google that they had to turn off auto-delete, only that Google should have known (like the other guy said)
rootbeerdan t1_ja0kq39 wrote
>The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required Google to suspend its auto-delete practices in mid-2019, when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation.
This is exactly what I said and disproved what you said.
The US Gov is saying that Google should have expected it, but they never notified Google until much later.
There is no such thing as "reasonably anticipated this litigation" because nobody told them. This entire article is just taking the US gov at 100% fact when Google's side of the story is actually the more reasonable one. Every company on earth has auto deletion policies, although 24 hours is a bit short, it's not intentional destruction of evidence when they were never officially notified.
This is the government trying to shift blame to Google because they didn't want to tell them they were being investigated. This will get thrown out.
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