> None of this is particularly surprising

I am not a vengeful type. But people need to be punished to a shocking degree until this is fixed. It should be surprising. And it should have terrible, if not horrific, consequences.

I suspect Google will be made an example of, which surprisingly is usually the case.

I suspect nothing major will happen because as is typically the case, the judge deciding this is way way too deep into "sunk cost" territory.

You can already see that in his previous findings: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23731433-23-03-28-go...

"The court has already declined to issue terminating sanctions against Google"

"the Court would like to see the state of the evidence at the end of fact discovery"

You can see the dilemma in that last statement. There is practically no discovery malpractice large enough to ever have a judge blow up a case, which is why it happens over and over again.

It happens. The Feds changed the rules of civil procedure back in 2006-2008 to eliminate most excuses to produce information.

Prior to that, you could go the court and say your Exchange backup restorations would be difficult or impractical to do at reasonable cost and try to get the other party to pay or share cost. Now, the judge would laugh at you if you responded that way.

Google culturally has a small company mindset about this stuff, plus they are really rich so they can buy their way out of trouble. Now that HN people are talking about these issues, you can be sure some attorney or regulator will find a way to screw the company over good, as things like this are dumb.

At least in the past they were spending a few pennies for lobbying to various legislators on both sides of the isle. With a bit of luck and they’d be calling in some favors.

They might be punished but it may be a slap on the wrist.

Google, as a company, can easily afford any kind of sanction they may face on this.

It was individuals at the company engaging in blatantly illegal activity. I can guarantee they will face no consequences whatsoever over this. Unless for some reason there was some peon class employee involved in it, in which case s/he will be made the scapegoat.

who in particular would you punish? All this behavior is required by company policy, presumably set by Google's legal department: "Google employees are instructed that chatting “‘off the record’” is “[b]etter than sending . . . email” specifically because Google destroys off-the-record Chats every 24 hours, whereas it retains emails to produce in litigation".

The judge can tell the jury in a jury scenario to make an adverse inference; ie assume that whatever “bad” thing in question was said in the missing communications.

This is an area where individual conduct doesn’t matter until it does. Irritating judges is a risky affair.

The people under a litigation hold? This is not some implicit thing; there is very explicit notification.

All of the parties involved need to be sanctioned. The employees following the bad instruction and the lawyers issuing the instruction. Violating a court order at the instruction of your employer's lawyer doesn't give you a free pass. Remember: they are the company's lawyer, not the employees'. But, the lawyers definitely need to be hit and hard. Not sure if disbarring is an option here, but should be on the tablem

>>Violating a court order at the instruction of your employer's lawyer doesn't give you a free pass.

What was the specific court order? I see it generally referenced in the brief but don't know the whole story. Were employees violating it here?

The people in question are the people who create the policy.

On a tangential but somewhat intertwined note:

Australia has recently had multiple data breaches across a number of large groups that saw decades of user data copied .. that should have been PURGED.

Some of it arguably should never have been retained - proof of identity data, addresses, passport numbers, etc.

Obviously this isn't the same as internal emails, chat histories, etc but I'm hoping we here in Australia see a solid swing away from data retention "just in case", "because we can".

The default setting on all such things and software really needs to be nothing is saved unless specifically and knowingly set to be saved (for a solid recorded reason) and then for only the minimum neccesary duration.

If you have a policy or procedure, what you’re suggesting is ok in most companies.

There’s no law that says that you need to keep security camera footage for any length of time. If your practice to to retain for 7 days, and you get a subpoena to provide it 10 days later, no problem. But if you are directed to retain footage from February 30th, or have a reasonable foreknowledge that you should keep the footage, you’re in trouble.

The answers vary by company. If you sue or investigate people all of the time, you want to keep everything forever. If you get sued frequently, you want to get rid of the data as soon as practical. If you consciously don’t create records for matters that aren’t confidential, people are probably going to infer something.

Footage from February 30th would be pretty hard to find no matter what your retention policy is.

> If you consciously don’t create records for matters that aren’t confidential, people are probably going to infer something.

I'm suggesting that software companies that provide products and companies that use them adopt a default position of NOT creating records | histories | customer interactions and only engage record keeping by an explicit action that has a time limit and is logged with a reason for retention.

I have no issue with legally required | meeting minute keeping | security footage for a month | etc | records.

If that becomes the norm then people would no longer why (for example) worker to worker chat conversations "across the bench" aren't being kept for 50 years (or even longer than a month | current project duration).

Mechanics working on a car have no need to be recorded in perpetuity (although its handy to retain footage for XX weeks in case of an accusation of theft from a vehicle) just as shop floor software workers have no need to be recorded "forever".

The product in a mechanics shop is labor and parts. These get tracked via inventory.

In knowledge work, the knowledge is the commodity. If you keep nothing beyond formal deliverables, you best have a system to capture the knowledge.

Most organizations are very bad at that. It requires a lot of rules, policies and people to enforce those policies. Google for a government retention schedule. It’s probably a 100 page document for a state or large city.

Customer private data and internal employee communications are totally different things. What you’re saying applies only to the former.

Is there an actual need to warehouse internal employee communications (all employees, not just the execs) for ever?

In the event of a data breach can an excess of silo'd communications prove harmful and lead to regret that it was ever kept?

I think worse they were under injunction to retain all communications. They were essentially destroying discoverable material. AFAIK the result is in the court the court can assume the material was damaging to their case and treat it with prejudice.

>It's incredibly dumb to explicitly discuss avoiding leading a paper trail with respect to subjects where litigation is imminent or already in progress.

I'd say it's incredibly dumb to do that on a platform that can record the interaction.

I never understood why folks use platforms like slack/email/etc. to discuss stuff they don't want others to know about.

The ideal for that, of course, is to have in-person conversations in a place either known to be free of surveillance and/or difficult to surveil.

Failing that, assuming you trust the other party (which, in a case like the one we're discussing, you'd think would be the case), an unrecorded telephone call (yes, you can actually still do that) will work in a pinch.

I don't know how many times (many, though), I've met with someone in person or spoken via telephone about stuff that might be less than flattering (for me, at least, nothing illegal/unethical -- usually more about discussing my or the other party's activities/behavior that might reflect poorly on either of us or the organization) to avoid any record of such conversation.

I'm not suggesting that people should organize/discuss unethical/illegal things on any platform (in person included). Rather, I am surprised that folks have and continue to do so on recorded (or even potentially recordable) media.

Especially someone as obviously (how else could he have come to head GOOG) smart and savvy as Pichai.

It's not like this is something new, is it?

Edit: Removed extraneous text.

> The ideal for that, of course, is to have in-person conversations in a place either known to be free of surveillance and/or difficult to surveil.

Now I’m imagining tech executives having meetings in the bathroom with all the faucets going full blast whispering like the mafia dons of old.

>Now I’m imagining tech executives having meetings in the bathroom with all the faucets going full blast whispering like the mafia dons of old.

I suppose. Although, I'd think it'd be more like out in the parking lot, in a car or an exec's private office.

But I do have to say your vision is definitely an amusing one. But I'd have a flunky or two handy to flush the toilets every minute or so too. :)

Why doesn't Google have a sauna? Or a beach house? Seems like a win win.