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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

(www.nytimes.com)
154 points tysone | 14 comments | 20 Nov 24 11:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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getpost ◴[20 Nov 24 23:05 UTC] No.42199072[source]▶
If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable.

I don't wish to facilitate corporate crime, and it's obvious that some of Google's anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment.

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lancesells ◴[20 Nov 24 23:23 UTC] No.42199195[source]▶
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

> There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication.

Wow. This is the opposite of how I feel. Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business. The things that have come out in court show how they manipulated their customers (advertisers). Regardless of how you feel about advertising a portion of those companies are small mom and pop shops trying to get by. If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.

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1. davorak ◴[20 Nov 24 23:44 UTC] No.42199371[source]▶
> If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.

That does not match my second hand accounts of how the law and lawyers work at this level, at least in the USA. Lawyers, at least in part because it is there job, will scrutinize every communication for anything that has the slight chance to be interrupted in their cases favor regardless if that interpretation is truthful.

The system of law in the USA is adversarial, the Lawyer's job is to present the case in the best possible light not to find and present the truth. So if something taken out of context plays well for their case it will be used. That could include decades old communications that no one remembers happening on a tangental topic.

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2. philwelch ◴[20 Nov 24 23:54 UTC] No.42199459[source]▶
As Cardinal Richelieu famously said, “if you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
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3. lxgr ◴[20 Nov 24 23:55 UTC] No.42199462[source]▶
Much more than that, the legal system is just engaging in empire building here: Everything that is potentially relevant is subject to discovery, which increases billable hours…

And I assume approximately nobody in the legal sector has any interest in reducing these.

The collateral damage of the incentive structure created by this dynamic must be vast. Deleting everything by default as a (reasonable, at a micro-level!) leads to immense institutional knowledge loss.

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4. davorak ◴[21 Nov 24 00:01 UTC] No.42199509[source]▶
> The collateral damage of the incentive structure created by this dynamic must be vast. Deleting everything by default as a (reasonable, at a micro-level!) leads to immense institutional knowledge loss.

Agree wholeheartedly, would be great if would could step off this path, but I have not heard of any efforts in that direction or groups that champion it.

5. lesuorac ◴[21 Nov 24 00:01 UTC] No.42199513[source]▶
But you won't be able to _only_ use 6 lines from honest men. Their lawyer will produce the other ~300 lines of context.
6. gerash ◴[21 Nov 24 01:36 UTC] No.42200151[source]▶
Exactly, the legal system's job is not necessarily finding the truth. It's who can convince the judge/jury better even if they use nasty tactics.
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7. seanmcdirmid ◴[21 Nov 24 02:49 UTC] No.42200594[source]▶
Won't LLMs make this really easy?

"Hey ChatGPT, find quotes in this 6 TB of chats to support my argument"

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8. ◴[21 Nov 24 03:00 UTC] No.42200665{3}[source]▶
9. lxgr ◴[21 Nov 24 03:38 UTC] No.42200863{3}[source]▶
Possibly? I wouldn't bet on lawyers billing any less per page of document discovery either way.
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10. snowwrestler ◴[21 Nov 24 04:39 UTC] No.42201182[source]▶
This quote is frequently misinterpreted. It is not a comment on the mutability of language in general, it is a comment on centralized authoritarian power, which the Cardinal sought and wielded. Because he personally wielded so much power, he needed only the flimsiest excuse to condemn someone.

The U.S. legal system does not empower prosecutors in this way. They are free to provide quotes out of context, of course, but defense counsel are just as free to provide the missing context, and neither actually gets to make the decision to convict.

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11. seanmcdirmid ◴[21 Nov 24 04:45 UTC] No.42201203{4}[source]▶
Some of them are bound to if there is free market competition going on. Anyways, they are certainly not going to let 6 million documents get in the way of a big settlement.
12. kridsdale1 ◴[21 Nov 24 04:53 UTC] No.42201243{3}[source]▶
You should trust that better search tools than LLMs exist for large collections of documents for legal discovery.
13. davorak ◴[21 Nov 24 05:15 UTC] No.42201355[source]▶
> Exactly, the legal system's job is not necessarily finding the truth.

The system purpose is to try and find the truth, because that helps society function, but is imperfect. It is good enough, so far, to keep society functioning, though its imperfection allows injustice to happen.

> It's who can convince the judge/jury better even if they use nasty tactics.

The adversarial system[1] does result in nasty tactics emerging, and I think there is room there for improvement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system

14. philwelch ◴[21 Nov 24 05:50 UTC] No.42201498{3}[source]▶
Don’t underestimate a federal prosecutor. Perhaps we need a new saying: “If you give me six lines from the US Code, I can get a plea bargain from the most honest of men.”