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154 points tysone | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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getpost ◴[] 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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1. 1vuio0pswjnm7 ◴[] No.42200785[source]
"Google produced 13 times as many emails as the average company per employee did before it was a decade old, Kent Walker, Google's top lawyer, testified in the Epic trial. Google felt overwhelmed, he said, and it was clear to the company that things would only become worse if changes weren't made."

According to Google's own testimony this is a Google problem not a problem shared by the other average companies that produce 13 times less email per employee than Google.^1

A reasonable person might suggest that the company's employees try to produce less email (and instant messages) like other companies.

Instead, a crook might agree that the company destroy email (and instant messages), potential evidence, immediately after being created.

But Google does not do that by default for the public with Gmail and its instant message services. Maybe because the average user is not a crook.

1. Google probably has far more than 13 times the amount of storage capacity than the average company.

Destroying potential evidence at a company is what it is. It is not like there are multiple ways to interpret it. Google did it even after they knew they were being inestigated.