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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

(www.nytimes.com)
154 points tysone | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 11:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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mattmaroon ◴[20 Nov 24 23:26 UTC] No.42199221[source]▶
“ If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.”

I’m surprised to see someone advocating for “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to hide” on HN. The cognitive dissonance must be in overdrive here!

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kibwen ◴[20 Nov 24 23:35 UTC] No.42199295{3}[source]▶
No, please stop with this false equivalence. People get rights and benefit of the doubt. Corporations do not.
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mattmaroon ◴[20 Nov 24 23:54 UTC] No.42199458{4}[source]▶
It's not false equivalence, we were talking about communications between people. Corporations don't write emails, people do. A corporation, big or small, is just a legal way of definining the property of people, and the people who work for it (who may or may not also own some of it) are people. Communications between them are communications between people.

What they're saying is that people deserve privacy, unless what they're doing has some relationship to making money, in which case they do not.

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1. kelnos ◴[21 Nov 24 04:49 UTC] No.42201227{5}[source]▶
Of course we're talking about communications between people, but the record of these communications is used to find fault with the company, usually, not with the individual people. I think that's a really important distinction.

So I agree with the person who said this was a false equivalence.

Corporations exist at the pleasure of the people; we can and should impose any and all requirements and restrictions on them necessary to ensure they do not amass too much power and act to the detriment of regular citizens. We've failed in that, and we see the negative consequences of that daily.