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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

I think we’re going to see another cycle in tech, much like the one where they realized that people kept saying illegal things in a documented fashion and this kept getting them into trouble leading to short retention policies. Except this time it will probably involve mandatory court-ordered retention which will further push people towards dropping “let’s discuss this offline” comments and trying to hide their conversations that way, which will probably also get regulated at some point. Company lawyers are always the “nanana I’m not touching you!” type where they just try to come up with some new cute way to skirt laws and it doesn’t actually work, but I guess they can keep doing illegal things for a few years until judges catch up when them.

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Not just tech; we're seeing this pressure in finance too. Matt Levine joked about this recently:

> It really is wild that the SEC’s official position is now that it is illegal to “use unofficial communications to do things like cut deals, win clients or make trades.” “Conduct their communications about business matters within only official channels”! Imagine if that was really the rule! You can’t have lunch with a client and talk about business, or have beers with your colleagues and gripe about work, because that does not create a searchable archive for the SEC to review.

> Of course the SEC does not entirely mean this. Yet. But in like five years, technology — and the SEC’s interpretation of the rules — will have advanced to the point that banks will get fined if their bankers talk about business with clients on the golf course. “You should have been wearing your bank-issued virtual reality headset and recorded the conversation,” the SEC will say, or I guess “you should have played golf in your bank’s official metaverse, which records all golf conversations for compliance review, rather than on a physical golf course.” The golf course is an unofficial channel! No business allowed!

I'd be completely in favor of this... if first the politicians, lawmakers, and bureaucrats were all held to the same standard.

The combination of open records and open meetings laws in many state governments largely do hold state and local officials to rules like this.

True, but the practical reality parallels the regulations mentioned above: the rules are not being enforced fully, and there do not appear to be enough real-world consequences to prevent individuals from breaking them.

Is there specific government meeting or record you have in mind, that legally should have been public, but isn't?

Generally we have enough proof of politicians doing/saying deplorable things. We don't have enough voters punishing their politicians for misbehaviour.

Eventually, Big Brother turns on everyone.

They created big brother. Creation turns on it's creator.

This seems really interesting to me. The US Constitution was only able to come about due to closed door discussion and debate, and that was one of the most positive outcomes in history for liberal democracy.

There are legitimate arguments for open discussions and records, but they can absolutely lead to a stifling of compromise and spur polarization.

> if first the politicians, lawmakers, and bureaucrats were all held to the same standard

Then you will have engineered a world free of compromise. Every meeting becomes posturing, because every proposed concession becomes a liability before it can be considered by the other side. (And you know they're similarly constrained.)

We're now learning the Cuban missile crisis was not resolved through blind boldness, but through the sort of open dialogue only possible over covert channels [1][2].

[1] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba-cuban-missile-c...

[2] https://mondediplo.com/2023/02/12cuban-missile-crisis

Yes traceability is a thing.

I’m more surprised it’s put in a “this is wild” light. This is in the same direction as declaring gifts you receive from your clients, or reporting the expenses of these lunches you’re having in a business setting, along who were there and how much you paid for them.

My take on this is, if it’s a business act (a task you did on company time, with company money) it shouldn’t be in a grey “we were just chatting” area and you should be able to report to your company what you did and justify the money spent.

I wouldn’t expect full recordings, but at least enough to explain why there was a meeting in the first place and what was discussed. Now I totally understand the SEC wanting more, but they’re probably doing so to move the window and not actually expecting it goes through.

It'll just end up with mandatory RTO and end of WFH. It's kinda funny how enlightened WFH HNers in this topic don't realize that they're effectively (in WFH case) defending recording of every private workplace conversation forever so it can bi sifted through by lawyers, HR and compliance auditors for any kind of wrongdoing.

It's a precedent workplace surveillance in total scale just to hunt for (I quote) "shady shit".

It's a bit weird that this is even a thing given Google's ecosystem supports retention and litigation holds - technology acquired through buying Postini iirc.

It sounds like a selling point:

1) Use Postini

2) Violate an explicit court order by automatically deleting all your incriminating documents.

3) Blame thousands of unaware individual contributors for not each manually blocking << 1% of the illegal deletions, per directions that went straight to their corporate mailing list filter’s trash can.

4) Cite this case as precedent, and demand whatever slap on the wrist Google is about to receive.

1.5) Buy insurance to pay whatever that fine works out to.

5) Continue breaking the law.

6) GOTO 2 when the next subpoena arrives.

Seems like it simply supports the DoJ's case that they're acting as a trust, if they simply bought a $625M competitor to completely dissolve its product.

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