> This is regulatory and legal overreach.
No, its not.
> Yes, there are laws about preserving evidence and records. However, these laws haven’t been updated to reflect how office communication has changed over the years.
Yes, they have.
> No one would propose, circa 1950, that companies must record every conversation between two people in the office for regulatory compliance or lawsuit discovery, etc. purposes.
No one proposes the digital equivalent, only that once a record is created (which online chats inherently do in the course of executing them), the record be preserved. Which, in the 1950s, is exactly the rule that applied to anything that a record was created of.
> But effectively, that’s what retention requirements for chat messages amount to.
No, its not.
> What is the principled policy argument (ignoring practicality) for requiring retention of chat messages, but not requiring every employee to wear a body camera that permanently records every work-related interaction they have IRL?
The principled policy argument is that once records are created, deleting them when the conditions for a litigation hold exists is destruction of things known to be evidence in current or anticipated litigation, and that allowing parties to selectively destroy evidence with knowledge and reasonable anticipation of litigation unreasobably obstructs the discovery of truth the the legal process.
Chats are in no way special with regard to this argument.