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Comment by qup | Hacker News Reader

Is there some reason to think they're the only copies?

Whether or not they are copies is irrelevant(*). Are software engineers normally allowed to keep copies of the proprietary source code of their employer after they leave the company? Do accountants normally keep copies of the financial records of their employer? Is it standard practice for doctors to store medical records of hospital patients in their basement?

(*) If he kept the only copy, that's even worse since a new prosecutor wouldn't have access to the old records if they wanted to pursue a new prosecution or if there was an appeal to an old case.

As long as there's an archive of the prosecutor's records, they're either public records (as most government records are, by default), or they're exempt, but the prosecutor already had access to them, and no interest is served in demanding their destruction. This isn't proprietary source code, and it isn't proprietary financial information.

"FBI wiretap transcripts" sound like very private conversations, probably including innocent people and innocent topics. Just because they had a court order for the wiretap doesn't mean the conversations are now public record. So they are exempt, but then it's still private and not something that you should be taking home.

> prosecutor already had access to them

I don't think that argument works. The same could be said for a software engineer. He had access to the source code, so why can't he keep a copy of it?

Because it has commercial value, and the engineer would be misappropriating it. Anyways, I don't much care beyond "the situations are not really comparable".

They seem comparable. Similarly, employee HR records also aren't source code or financial information, but you still wouldn't want copies in your former HR team members' houses.

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