
On Wall Street, a high-ranking few still avoid email - dodders
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wall-street-email-idUSKBN12W4F7
======
nerdo
Sounds like things are going as planned for Wikileaks[1]:

> RS: One of the unintended consequences is the opposite effect, which is what
> we've seen with the Department of Defense, and even the State Department,
> here in the U.S., of trying to make secrets more impenetrable rather than
> less and trying to take precautions against what has happened from happening
> again in the future. How do you regard that?

> JA: Well, I think that's very positive. Since 2006, we have been working
> along this philosophy that organizations which are abusive and need to be
> [in] the public eye. If their behavior is revealed to the public, they have
> one of two choices: one is to reform in such a way that they can be proud of
> their endeavors, and proud to display them to the public. Or the other is to
> lock down internally and to balkanize, and as a result, of course, cease to
> be as efficient as they were. To me, that is a very good outcome, because
> organizations can either be efficient, open and honest, or they can be
> closed, conspiratorial and inefficient.

1:
[http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040,00...](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040,00.html)

~~~
smallnamespace
Time for Wikileaks to make all their internal communications public.

After all, don't they believe in full transparency?

~~~
Bartweiss
At risk of taking bait, they explicitly _don 't_ believe in full transparency.

They've backed and associated with various privacy groups and suggested that
individuals and groups not in the public interest deserve privacy. Assange has
complicated that a little by releasing personal, unredacted emails, but it's
been their stated intent at least.

Give that transcript another read: "organizations which are abusive and need
to be [in] the public eye". That's not decrying privacy, its decrying use of
privacy to hide abusive behaviors. I haven't seen Wikileaks accused of that;
the usual accusation is that their public behaviors are politically motivated,
which is very different than alleging internal corruption.

~~~
smallnamespace
Wikileaks claims they use leaks to serve the public's interest. That makes
them a public interest organization.

Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse. When you have
the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through
leaking, I think the public deserves to know how Wikileaks decided what to
leak, how they are funded, and what interests they represent.

Simple hypothetical scenario: Wikileaks gets compromising information about a
left-leaning and a right-leaning organization, but they only decide to make
public _one_ of those leaks because they're biased. Or they receive some
damaging info, and use it to trade for political or personal favors in return
for suppressing the leak.

Given that there are so many ways that Wikileaks could abuse the public's
trust, their 'transparency' rhetoric very much should apply to themselves.

~~~
rndgermandude
Quite honestly, when wikileaks releases material such as the Podesta emails,
undoctored (most Podesta emails are verifiable by checking google's DKIM
signatures), it does not matter what wikileaks objectives and motives are and
if they are ethically clean.

Corruption is still corruption, no matter if it is made public by a "good"
organization or another corrupt organization. The corrupt organization does
not get a free pass just because their competitors might be even more corrupt
(and wikileaks might know that and hold back that information).

~~~
smallnamespace
The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we
shouldn't), it's whether we should try to keep Wikileaks honest, given that
its position gives it strong incentives to do shady things without any
transparency.

Wikileaks' core activity forces it to walk a very very thin moral and ethical
line. I think we the public have obligation to make sure they don't cross it,
_especially_ if we benefit from the leaks.

I'll note that in another context, it was for a long time not alright for
prosecutors to use illegally obtained evidence, in order to discourage
prosecutors and police from breaking the law, _even at the cost of potentially
letting criminals go free_. Why doesn't that logic apply here?

~~~
rndgermandude
I was replying to this specifically:

    
    
        Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse.
        When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking [...]
    

If there is no (major) wrongdoing, you cannot just tear them down. The
organization needs to be corrupt in the first place.

    
    
        it's whether we should inspect Wikileaks itself,
        given that its position gives it strong incentives to do shady things
        without any transparency.
    

I don't see anything suggesting strong incentives to do shady things, can you
elaborate please?

I see the opposite, however, they got strong incentives NOT to do shady
things, because if they are caught even once doing shady things, their
reputation is in the gutter and nobody will ever listen to them again. That is
not to say that they got no political bias and even political bias. When the
emails you obtained contained Hillary asking why they cannout just "drone him"
(aka Assange), you might take that a bit personally too. But political bias
and personal bias is in no way evidence for "shady things" and wrongdoing.

But yes, wikileaks too should be scrutinized, and I think it is, by pretty
much everybody, the government, it's agencies, the media. Still, so far, after
a decade of operation, there is no proof wikileaks did anything sinister, and
the best attempts so far to discredit wikileaks was coming for their leader
with rape charges instead of discrediting what the organization is doing.

And yes again, we the public should not stop to be vigilant and continue to
scrutinize wikileaks.

~~~
smallnamespace
> If there is no (major) wrongdoing, you cannot just tear them down. The
> organization needs to be corrupt in the first place.

I'm not so sure that's true. As the size of an organization grows, the
probability that someone in it will write an e-mail that looks incredibly
damning when leaked approaches 1. That's true regardless of whether there is
any _actual_ corrupt behavior, but the political damage is done regardless.
IMO, the public is generally not great at teasing apart real misconduct from
stupid private e-mails, because the public either lacks or chooses to ignore
context.

I know in this day and age it's not very popular to say that things should be
kept from the public, but I'd like to point out the example of the legal
system. Judge often decide that evidence should _not_ be shown to juries
because the evidence is inflammatory and will cause bias. _Sometimes showing
more evidence leads to less truth, not more_. Obviously, Wikileaks is not a
court, but it does choose who gets to see what, and they have some idea of how
the public will react to what is revealed. But we have no real idea how they
internally make that decision.

> I don't see anything suggesting strong incentives to do shady things, can
> you elaborate please?

Sure -- this is an organization that often gets illegally obtained information
from perhaps anonymous sources. Because the sources are by definition secret
or inaccessible, and yet the information can be very damaging, there's always
the temptation for illicit dealings. Here are some possibilities:

\- Someone in Wikileaks uses the information to blackmail the target of a leak

\- The target of a leak gets wind of it and tries to buy off Wikileaks

\- Outside actors (e.g. the Russian government) effectively use Wikileaks as a
'neutral' channel to cloak their interference in the political affairs of
another country. This may in fact be what is happening today, but we can't be
sure because again -- Wikileaks is not transparent.

\- A Wikileaks staffer is arrested or otherwise threatened by a government to
do their bidding

Contrast this how major news organizations handle sources and leaks:
journalists form a professional body with their own journalistic code of
ethics and conduct. Leaks are evaluated for their newsworthiness and sources
are scrutinized.

Obviously, traditional media organizations aren't perfect either, but they are
far more open and transparent than Wikileaks is, because there are
institutional norms developed over decades that constrain their behavior.

In a perfect world, Wikileaks would be open and transparent in their _process_
of how they evaluate and pass on leaks, so we can be sure that they're not
being unduly influenced or using it to advance a hidden agenda.

~~~
rndgermandude
You talked about incentives to do shady things, but only provided examples of
theoretical abuse (there is no indication any of which ever happened). Of
course there is a danger of abuse, but I fail to see how shadiness is being
_incentivized_ by the structure of wikileaks and the work they do.

All your examples apply to traditional journalists as well, by the way.

Wikileaks has their own code of conduct and ethics. I fail to see how their
self-imposed code is any less valid than the self-imposed code of traditional
journalists.

wikileaks claims it evaluates and scrutinizes their sources. So far it seems
they actually did that, and did not fall for any hoax. Traditional journalists
also claim they evaluate their sources, and most of them did not fall for any
hoax. Both don't do so transparently, in fact journalists went to jail for not
being transparent and disclosing their sources, so I fail to see how
traditional journalists are any better or worse than wikileaks. The lack of
transparency when it comes to sources is a feature and not a failure,
protecting said sources, for both wikileaks and traditional journalism.

It's a bold claim to state that traditional journalists are more open and
trustworthy simply because they have been around longer (the organizations,
not the individuals of course).

Regular news organizations reported the Iraq had WMDs because the government
sources said so, without any actual evidence. Or published fake Hitler
Diaries. Meaning it's not all that rosy and checked and ethical as you make it
out to be.

I don't see the "contrast" you claim exists. If anything, wikileaks has a
better track record than a lot of traditional media organizations when it
comes to publishing verified information, so far.

PS: The likes of Murdoch and Bezos prove outside influence in journalism is a
real thing to worry about.

------
chollida1
> Dimon uses email but is known to keep his replies short and factual,
> favoring "yes," "no" and "thank you."

I mean, come on. Everyone uses email. Having said that, everyone also knows
there are things you put in email and things you only discuss face to face, or
over the phone.

And the dividing line doesn't necessarily have anything to do about breaking
the law.

Everyone on wall street has had an email they typed up get into the hands of
someone who they wish it wouldn't.

Whether its shitting all over an analyst for not being good at their job that
got back to the analyst or doing something similar to a CEO, these things can
harm your future relationship with these people who you may need to do
business with again.

You rant over the phone, you issue actionable orders via email for the same
reason. One has no trace, the other has a record you can point to.

~~~
alistproducer2
>Having said that, everyone also knows there are things you put in email and
things you only discuss face to face, or over the phone.

A lot of people don't know this. One of my favorite classes in business school
was "Business Communications." a lot of the stuff seemed really basic, but I'm
amazed how much of it is disregarded in the wild.

~~~
ams6110
First job out of school (early 1990s), working at a "big" consulting company.
All the new hires had it drilled into them that you do not talk about work
outside of work. And you never discuss anything client-specific in public, on
a plane or in a cab, in a restaurant, etc.

Email wasn't a worry, nobody had it then. I think they had an internal system
of some sort but the line staff consultants didn't have access.

------
dtnewman
My first job was at an investment bank. I was taught very early on that I
needed to watch what I said in my emails. I'm not sure if it was true or not,
but someone told me that every month, someone from compliance looked over a
random selection of my emails and my manager would have been informed if they
found something wrong.

What everyone on Wall Street appreciates is that your emails are a permanent
record and should be treated accordingly. When there's a real risk that your
emails will later turn up in court, you are gonna be a lot more careful about
what you say. Even things that seem innocuous when you write them may not look
good if they come under the spotlight later (something like "Hey John, the
code in that repo looks messy..." may come back to bite you if it turns up in
court). So I was taught to always keep to facts in emails rather than opinions
("this data set has 246 invalid phone numbers and 20 fake email addresses" is
a fact... "this data looks messy" is an opinion subject to all sorts of
interpretation later).

You might think that there's nothing that you have to hide. If that's true,
then by all means, say what you want in your _personal_ email. But when you
are using your company email, remember that you don't have many rights to
privacy there and so treat it accordingly.

~~~
jlarocco
That's actually true in _most_ large corporations.

I once dated a lady who did data recovery and "e-discovery" for the legal
department of a large corporation. A large part of her job involved grabbing
disk images of people's hard drives, and then digging through them and
people's email, looking for any information relevant to lawsuits, internal
investigations, subpeonas, etc..

As far as I know it was never at random, though.

~~~
devopsproject
Compliance vs Discovery. Typically, you would check for compliance
periodically while discovery happens after the fact.

------
pbourke
"His staff filters important messages, prints them out and puts them on his
chair for review"

A desire to filter out noise and apply their attention in a selective manner
is probably the biggest motivation to avoid email. At this level, I imagine
people would like to receive a concise written or spoken summary, think about
the content, discuss it with the relevant people and then make a decision.
Since they control their own time, and have staff to respond to "tactical
emergencies," they're free to organize their schedule and staff in order to
optimize the decision-making process.

~~~
johan_larson
I remember hearing talk about Bill Gates having _four_ assistants who did
nothing except filter and redirect email sent to him.

I can easily believe that major figures with a public email address receive
far more mail than they can deal with in person.

------
thefastlane
> Dimon volunteered: "Don't send emails after you've had a drink."

good advice for everyone, not just bankers and politicians.

~~~
nashashmi
Don't send emails when you are angry either. Just wait a while before sending.

~~~
colejohnson66
Actually, just the act of writing out your anger or pain without actually
sending it can reduce the anger or pain

~~~
robotresearcher
Just fill in the address field at the top of the email last, if ever.

------
drzaiusapelord
Its incredible how there's all this email related stuff in the press and not
one word about email encryption. Pretty much everything supports S/MIME, yet
almost no one uses it. The DNC hack could have been avoided if those emails
were encrypted, for example. Hackers would then also have to get private keys
on top of data. That's another layer to get through.

I suspect baby boomer led management think memorizing passphrases and using
encryption is "too hard" and are calling the shots right now and we're all
paying the price for it. We should be teaching each other and the younger
generation that email encryption should be seen the same way we look at https
now. Not too long ago https was regarded as for just 'credit card stuff only'
because it 'cost time and resources.'

Its sad that something as critical as email doesn't have end to end
encryption.

~~~
renaudg
_memorizing passphrases and using encryption is "too hard"_

It's not just baby boomers, it's most people outside HN unfortunately.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The worst part of this is that memorizing passphrases is far easier than
passwords. Compare:

mydog'snameisAliceandsheiscute

to

P@ssw0rd

The latter is harder to memorize (what letters did I substitute with symbols
again?) and far easier to crack.

I suspect until regulators make people use encrypted email we'll keep using
plain-text.

~~~
lukewrites
I'm a big fan of passphrases for important sites. For most sites I use a
randomly generated pw that's stored in a password manager. I use separate pw
managers for home (1password) and work (lastpass).

Since a pw manager can be cracked, for important sites (financial , email,
etc), I make up a sentence that describes my feelings about the site. These I
keep memorized. As a bonus, as my feelings about the site change, it's a great
prompt to update my password.

I'd like to throw a layer of physical security into the mix (eg one of those
usb keys), but it seems like there still aren't universally accepted options.
Anyone have suggestions for this?

~~~
jlgaddis
LastPass supports 2FA (Yubikey, Google Authenticator, etc.) and it's pretty
seamless and works well.

------
exelius
I have worked with C-level executives at several very large companies. Due to
the nature of regulation at companies of this size, many of these individuals
are under subpoena almost continuously. As a result of the record keeping
requirements of a person under subpoena, their life is much simpler if they
conduct all business in person and keep no files. They use e-mail exclusively
for interactions that are intended to be public. Any business communication to
them is usually scheduled through a secretary and done in in-person meetings
with projected slides.

It's not that they have anything to hide -- but at the same time, corporate
espionage is a real thing and you have to protect trade secrets and you know
the government receives a copy of every e-mail and document that you do.

~~~
gohrt
So, they have something to hide.

~~~
exelius
Well, there are a lot of things that look bad but aren't criminal.

~~~
dtnewman
To add to this, there are also lots of things that can be misinterpreted or
taken out of context. I imagine that most people would treat email differently
if they knew that all of their emails would become public information. Smart
executives at large companies simply _assume_ this and send emails
accordingly.

------
fatdog
People only use email to create a paper trail. It's not a discussion, as a
medium it's a set of assertions and challenges.

If you don't have a personal relationship with someone, questions aren't even
honest questions, they are signals of liability transfer.

The cc: line is a kind of blackmail where assholes list the people they are
performing for, or threatening to scandalize you to.

Everything about e-mail is abnormal.

It's a performance. The only way to win is not to play. Hence executives
eschew it.

~~~
closeparen
Please name the organizations that led you to believe this so we can never
work for them.

I don't doubt that this toxic environment exists, but I'm fortunate not to
have worked in one yet and I'd like to keep it that way.

~~~
fatdog
The entire public sector, and most organizations over 1000 people. Bureaucracy
is what happens when your dunbar-number sized network overflows and starts to
metastasize.

When people say they work for a company that is collaborative and non-
hierarchical, I've found it either means they are a manipulative and
delusional tyrant or they are the sucker at the table.

~~~
closeparen
My large organization manages this pretty successfully by having small teams
that don't interact much.

It's absolutely hierarchical from a macro level, but engineers live in pretty
collaborative 5-10 person leaf nodes and we don't need to interact across the
tree very often.

What you describe might exist for senior management, but they generally take
cross-team dependencies to be a bug in the way the tree was partitioned, and
fix it at the next re-org.

------
shade23
Wouldn't you prefer encrypted email more than a conversation. You do get a lot
of self destructing emails too. And custom protocols included. And they use
phone calls too I presume. Those would also come under the same scrutiny
right?

~~~
moftz
In some cases, they need to preserve email in case the company is sued and
emails are subject to discovery. If these guys want to talk in private, they
talk face to face. Email is only for things that should have a papertrail.

~~~
maxerickson
You can have a data retention policy and delete email after a certain period
of time, you don't have to keep them just because they are created.

Of course the nature of email makes it difficult to make sure the policy has
been enforced.

~~~
Bartweiss
For personal use or many companies, you can get by with a common sense data
retention policy and systematically delete aged-out emails.

That's not true for banks; they have specific reporting laws to comply with
for anything that gets emailed.

~~~
greedo
For insurance companies, you're largely bound by whatever policies and
procedures you define in your MAR specifications.

------
noer
The thing I always think when I read articles like this (and this one from the
NY Times about Senators & Email [1]) is that they don't use email because they
don't have to. They have jobs that come with many assistants & aides who can
communicate electornically on their behalf. They started working in these
positions before email became the norm for business/professional communication
and happen to have had careers that span both eras.

I wonder if these people are the last (or some of the last) people that don't
use email to communicate.

1: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/us/politics/storing-
emails...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/us/politics/storing-emails-from-
these-senators-will-be-easy-if-they-ever-send-one.html)

------
laxatives
This doesn't seem so crazy. Google deletes emails after a few months for
rank/file and 6 months for executives for the sake of avoiding lawsuits as
well.

~~~
johan_larson
> ... after a few months for rank/file and 6 months for executives

What's your source for this? I can easily believe they delete emails. But I
would expect them to be subject to various laws about email retention, and
those laws typically require companies to hold on to emails for years.

------
Gustomaximus
Not covered in this article, some people simply never transitioned to new
technology because they are older, unfamiliar/inclined with tech and didn't
have to.

A colleague who was at a fairly known investment company told me of a senior
exec whose PA left printed emails and left them on his desk. He would then
write replies on the paper version and the PA would type and send them.

Nothing to do with secrecy. He was just older and never adapted to computers.
I feel this logic fits occam's razor nicely rather than being over
conspiratorial. It's not like you can't use email for efficiency, and do the
'lets take this offline' response when going somewhere sensitive/secretive.

------
darrenmc
I wonder how many tech executives don't use email?

I've got a feeling Tim Cook doesn't use a computer, maybe just an iPad with a
carefully curated list of messages and financial reports for him to browse.

------
steveplace
Janet Napolitano never used email as the head of DHS

~~~
nashashmi
Donald Trump is also said not to use email. I think he said "I'm smart. I
don't use email.".

~~~
gearhart
In case anyone else, like me, assumed this was comedy, there's no Politifact
on it, but Bloomberg claims it's true:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-20/trump-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-20/trump-
strategy-meeting) (last paragraph)

~~~
qznc
He probably does use his phone to tweet [http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-
tweets/](http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/)

------
addicted
Probably the most productive lot.

