>To me, a slack message or chat message is the digital equivalent to me going to your desk or talking to you at lunch in person.
To some people, posting on a public facebook wall is likewise the digital equivalent of talking to someone at lunch in person. Where is the line?
>I think the fair trade off is “if i have the document, then I will produce it” and a default policy of delete after x time would be tested no different than if you or I had a conversation in person.
The purpose is to get the truth of the dispute, not prevent liability for people acting badly. Your purpose for not having courts see evidence of wrongdoing is so that what, things are better for the wrongdoers? If your argument is feasibility or removing the recording element at all, I'd understand, but the thing is already recorded.
>Now we live in a digital world where because we can, we are now being told to record. How would this be any different than the courts demanding that all conversations be recorded via audio recording when not using a chat application.
It'd be different because courts aren't demanding the conversations be recorded at all; that's just the way things are working. If you worked at a company where all conversations are recorded and you're on camera all the time, you'd have to preserve those too.
There is a big difference in deleting chat after the court asked, and simply not retaining chats.
Something about your reply seems to indicate the topic is about self cleaning messages, which is under question by the courts of deleting evidence.
Even the words utter in a room linger some time after they leave my lips. Should we be told to install acoustic tiles that let the words echo for the ages so the courts can determine the truth?
Facebook is inherently different because of the broadcast style of updates rather than targeted messaging. I don't think the intent of usage matters as much of the intent of the system. Facebook statuses are designed to be fairly public.
> The purpose is to get the truth of the dispute, not prevent liability for people acting badly. Your purpose for not having courts see evidence of wrongdoing is so that what, things are better for the wrongdoers? If your argument is feasibility or removing the recording element at all, I'd understand, but the thing is already recorded.
The purpose of not recording everything is to allow businesses (read: the people within them) to function efficiently without having to worry that anything and everything they say could be dragged into the record on a lawsuit. Also to encourage people to put problems on the record, paradoxically.
I work remotely, meaning face-to-face conversations are out of the question. I'm rapidly running out of ways to communicate that aren't on the record, which poses a communication problem for the business and inhibits dealing with problems that could lead to a lawsuit.
In a world where chats aren't part of the eternal record, I can pop in and say "hey, such and such feature seems like it has a security/privacy risk, we should take a look at that". The communication is valuable, and the business is now aware of the problem.
In a world with eternal chat records, nobody wants me to point that out unless we are ready to deal with it immediately. If I point it out, the business schedules it to be handled in a quarter or two, and they get hacked in the meantime then my chat message is on the record as evidence that the business was aware of the problem and "did nothing". Everyone would prefer that I had said nothing, because the business' liability is diminished if they can say they were unaware of the problem.
The underlying reality here is that business do not want their problems on public record, and will encourage their employees to communicate using non-recorded means or, failing that, to not communicate at all. It would be legally preferable to ship a product full of issues the business is unaware of than to ship a product with a single issue that the business is on record knowing about.
Requiring recording of all communications just encourages the business to not communicate internally, leading to the exact same problems recording was supposed to prevent.
Our legal system does not reward recording communications in the least, it actively penalizes doing so. We're trying to strong arm businesses into doing something against their own best interests, and I'm doubtful that's a productive line of action.
>I work remotely, meaning face-to-face conversations are out of the question.
Zoom? Phone calls? You choose to use a recorded form of communication, but there are options. That said, if your goal is to intentionally hide information from use in a future lawsuit, there are easier ways to decrease your business's liability that don't run the same risks.
> If I point it out, the business schedules it to be handled in a quarter or two, and they get hacked in the meantime then my chat message is on the record as evidence that the business was aware of the problem and "did nothing".
You example about nobody wanting you to point this out because that creates liability is an error. The liability arguably already exists because the business should have known of the issue and did not. A policy of not reporting security issues because they fear lawsuits makes things much worse, making it potentially rise to recklessness. So you not telling the company about it on purpose, if that's a part of the culture of the company, is likely worse than you telling the company and having them make a reasonable assessment of risk and resource allocation. That's not "doing nothing" from a legal standpoint. Whether their decision was reasonable under the circumstances is one thing but it's usually not random people on the street evaluating this.
By the way, this has nothing to do with chat. Why do you think many companies routinely do security evaluations? It's not because consumers care. If your example is true companies would do better to not have security at all.
Finally with this, even if it were better for the company not to report it would be worse for you not to report.
>Requiring recording of all communications just encourages the business to not communicate internally, leading to the exact same problems recording was supposed to prevent.
Courts don't do that, though. Businesses decide to use recorded communication, much the same way they did when the law was created and distance was an issue.
> It would be legally preferable to ship a product full of issues the business is unaware of than to ship a product with a single issue that the business is on record knowing about
That's not necessarily true, but even if it is it wouldn't be preferable from a commerce standpoint. This isn't business in a legal vacuum.
Take the chat logs from any organization, no matter how perfectly rule-abiding, pure and saintly and a prosecutor or adversarial lawyer will be able to find snippets of text that can be taken out of context to make them look bad.
Chats, emails, zoom calls, in-person conversations, etc all make sense to be ephemeral. Official company documents published by HR, official specifications, advertisements, etc make sense to be kept long-term.
Why would emails be ephemeral? I see the argument he and presumably you are making in terms of chats, though I disagree with it both in terms of what the law currently is and in what it should be, but email? Mail isn't ephemeral.
When you are having a conversation in person and you don't know it is being recorded, you have an expectation that it won't be recorded because that is the default. Do you have an expectation by default that your chat system, slack or whatever irc you use is not accessible by anyone ever again, once you close the client? I don't because that hasn't been the case for most chat clients ever.
To some people, posting on a public facebook wall is likewise the digital equivalent of talking to someone at lunch in person. Where is the line?
>I think the fair trade off is “if i have the document, then I will produce it” and a default policy of delete after x time would be tested no different than if you or I had a conversation in person.
The purpose is to get the truth of the dispute, not prevent liability for people acting badly. Your purpose for not having courts see evidence of wrongdoing is so that what, things are better for the wrongdoers? If your argument is feasibility or removing the recording element at all, I'd understand, but the thing is already recorded.
>Now we live in a digital world where because we can, we are now being told to record. How would this be any different than the courts demanding that all conversations be recorded via audio recording when not using a chat application.
It'd be different because courts aren't demanding the conversations be recorded at all; that's just the way things are working. If you worked at a company where all conversations are recorded and you're on camera all the time, you'd have to preserve those too.