Submission + - Is It Time to Call BS on "The Retention Policy Ate My Communications" Excuse?
theodp writes: The FTC is accusing Amazon execs, including founder Jeff Bezos, of using encrypted messaging apps that automatically delete messages to communicate, even after they were notified they were under investigation. The FTC is asking a judge to force Amazon to produce documents related to the company’s failure to preserve Signal messages, the company’s document preservation notices, and its instructions about using disappearing messaging applications. The FTC alleges Amazon execs did this while discussing "sensitive business matters, including antitrust" (instead of using email) to destroy potential evidence. Google also came under fire this week in its antitrust case over an issue about whether it intentionally deleted or failed to retain documents that might have been used as evidence in the trial. Google had a policy of having 'history off' on its chats by default, leaving it to employees [including CEO Sundar Pichai] to determine when to turn it on for relevant conversations (akin to some police bodycam policies). The Department of Justice (DOJ) called the alleged destruction of documents "unequivocal and honestly breathtaking," adding that "there’s no question" executives "intentionally had conversations with history off." "Google’s retention policy leaves a lot to be desired," said the judge, adding disapprovingly that it was “surprising to me that a company would leave it to their employees to decide when to preserve documents." And back in 2018, Facebook acknowledged that a secret Messenger retention policy feature was the cause of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's mysteriously disappearing messages.
Which begs the question — are Mission Impossible-like self-destructing email, messaging, and document policies beneficial to rank-and-file employees, or is this more about a play to "reduce your risk in the event of litigation [...] by permanently deleting old content that you're no longer required to keep," as Microsoft explains? Microsoft goes on to claim that destroying all of your employees' communications — like the University of Washington's just-implemented Microsoft Teams Chat Message 'Retention' Project that calls for destroying all of the university's messages after 30 days with 'no exceptions' (UW also suggests other FOIA-dodging 'best practices') — will also "help your organization to share knowledge effectively and be more agile by ensuring that your users work only with content that's current and relevant to them." However, former Microsoft Researcher Jonathan Grudin (coincidentally a UW affiliate professor) found plenty of pushback on the idea of improving-knowledge-by-deleting-communications when the company unsuccessfully tried to make Microsoft employees eat their own retention policy dogfood that the company was selling to other organizations. Grudin explained in a 2021 interview:
"Now I'll describe a couple unpublished projects. One was an email system. Someone said, 'We call it email retention but really it's email deletion.' We were told that starting the next April, all email a year old would be automatically deleted. IBM had such a system and some of our customers wanted it. I contacted friends at IBM who described it as a nightmare. [...] Why did we think it would be a good idea to use it internally at Microsoft? Some guessed storage costs, but those were dropping daily. Well, companies might have bodies that they'd like to remain buried, conversations that they would prefer not to surface. But you can't legally destroy inculpatory evidence, and an embarrassing remark that makes headlines generally has little weight in court where they look for patterns of behavior over time. The real reason turned out to be discovery costs. Microsoft and many companies are involved in far more legal proceedings than you read about. They have to pay attorneys to read all subpoenaed emails. It reportedly came to about $30 million a year. A team of about 10 people were managing the email deletion project. Some had given up other jobs to work on it, because they loved this idea. Most had information management backgrounds. They believed that only records with business value should be kept. Seeing big email folders 'makes my skin crawl,' one remarked. This view came from an era of paper documents and Rolodexes when filing and finding documents was manual. It was really difficult. It was expensive. Whereas for me and others, email is a Rolodex as well as a source of a lot of information whose future value we don't know."
"I learned that 1000 Microsoft employees were testing the software, a process referred here to as eating dogfood. I asked how it was going for these folks. An information manager beamed and said, 'It's working!' [...] I asked, 'What do the employees using it, think about it?' This surprised the team. It never occurred to them to ask. They were sure that the employees would see the value of email deletion for the company. They were really curious. They did realize that a survey and interview might uncover gripes, but they wanted to find out. [...] The interviews, which of course did find ingenious and time-consuming ways that people were dodging deletion. [...] So what did we find? Well, the cost to the company, in lost time and effort from email deletion, would easily exceed $30 million annually. [..] The deployment was canceled. [...] A partner in a San Francisco law firm heard about my findings and called up. He said that some companies would use email deletion software, whatever the cost. He explained, 'Phillip Morris is in the business of addicting people to something that will kill them. They'll pay what they need to as long as the business is profitable. Once it stops being profitable, they'll stop.'"
Which begs the question — are Mission Impossible-like self-destructing email, messaging, and document policies beneficial to rank-and-file employees, or is this more about a play to "reduce your risk in the event of litigation [...] by permanently deleting old content that you're no longer required to keep," as Microsoft explains? Microsoft goes on to claim that destroying all of your employees' communications — like the University of Washington's just-implemented Microsoft Teams Chat Message 'Retention' Project that calls for destroying all of the university's messages after 30 days with 'no exceptions' (UW also suggests other FOIA-dodging 'best practices') — will also "help your organization to share knowledge effectively and be more agile by ensuring that your users work only with content that's current and relevant to them." However, former Microsoft Researcher Jonathan Grudin (coincidentally a UW affiliate professor) found plenty of pushback on the idea of improving-knowledge-by-deleting-communications when the company unsuccessfully tried to make Microsoft employees eat their own retention policy dogfood that the company was selling to other organizations. Grudin explained in a 2021 interview:
"Now I'll describe a couple unpublished projects. One was an email system. Someone said, 'We call it email retention but really it's email deletion.' We were told that starting the next April, all email a year old would be automatically deleted. IBM had such a system and some of our customers wanted it. I contacted friends at IBM who described it as a nightmare. [...] Why did we think it would be a good idea to use it internally at Microsoft? Some guessed storage costs, but those were dropping daily. Well, companies might have bodies that they'd like to remain buried, conversations that they would prefer not to surface. But you can't legally destroy inculpatory evidence, and an embarrassing remark that makes headlines generally has little weight in court where they look for patterns of behavior over time. The real reason turned out to be discovery costs. Microsoft and many companies are involved in far more legal proceedings than you read about. They have to pay attorneys to read all subpoenaed emails. It reportedly came to about $30 million a year. A team of about 10 people were managing the email deletion project. Some had given up other jobs to work on it, because they loved this idea. Most had information management backgrounds. They believed that only records with business value should be kept. Seeing big email folders 'makes my skin crawl,' one remarked. This view came from an era of paper documents and Rolodexes when filing and finding documents was manual. It was really difficult. It was expensive. Whereas for me and others, email is a Rolodex as well as a source of a lot of information whose future value we don't know."
"I learned that 1000 Microsoft employees were testing the software, a process referred here to as eating dogfood. I asked how it was going for these folks. An information manager beamed and said, 'It's working!' [...] I asked, 'What do the employees using it, think about it?' This surprised the team. It never occurred to them to ask. They were sure that the employees would see the value of email deletion for the company. They were really curious. They did realize that a survey and interview might uncover gripes, but they wanted to find out. [...] The interviews, which of course did find ingenious and time-consuming ways that people were dodging deletion. [...] So what did we find? Well, the cost to the company, in lost time and effort from email deletion, would easily exceed $30 million annually. [..] The deployment was canceled. [...] A partner in a San Francisco law firm heard about my findings and called up. He said that some companies would use email deletion software, whatever the cost. He explained, 'Phillip Morris is in the business of addicting people to something that will kill them. They'll pay what they need to as long as the business is profitable. Once it stops being profitable, they'll stop.'"
