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Comment by awalton | Hacker News Reader

From SFChronical: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-Waymo-case-...

> While he didn’t believe that work was illegal, “I had questions about the ethics of it,” Jacobs testified.

> He confirmed that Uber used encrypted, ephemeral messaging “to protect sensitive information and ensure we didn’t create a paper trail that would come back to haunt the company in any potential criminal or civil litigation.” It also used “non-attributable devices” to communicate with third parties providing on-the-ground intelligence about threats to Uber, and to research Uber protestors, he testified.

...sound like "Just another Fortune 500" to you?

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Actually, yes. I have seen Fortune 500 C-level execs use this exact behavior. When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace.

Not that it excuses Uber's behavior, but corporate execs don't trust that their comms aren't being monitored (by either the govt or hackers in their systems). I-banks and traders have spied on them for years, so it's not an unfounded fear.

> When there is a merger in the works, use of burners and anonymous e-mail accounts are commonplace.

That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference?

> That's to prevent leaks from driving the stock price up, and causing the buyout cost to increase. That's a little different than using it to hide the fact that they were knowingly breaking the law. Do you understand the difference?

You're making the assumption that they did it for that reason. It could be that covering up the crimes was just a side effect.

I keep all my e-mail in gmail forever, and it's delivered substantial business benefits. If someone asks me for details of something I did fifteen years ago, I can pull it up with ease.

Other than covering up crimes, what advantage do you imagine would be worth the loss of those benefits?

Well, in the current context, deleting stuff that could be used against you in a lawsuit. Doesn't need to be something you did that was wrong but maybe just something you wrote that expressed doubts about a strategy, for example.

But there's also just cleaning out all the cruft which makes finding useful stuff harder. Since going all-in on Gmail, I delete far less than I used to and that's not entirely a bad thing but I also have to sift through a lot more stuff when I'm looking for something.

> deleting stuff that could be used against you in a lawsuit.

> Doesn't need to be something you did that was wrong

Deleting something that can be produced of evidence of wrong-doing is illegal all by itself.

Leaks can be incredibly expensive. Millions of dollars of lost revenue.

Yes I do; and the F500 Cs I know use it for both purposes. There's somewhat of a code of honor between F500-level execs that anything said in private stays private; you need to be able to have frank backchannel conversations without worrying about antitrust or regulatory problems. Most common is when a communication is rather innocent, but taken out of context or worded in the wrong way it could look very bad.

If the objection is to the technology: Lots of companies use special techniques to avoid creating a paper trail.

It's called "phone calls" and "talking privately". Using that to do bad stuff is bad, but conducting certain matters in a way that doesn't leave a paper trail is not by itself objectionable. I don't know any workplace that tries to ensure all communications leave a paper trail (though I did have a Facebook friend who insisted he only worked at such places, which must be false, since he's employed).

>If they objection is to the technology: Lots of companies use special techniques to avoid creating a paper trail. It's called "phone calls"

I had a friend who worked at a nonprofit who always knew when the general counsel wanted to discuss something sensitive - because he'd call on your office phone. (I suspect he thought it was harder to record a phone call than a 1:1 convo)

What's funny is he didn't realize that the mere chain of calls contained metadata. For example, if the first workday after a boozy company party the HR rep in charge of the interns gets a call, then an intern, then the intern goes into HR, then a senior staffer gets a call, then the senior staffer goes in to speak with HR... certain inferences can be drawn.

Ya, but only inferences. Anyways, it’s much harder for discovery than a complete conversation.

Once you put everyone under oath, unless everyone agrees to the same story, it's not too difficult to make the truth come out.

Sounds like union busting activities from the 1870s well into the 1940s, so business as usual in the neo-gilded age.

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