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Comment by AlexCoventry | Hacker News Reader

Are there bright lines about when you have to take explicit steps to record a conversation, if you're under a hold? For instance, I assume you usually don't have to record a verbal conversation? If that's the case, what's the practical difference between that and a conversation over a text-based system which defaults to not recording you? Just your presumed intent to abuse the system to work around the hold?

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Uh, the deliberate choice to move from a text-based conversation that records history, to a text-based conversation that doesn’t record history seems like about as bright a line as you could cross.

I was assuming that choice was made before the hold order.

It was not.

Oh, wow. Thanks for the clarification.

I believe it’s that the courts order is along the lines of “all written communications, notes, documents, [etc.] pertaining to the matter [xxx] at hand must be preserved.” In this case, chat communications would fall under that order, and therefore steps need to be taken to ensure their preservation…

But how can you say the conversation that happened off-record does pertain to the matter at hand? How can you preserve something that was not created in the first place?

I am under a hold for all written records. A co-conspirator contacts me via email and I reply the following: "Please meet me under the sletchy bridge at 2am. Alone. Make sure nobody follows you. Don't wear a wire."

Am I under a legal requirement to record in person meetings? No. Am I obviously attempting to avoid the hold? Yes.

Guess what the legal charge is for attempting to avoid preserving records?

You have not discovered some clever loophole.

Your analogy uses loaded terms (co-conspirator) and makes use of biased character portrayals (alone by a sketchy bridge at 2AM, don't wear a wire).

Even in this case, unless the court issued an order that forbids physical meet-up/contact between the accused, I don't see anything the court can hold against them. Meeting at a bridge at 2AM is not a crime, and doesn't mean they are avoiding anything other than other people.

like the poster you are responding to, I can obviously see something the court can hold against them, so it seems maybe your inability to see it is more a reflection of you than the situation

perhaps it bears repeating that judges aren't robots and can see someone obviously trying to evade an order and impose sanctions accordingly

oh, the topic totally changed once you moved to a history free chat? got any proof? no? that's too bad, seems the judge'll have to assume the most likely scenario in their judgement

What if they have a video conference with you and hold up a piece of paper with written text on it. Do you now need to have recorded your meeting?

That depends, are you doing this for the purpose of obviously attempting to get around a court order?

If so, then that would be illegal to do what you are suggesting.

Judges to not take kindly to 'clever' programmer loopholes. If you do that, you are just going to go to jail.

You’re missing the point - by typing the conversation, it is a written conversation, which must be preserved if it is relevant. So to the extent you have a written conversation and don’t preserve it, you are violating the order. In other words, there is no way to have a WRITTEN off the record conversation

Ah, I see. Thanks.

> text-based system which defaults to not recording

I believe the default is to record, though, no? Presumably disabling recording in that case could be seen as an attempt to circumvent a legal retention hold.

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