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Comment by tomashubelbauer | Hacker News Reader

You'd think an active investigation would trump standard practice. This doesn't inspire confidence in Boeing's QA process. If it was OK, it would be in Boeing's interest to hold the footage erasure so they could present it as a piece of evidence in their favor.

Edit: See child comment. I made a wrong assumption which made me think this was likely intentional. I no longer stand by this comment.

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The work in question was done in, what was it, at the latest October or November if I recall? More likely before even that. The incident then happened in January.

Footage stored on a 30 day rolling basis would have been overwritten or otherwise disposed of long ago before anything even happened.

Honestly, 30 days for security camera footage seems fine to me. I don't see wrongdoing here.

It's especially weird to focus on this completely normal event when, elsewhere in the news, "a Boeing whistleblower was found dead in his truck in the parking lot of his South Carolina hotel after he failed to show up for the second part of his testimony for a bombshell lawsuit against the company".

( https://nypost.com/2024/03/11/us-news/boeing-whistleblower-j... )

I agree. I wonder to how many months/years would people here agree to if their workplace was to be filmed with security cameras?

How long would it be reasonable to keep footage filmed in modern open-office?

IMO, at least however long the statute of limitations in that jurisdiction is for things like sexual harassment, physical/sexual assault, etc. Way too many of those types of cases go totally unpunished because there's no camera evidence, and it seems quite reasonable to me to retain that footage so that if an issue arises, the relevant evidence is available. I don't think you should have any reasonable expectation of privacy for committing crimes at work, and while yes that means that there would be a camera overhead recording my every move, I'm not the kind of person that necessarily sees that as a bad thing; that footage would both protect and bind all of us to a clear social contract, and that seems better than just throwing our hands in the air and saying "oopsies, the footage was overwritten! So sorry!"

I don't think most people would be OK with videoing every public and semi-public place and keeping the footage for 30 years just on the off-chance that a crime might be committed with no witnesses and a trial held a couple decades later.

This was a security camera. Usually you notice security-relevant things pretty quickly.

Neither do I, and I despise this article, the author, and the outlet for inducing unwarranted anger and sensationalism that only adds noise to a very serious matter.

Not that Boeing's attitude toward QA does not deserve to have massive shade thrown on it, but what the hell, do you think that the QA department, likely understaffed, is staffed with precogs? They'd have needed to know something was up, which the documentation wasn't generated for to ensure. It'd traditionally be the security people who'd worry about managing security camera footage, and legal who'd generally be overseeing record retention and preservation of records in extraordinary circumstances.

I wasn't aware of the duration of time between the Boeing incident and the QA check. Without that in mind, the footage being lost seemed rather suspicious to me, but after your sibling commenter pointed this out, I see how my comment comes across now. I've edited the comment to make this clear.

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