Deleting E-mail Could Get You In Trouble

Sterling D. Allan writes "A story in the Deseret News cautions governments and corporations from deleting legitimate email. Expensive measures are being called into place to archive the mail for future subpoena purposes. Think Enron on one hand. Think Monicagate on the other. Next they'll ask us to keep recordings of all our phone conversations? Big brother gets bigger -- with good reasons, as always. What about all those business propositions I get from Nigeria. Do I have to keep those too? "Get rich from home" (to pay for the purchase of a new hard drive to contain all your spam). One man's junk is another man's treasure. You never know what an IRS agent might find lucky."

Comments

It's RTFA time...

[kirun]

Salt Lake County is looking at a system whereby employees would decide whether the e-mail is a "non-record" (spam or personal; delete whenever you want);

So, no, we don't have to keep spam.

actually...

[Ignignot]

Next they'll ask us to keep recordings of all our phone conversations?

Actually trading corporations (like Bear Sterns or Bloomburg) are required to record all conversations relating to market orders. That means that some phone lines are always being recorded at all times. This is required by the SEC. You'd be suprised what restrictions are already in place to prevent things like insider trading from happening.

Company policy requires email deletion

[britneys 9th husband]

Some companies have "document retention" policies that require employees to delete email after a certain period of time. It's not to free up space on the servers, it's to make sure the stuff can't be subpoenaed. Many respected companies have policies like this. Many even have tools that make the email deletion automatic, and require management approval to disable the tool.

So maybe this story is really just focused on banning policies like this.