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New Email Rules Effective Friday
An anonymous reader writes "As of today [Friday], certain U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees, in accordance with new federal rules. In April the Supreme Court began requiring companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce 'electronically stored information' as part of the discovery process of a trial." From the article: "Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of 'virtual shredding,' said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation. 'There are hundreds of "e-discovery vendors" and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006, [James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co.] said. .'"
Our government fears transparency because we'd see the damage done to its lungs after years of surviving on tobacco taxes.
How hard do you think it'd be for the government to get their hands on those PGP keys if they were stored on google's servers.. ?
Google is a US company and should a court request those keys.. they'd give them.
MABASPLOOM!
I'm an admin in a smaller company as you - shared hosted email. If you really want to play it safe, I would say make the responsibility of saving email the responsibility of each user.
It's a good thing you're an admin, and not head of the company. Here's how your scenario might play out it court:
Judge: Email 1 is a reply to email 0, but I don't see email 0. These are all emails to Dwayne. Dwayne, what happened to email 0?
Dwayne: Umm.. I guess I must have deleted it by mistake. I do that all the time. I know we're not supposed to delete email, but this email thing is complicated and I must have hit the wrong button or something.
Judge: Ok, but companies keep backup tapes these days. What happened to them?
Archen: Oh I just decided to leave all that stuff up to the users. I couldn't be bothered with buying more tapes and modifying my backup schedule. The backup tapes get over-written every week, and that email was from 3 weeks ago.
Judge: I see. Well you've obviously in violation of the ruling. I can't hold Dwayne here responsible since these systems are complicated, and data retention should be handled by someone specially trained. But since you made the decision, I'm holding the entire company responsible and fining you 1 million dollars. I'm also recommending to the federal prosecutor you be charged with obstruction of justice Mr. Archen. Destruction of data also won't help the case against you.
AccountKiller