Slashdot Mirror
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. .'"
What happens for companies that don't host their own e-mail, particularly smaller companies?
In order to save money, my company hosts our website and e-mail on a shared server. E-mails are downloaded via POP3 and immediately deleted from the server (each account can only hold 20MB online at one time). Most people then delete their e-mails after reading, so we have absolutely no way to retrieve this data.
This doesn't seem to impact my company, but at some point I fear regulators will start requiring more stringent data retention processes (among other IT tech processes). SOX has already hurt large companies, hopefully they don't start pushing some its fundamentals down to the little (non-public) folks.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Is congress and the white house. Much like congress is exempt from the Sarbanes/Oxley Act.
Want to see the biggest crooks and ones fudging the numbers, look at congress. Enron couldn't come close. They all would have been locked up years ago if they had to abide by the laws they pass.
This is a bit misleading. Its only "virtual shredding" if you don't keep the records around for a reasonable period (either by statutory requirements or insutry standards) or if you have notice of litigation in which the evidence is relevant, and you continue to shred.
Thats why there is a document retention policy safe harbor in the rules themselves.
FWIW, lawyers, even the "technology experts" don't seem to understand technology as well as someone who came through IT before becoming a lawyer.
(disclaimer: IT guy-turned-lawyer, so I always think I know more than "pure lawyers" when it comes to tech).
Since the linked article is light on information, I found the actual amendments (note: PDF)
While I'm in favor of measures to curb white collar crime these requirements seems to do more harm that good by encouraging companies to take business elsewhere.
Practically everyone can scramble our email, like with "Pretty Good Privacy" (PGP). If many of us do it, they might be able to crack it or force our password after due legal process, but private parties won't be able to snoop through all of us on any possible budgets.
Your government can probably crack any nonsymmetric crypto (with help from the US), but might not have the resources to crack everyone's all the time. You can try a tinfoil hat, YMMV.
The real problem is webmail, which can't use any installed crypto on either end (with possible rare exceptions, but the rarity and/or nonintegration makes them useless at only one end of the comms).
If GMail let me upload a PGP applet I signed myself (which I could validate in the pages when I hit them), which they embedded into their pages in Javascript the public could audit for holes, they might actually become by far the best email system for the masses. And win the webmail wars. And really piss off the government(s) that have been trying to pry into their transactions for years.
--
make install -not war
These are NEW rules? and they refer to an IT worker copying over TAPE? Does this mean I should be saving all my carbon paper too? how about punch cards?
Might all this extra data clog the system of tubes that is the internet?
Techie:- We need to keep more backups of our e-mail database
Bean Counter:- How much do the tapes cost
Techie:- Lots - we need at least one DLT per backup
Bean Counter:- We can't afford it.
Techie:- We have to afford it
Bean Counter:- Just leave the requisition in my intray
Months Pass
Bean Counter:- The courts are on to us. Where are the e-mail backups for the 1st December 2006
Techie:- I had to overwrite them so as to keep a reasonabley current backup
Judge:- Techie, you shredded evidence - now you're for it
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Now would be a good time to invest in companies that make storages devices
This link goes into a bit more detail than the article in the main /. story.
The pertinent rules appear to be the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, specifically Rule 16 dealing with pretrial scheduling and Rule 26(f) relating to discovery and disclosure.
Cornell University has these rules online. They might be outdated already.
Rule 16
Rule 26
Wikipedia also has a writeup on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Do a search for rules on electronic discovery for more commentary.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So all the email traffic done in the US will be stored somewhere at least once, often twice (sender+reciever) and in some cases several times.
And storing them is not enough: you'l need to browse them for searches!
This is a very very smart move!
And when litigations will go with browsed web pages, we'll need to store all the web we browse!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"companies and other entities involved in federal litigation"
Odds are you already know if you're one of these.
(Use your best Jeff Foxworthy voice for this next part)
"If your CFO has been escorted out of the building on the national news by people with big yellow letters on their backs..."
"If the new guy in the office spends all his spare time chatting up his sleeve instead of the secretary..."
"If your office phone system now says Press 1 for Customer Service, Press 2 for Public Defenders..."
"If they show Dennis Kozlowski on Biography and your boss snorts "Huh. Pikers..."
"if you check your email and a cheery voice announces "You've got bail!"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Nice try, but you are sadly wrong thanks to your slippery-slope fallacy. As long as you have a data collection policy and follow it, you're fine. Documents/data that have been shredded prior to discovery or litigation aren't your problem. If your policy is "shred every 60 days" and you follow it, and the court requests something 120 days old, your policy will stand up in court. This rule applies only to those who are currently under federal litigation or think they soon might be.