Gmail's 'Self-Destruct' Feature Will Probably Be Used To Illegally Destroy Government Records (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A new update rolling out for Gmail offers a "self destruct" feature that allows users to send messages that expire after a set amount of time. While this may sound great for personal use, activists fear that government organizations will use the feature to delete public records to hide them from reporters and others interested in government transparency. Normally, government emails are available to journalists, researchers, and citizens using Freedom of Information Act requests (and its state-level analogues.) The self destruct feature was announced on April 25 as part of Google's new confidential mode for G Suite. In addition to self destruct, confidential mode allows users to delete messages after they have been sent and places restrictions on how recipients can interact with received emails. "As more local and state governments and their various agencies seek to use Gmail, there is the potential that state public records laws will be circumvented by emails that 'disappear' after a period of time," the National Freedom of Information Coalition wrote in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. "The public's fundamental right to transparency and openness by their governments will be compromised. We urge you take steps to assure the 'self-destruct' feature be disabled on government Gmail accounts and on emails directed to a government entity."

Comments

And this is why

[rickb928]

we need to stop this foolishness of non-government mail and file servers, using personal resources for official business, and not properly archiving everything, period, not daily but continuously.

Expensive but worth it.

Re:Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

If you voted for Hillary, you're a traitor.

Huh. Does the same hold if you voted for our comrade in chief.

You're not going to have a small gov't anyway

[rsilvergun]

This is what drives me nuts about the "small government" voters. If people think the rich and powerful aren't just going to build a large government apparatus for their own use they haven't been paying attention to the last 2000+ years of history. The question is never, will there be a powerful government, it's always, who will that government work for?