Amazon Defends Its Use of Signal Messages in Court (geekwire.com) 54
America's Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed an antitrust suit against Amazon in September. This week Amazon responded in court about its usage of Signal's "disappearing messages" feature.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares GeekWire's report: At a company known for putting its most important ideas and strategies into comprehensive six-page memos, quick messages between executives aren't the place for meaningful business discussions. That's one of the points made by Amazon in its response Monday to the Federal Trade Commission's allegations about executives' use of the Signal encrypted communications app, known for its "disappearing messages" feature. "For these individuals, just like other short-form messaging, Signal was not a means to send 'structured, narrative text'; it was a way to get someone's attention or have quick exchanges on sensitive topics like public relations or human resources," the company says as part of its response, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Of course, for regulators investigating the company's business practices, these offhanded private comments between Amazon executives could be more revealing than carefully crafted memos meant for wider internal distribution. But in its filing this week, Amazon says there is no evidence that relevant messages have been lost, or that Signal was used to conceal communications that would have been responsive to the FTC's discovery requests. The company says "the equally logical explanation — made more compelling by the available evidence — is that such messages never existed."
In an April 25 motion, the FTC argued that the absence of Signal messages from Amazon discussing substantive business issues relevant to the case was a strong indication that such messages had disappeared. "Amazon executives deleted many Signal messages during Plaintiffs' pre-Complaint investigation, and Amazon did not instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages until over fifteen months after Amazon knew that Plaintiffs' investigation was underway," the FTC wrote in its motion. "It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon's actions and inactions...."
Amazon's filing quotes the company's founder, Jeff Bezos, saying in a deposition in the case that "[t]o discuss anything in text messaging or Signal messaging or anything like that of any substance would be akin to business malpractice. It's just too short of a messaging format...." The company's filing traces the initial use of Signal by executives back to the suspected hacking of Bezos' phone in 2018, which prompted the Amazon founder to seek ways to send messages more securely.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares GeekWire's report: At a company known for putting its most important ideas and strategies into comprehensive six-page memos, quick messages between executives aren't the place for meaningful business discussions. That's one of the points made by Amazon in its response Monday to the Federal Trade Commission's allegations about executives' use of the Signal encrypted communications app, known for its "disappearing messages" feature. "For these individuals, just like other short-form messaging, Signal was not a means to send 'structured, narrative text'; it was a way to get someone's attention or have quick exchanges on sensitive topics like public relations or human resources," the company says as part of its response, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Of course, for regulators investigating the company's business practices, these offhanded private comments between Amazon executives could be more revealing than carefully crafted memos meant for wider internal distribution. But in its filing this week, Amazon says there is no evidence that relevant messages have been lost, or that Signal was used to conceal communications that would have been responsive to the FTC's discovery requests. The company says "the equally logical explanation — made more compelling by the available evidence — is that such messages never existed."
In an April 25 motion, the FTC argued that the absence of Signal messages from Amazon discussing substantive business issues relevant to the case was a strong indication that such messages had disappeared. "Amazon executives deleted many Signal messages during Plaintiffs' pre-Complaint investigation, and Amazon did not instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages until over fifteen months after Amazon knew that Plaintiffs' investigation was underway," the FTC wrote in its motion. "It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon's actions and inactions...."
Amazon's filing quotes the company's founder, Jeff Bezos, saying in a deposition in the case that "[t]o discuss anything in text messaging or Signal messaging or anything like that of any substance would be akin to business malpractice. It's just too short of a messaging format...." The company's filing traces the initial use of Signal by executives back to the suspected hacking of Bezos' phone in 2018, which prompted the Amazon founder to seek ways to send messages more securely.
âoeSensitive topicsâ (Score:5, Insightful)
A place to discuss sensitive topics? You mean a place to say things that you donâ(TM)t want other people to read later? Hmm⦠sounds like youâ(TM)re admitting to exactly what the court is worried about.
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Get your own, mine is busy taking dictation.
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Get your own, mine is busy taking dictation.
Sexist ... but FUNNY
Re: âoeSensitive topicsâ (Score:2)
Sounds like contempt of court (Score:3)
Seriously... how else could you describe shovelling that shit at a judge? Nobody in their right mind is going to believe "I couldn't send entire books through this secure line with no data retention, so all the stuff I DID frequently send through it is stuff that you don't need to worry about".
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Come on now we've all seen what happens to rich people who violate the orders of a judge. You get 10 strikes.
Re:Sounds like contempt of court (Score:4, Insightful)
Paraphrasing: "Mr Trump, I really don't want to put you in jail, it would cause me problems. Please stop obviously ignoring my $1000 contempt fines like they're spare change and when you bypass my gag order by passing your messages through allies outside the courtroom, I'll look the other way."
Yeah, not a great look for 'justice' for anybody who is paying attention.
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Paraphrasing: "Mr Trump, I really don't want to put you in jail, it would cause me problems. Please stop obviously ignoring my $1000 contempt fines like they're spare change and when you bypass my gag order by passing your messages through allies outside the courtroom, I'll look the other way."
Yeah, not a great look for 'justice' for anybody who is paying attention.
How should you act when faces with a Star Chamber court? Pretend they're legitimate? Not a good look for the "justice" system.
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You're shocked that committing crimes might land you in court?
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>Federal trial in Florida is now suspended until further notice from the judge presiding over it due to all of the complicated Constitutional issues involved
She's delaying instead of ruling because she knows the ruling she wants to make for Trump would be overturned immediately by the 11th circuit CONSERVATIVE court.
Cannon is a loyal Trump appointee who has been degrading trust in the courts with ridiculous actions to protect him.
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>How should you act when faces with a Star Chamber court?
Dear god you're a fucking moron. And it appears from the comment chain, dumb enough to reply 2 comments down without using AC mode.
Everybody knows Trump's a criminal with nothing but contempt for everyone who isn't Trump... you would get more respect if you posted that you don't think his crimes matter than by pretending he hasn't done enough to get any normal person convicted hundreds of times over.
Painting glass walls (Score:4, Interesting)
They're upset that they don't get to spy on private information because they used an ephemeral channel to send it?
Are they upset because they erased the white boards too?
Re:Painting glass walls (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is they waited 15 months to begin data preservation.
Had they simply turned off the auto delete feature when the investigation began then there'd be no issue.
In this situation hiding the crime may be a bigger deal than whatever the original crime was.
I've been the guy who had to do data preservation, key word search for subpoenas etc. We didn't fuck around and tell the court that we waited 15 months to start preservations or that the dog ate our messages. Their behavior as a huge corporation who definitely knows better is offensive to the court and they'll be very lucky not to get bitch slapped hard for this.
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Imagine having every coffee machine conversation recorded and stored for infinity for use in
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That makes sense. It also makes sense to treat them like a normal person under investigation -- completely shut down Amazon, raid all their offices, and lock up whatever documentation they have. Corporations get to do stuff like keep operating, with some minor restriction like "don't delete your data". But if they don't want to do the less messy way of securing that data, there's always the method used on normal people.
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No, employees do not have any such right. They are using company equipment to have company discussions on company time for which they are getting paid company funds. And oh yeah, the company knew they were under investigation.
Literally, those conversations belong to the company. I've been told at every single company and signed off on documents that said my everything is not private and the company has the right to read and copy absolutely anything I do on their computers. That's how it is in the adult
Re: Painting glass walls (Score:2)
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It's not a view. It's reality.
They were under investigation, they knew they were, they had an obligation to preserve data, they didn't, fuck them.
It really is that simple.
It doesn't matter how "people" are. The IT team had a data preservation responsibility. As an employee on company laptop using company services you literally don't have the right or option to control the company saving your messages. The IT team should have been saving all the messages in a separate store.
Period.
Black and white.
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You can feel the law should be different. There are lots of laws I disagree with, too.
But I still follow them and fully expect to be punished to the maximum extent the law allows if I'm caught breaking them.
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No, employees do not have any such right.
Yes, they do. You may debate where the line is, but employees retain various privacy rights.
Ex. https://www.findlaw.com/employ... [findlaw.com]
I've been told at every single company and signed off on documents that said my everything is not private and the company has the right to read and copy absolutely anything I do on their computers. That's how it is in the adult world.
Your "everything" is more broad than the law allows. The fact that you had to sign off to give up more of your rights should be a red herring - you entered into a contractual arrangement and negotiated away your rights.
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These are executives talking business on a "destroy the messages" system still destroying messages after the investigation started.
I hope the judge fucks them hard.
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These are executives talking business on a "destroy the messages" system still destroying messages after the investigation started.
That's the claim, but they offered no proof.
Meanwhile, Amazon's filing seems to make clear that they were cooperating and continue to do so, and even rolled out Wickr so they could automatically manage document retention on an encrypted messaging platform. FWIW, it's actually a fairly easy read: https://storage.courtlistener.... [courtlistener.com]
I won't go so far as to say they're innocent, but it seems like a stretch to claim they're guilty at this point, let alone deserving of:
I hope the judge fucks them hard.
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Perhaps, but it generally isn't in their interests to do so.
After all, aren't we always saying to CYA? If your boss asks you do something via Signal that's not something you should be doing, you want documentation so when the excrement hits the rotating ventilator you want the documentation to be there saying you were following orders.
It also helps in case you need to initiate legal proceedings for getting la
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When you did data preservation, did you start photographing all white board contents before erasing them?
Signal works the way it works. It's at least theoretically possible that even the Signal Foundation couldn't "turn off auto delete", but if that was something the justice department wanted done, they should talk to the Signal Foundation, not Amazon.
Now if you wanted to interfere with Amazon's business by insisting they stop using Signal, then maybe there's some justification for it, but that's the sort
Re: Painting glass walls (Score:1)
Data preservation is only required if you get a court order for discovery, here the FTC says companies have the duty to preserve messages as soon as the company may have grounds to believe there could be an FTC investigation which is nuts.
It is basically the same as saying people have the duty to preserve all their text messages for perusal by the police just in case they can find a crime to pin on you later on.
If FTC has grounds for an investigation, it should open a case with the court and sue Amazon requ
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It's not the same. People are not corporations. A mega corporation is perfectly capable of performing proper data retention once they're informed an investigation has started.
If a random person deletes their messages they might still be fucked too, btw, as most messaging systems do not auto delete. So they have taken an action to destroy evidence. At best this is not a good look in court and will very likely be held against them. Or a judge in a bad mood could fuck their life over.
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The law applies the same. If you on a regular basis delete your messages, like Amazon does here, then that cannot be held against you in a court of law until and unless you have been ordered by the court to preserve those messages. The investigations had not yet started, yet Amazon was supposed to comply with a discovery request?
Bull...Shit... (Score:3)
Signal is my app of choice when it comes to doing stuff that I want to leave no trace of.
I might half-believe employees of a small company with no formal IT use Signal because that's convenient and that's what they use normally. But Amazon has a vast IT infrastructure that its employees can use to send non-"structured narrative text", and a company that size has a well-defined policy on production and retention of company data. If someone at Amazon chooses to use Signal to communicate with colleagues, they immediately and automatically look as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo.
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If someone at Amazon chooses to use Signal to communicate with colleagues, they immediately and automatically look as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo.
These are people that need to chat about ideas (among other things) without those ideas leaking to competitors. Where do you expect them to do that? MS Teams? Google Hangouts? Apple iMessages? Facebook Messenger?
Maybe they did use it for more than they should have? I don't know. But, IMO, there's certainly more than enough justification for Signal's use in many many contexts there, and that's not even getting into personal use ("Bob, wanna go to the bar?").
Side note... if Signal is your app of choice ONLY w
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They could use Chime, they're built in chat client....
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arf. Their.
Bezos can't have it both ways (Score:3)
"For these individuals, just like other short-form messaging, Signal was not a means to send 'structured, narrative text'; it was a way to get someone's attention or have quick exchanges on sensitive topics like public relations or human resources," the company says as part of its response...
and
The company's filing traces the initial use of Signal by executives back to the suspected hacking of Bezos' phone in 2018, which prompted the Amazon founder to seek ways to send messages more securely.
So which is it Jeff? Were the Signal messages as terse and inconsequential as you want us to believe, and therefore unlikely to be of much interest to anybody outside of Amazon? Or were they consequential enough that hackers / competitors / detractors / FTC would find their contents worthwhile?
I realize that crafting the bit of fiction required to answer this question will require some serious literary contortions, so please, take your time.
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Maybe Jeff Bezos should stop working from home and get back into the office if his communications require that much secrecy.
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Now that his wife is gone he can work at home without being nagged to death. Prior to divorce he was better off in the office.
Lets face it (Score:3)
AMZN isn't required to record every conversation (Score:5, Insightful)
Staff at Amazon are not required to record every conversation between themselves. They're not even a broker-dealer or other regulated entity that is required to record all business-relevant phone conversations.
If the Amazon staff had telephoned each other - you know, ye olde voice chatte - then these communications would not have been recorded and no-one would be objecting to that. But just because they could have been recorded - people could have kept their Signal chat history - doesn't mean it's wrong not to. Amazon staff could have recorded all their phone conversations too, Nixon-style, but they didn't and no-one is saying that Amazon are concealing anything when they didn't do that.
Requiring everyone to keep maximal records is not required, and should not be required, and claiming that Amazon staff did anything wrong by not keeping every possible record is just trying to smear them.
I'm not even a fan of Amazon or Bezos, and I still think this whole "not keeping your Signal chat history is a clear sign you're a criminal" is wild overreach.
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Re: AMZN isn't required to record every conversati (Score:1)
Why donâ(TM)t you publish your chat history, if youâ(TM)re not a criminal that is.
Here the FTC hasnâ(TM)t even claimed a crime, they simply say that the company needs to make it available so they can prove a potential crime and ask the judge/jury to draw a negative inference if they cannot.
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Staff at Amazon are not required to record every conversation between themselves.
So the Sarbanes Oxley act [wikipedia.org] means nothing to you and you're willing to give the Amazon Corporation and all of its C-Level suite a pass? Do you understand how we got here? Do you understand how that law came to pass? [wikipedia.org]
I'm sorry but you're wrong, and document retention laws are a real thing for a real reason.
The snake is seasoning it's own tail with this one (Score:2)
Amazon makes a little bit of money monopolizing retail and destroying mom and pop stores but their real profit center is in cloud storage, data management and web service
Signal and paper shredder arguments ... (Score:2)
We didn't use the paper shredder to hide anything. Trust us, everything we shredded was trivial and non-consequential.
Why not just use verbal or phone conversations. At least there is some believability that those conversations were done out of convenience rather than evasion.
Spoken words are also vanishing (Score:2)
I mean, if they object vanishing messaging apps, they should also object face to face conversations.
Communication between humans has always been vanishing first, leaving a trail is a more recent development.