An interesting article about how a manager lost his job when an instant messaging virus sent his entire recorded conversations to his buddy list. This brings out the ticking time bomb that is the archive of all ones conversations. I've always treated chat and IM as just that - idle chat, and don't record those comments please!
Yet I seem to be a minority - I know lots of people who record their every message. And they've got good reasons, which makes me feel even worse. This permanent archiving kind of takes the spontaneity out of it, and it certainly makes it un-chat-like. How does one feel about teasing around with ones partner, as one does, when the threat of a divorce case in 4 years time brings out how cruel you were? Or, idle musings on the safety features of a product, in an open whiteboard fashion, gets dragged into liability suits?
I don't think there is an easy answer to this dilemma. The medium of chat is as it is, and no amount of wishing for that personal, forgiving experience can make the chat archiving devil vanish.
But there are some things that could be done. Here's one idea - perhaps a chat client could present a policy button with a buddy connection. For example, there might be different buttons for partner/confidential, business/confidential, negotiation/confidential and client/attorney privilege.
The first might extend husband-wife protection, with an intent of making the chat not useable against each party in a court of law. The second might create an internally confidential status, so that any forwarding could be warned against. The third would extend confidentiality to the documents such that they couldn't be used in a dispute (this is a trap for young players that I fell into). And the fourth could make the discussions inaccessible to aggressive plaintiffs. (And, we'd of course need another button for "write your own." Not that many people would of course.)
To support these buttons, there would need to be a textual understanding. A contract, lawyers would call it. If we both selected the same contract, then we'd agreed up front to its provisions. In legal terms, this gives us some protection - the courts generally agree with what you said up front.
There are limits of course - for example contract protection gets weaker if criminal proceedings are being undertaken. In which case, if you murder your spouse, you shouldn't expect the marital confidentiality button to save you. Also, even if the words can't be presented in court, there might be a lot of value in just reading them.
But it could bring back enough peace of mind to enable IM to get chatty again. What say you? Select your chat confidence policy and IM me with comments....
Posted by iang at July 2, 2004 09:08 AM | TrackBackThe answer is simple one should have a line that they do not cross when it comes to communications Business is that line where are you getting your money. If the business requires that you operate in on an un-authorized channel one not providing you protection from job loss do not use the channel. So do not call your wife using the office phone or send letters using the company postage. Work envrioments are salt mines with overseers ready to apply the lash to the lackey.
Posted by: Jimbo at July 2, 2004 09:24 AM