Incriminating Emails – Why Don’t Firms Delete Them?

Question

I’m listening to the Goldman Sachs grilling on Bloomberg Radio.
And the following questions come to mind.

(1)
Why don’t firms delete their incriminating internal emails before
senate hearings and court proceedings are to begin?
(They can easily determine if the email was sent externally.)

(2)
Is it merely because authorities can subpoena the back-ups
from the off-site data storage providers (OS)?

(3)
And if so, doesn’t a firm have the right to order its OS to
delete all back-ups at any time (provided there is no subpoena)?

(4)
And if there is no OS at all then what is to stop a firm from
deleting all such internal emails?

Answer 1

There are laws on how long a company must maintain those backups. If they delete them before that time, they will face heavy penalties.



Also, the backups are only from the servers. Usually, email is cached locally on the workstation, so even if they delete it off the server, there will still be local copies out on the workstations that could be read.

Answer 2

Certain companies are required to keep backups of all internal and external email for a specified period. Companies under the jurisdiction of the SEC are one of those situations.



In any event, defining 'incriminating' emails would be difficult, the only real solution would be wholesale deletion, which could very well destroy HELPFUL evidence, as well as important company data.

Answer 3

They don't because it's not as simple as opening Outlook and pressing delete. The server keeps a copy. In many cases, it's likely that additional servers involved in sending the email have copies. As you mention, backups are also likely to retain copies. If it came from outside the office, the originating server has a copy....