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Google allegedly hid documents from search monopoly lawsuit, DOJ claims:
Google employees have been improperly using attorney-client privilege to hide documents from discovery in litigation and government investigations, according to fresh allegations laid by the US Justice Department (DOJ).
"Google has explicitly and repeatedly instructed its employees to shield important business communications from discovery by using false requests for legal advice," DOJ attorneys wrote in a court filing for its search monopoly lawsuit against Google.
According to the court filing [PDF], Google taught employees to slap an attorney-client privilege label and generic "request" for counsel's advice label on any sensitive business communications that Google might wish to shield from discovery. Slapping these labels onto communications prevents them from being provided for discovery in litigation.
This practice has allegedly been used throughout all levels of Google's hierarchy, with the DOJ claiming Google parent company Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai copied Google chief legal officer Kent Walker onto an email to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki about how to respond to a press inquiry, with "Attorney Client Privileged" at the top.
In these "camouflaged" communications, the attorney allegedly remained silent on a frequent basis, which the DOJ claims underscored that these communications were not genuine requests for legal advice but rather "an effort to hide potential evidence".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 24 2022, @12:14PM
If Google cc's its lawyers to claim privileged attorney-client communications, why not just bulk cc the lawyers on absolutely everything? Then the entire business remains covered.
The government is not going to do anything about it, because they rely upon Google in so many ways as an end-run on spying and other activities they are not legally permitted to do themselves. Washington accuses Huawei of being an appendage of the CCP, and they are, but so is Google an appendage of Washington's. Or, maybe, Washington is an appendage of Google's. YMMV
Washington DC delenda est.