[lovich]

If those entities were custodians in charge of the data at hand in the court case, the court would order that.

This post appears to be full of people who aren’t actually angry at the results of this case but angry at how the US legal system has been working for decades, possibly centuries since I don’t know when this precedent was first set

[scarab92]

Is it not valid to be concerned about overly broad invasions of privacy regardless of how long such orders have been occurring?

[Retric]

What privacy specifically? The courts have always been able to compel people to recount things they know which could include a conversation between you and your plumber if it was somehow related to a case.

The company records and uses this stuff internally, retention is about keeping information accurate and accessible.

Lawsuits allow in a limited context the sharing of non public information held by individuals/companies in the lawsuit. But once you submit something to OpenAI it’s now there information not just your information.

[nickff]

I think that some of the people here dislike (or are alarmed by) the way that the court can compel parties to retain data which would otherwise have vanished into the ether.

[lelanthran]

> I think that some of the people here dislike (or are alarmed by) the way that the court can compel parties to retain data which would otherwise have vanished into the ether.

Maybe so, but this has always been the case for hundreds of years.

After all, how on earth do you propose having getting fair hearing if the other party is allowed to destroy the evidence you asked for in your papers?

Because this is what would happen:

You: Your Honour, please ask the other party to turn over all their invoices for the period in question

Other Party: We will turn over only those invoices we have

*Other party goes back to the office and deletes everything.

The thing is, once a party in a suit asks for a certain piece of evidence, the other party can't turn around and say "Our policy is to delete everything, and our policy trumps the orders of this court".

[nickff]

I think your points are all valid, but… On the other hand, this sort of preservation does substantially reduce user privacy, disclosing personal information to unauthorized parties, with no guarantees of security, no audits, and few safeguards.

This is much more concerning (from a privacy perspective) than a company using cookies to track which pages on a website they’ve visited.

[lelanthran]

> On the other hand, this sort of preservation does substantially reduce user privacy,

Yes, that's by design and already hundreds of years old in practice.

You cannot refuse a court evidence to protect your or anyone else's privacy.

I see no reason to make an exception for rich and powerful companies.

I don't want a party to a suit having the ability to suppress evidence due to privacy concerns. There is no privacy once you get to a civil court other than what the court, at its discretion, allows, such as anonymisation.

[Retric]

I disagree because the information has already been recorded and users don’t have a say in who at the company or some random 3rd party the company sells that data to is “authorized” to view data.

It’s the collection itself that’s the problem not how soon it’s deleted as economically worthless.

> with no guarantees of security, no audits, and few safeguards.

The courts pay far more attention to that stuff than profit maximizing entities like OpenAI.

[dragonwriter]

Its not an “invasion of privacy” for a company who already had data to be prohibited from destroying it when they are sued in a case where that data is evidence.

[dogleash]

Yeah, sure. But understanding the legal system tells us the players and what systems exist that we might be mad at.

For me, one company obligated to retain business records during civil litigation against another company, reviewed within the normal discovery process is tolerable. Considering the alternative is lawlessness. I'm fine with it.

Companies that make business records out of invading privacy? They, IMO, deserve the fury of 1000 suns.

[lovich]

It’s not private. You handed over the data to a third party.

[rodgerd]

If you cared about your privacy, why are you handing all this stuff to Sam Altman? Did he represent that OpenAI would be privacy-preserving? Have they taken any technical steps to avoid this scenario?