[Cryptography] DoJ/FBI's "nuclear"/Lavabit option

[Jerry Leichter]

> When IBM was faced with anti-trust litigation from the U.S. Govt in the late 1960's, it famously delivered the subpoena'd discovery documents in a number of moving-van-type semi-trailer-truck-fulls of boxes.  I think it took years for the govt to wade through the documents....
None of this would work today to do anything but get the company fined or its people put into jail.  The courts have established rules about "E-discovery" which require, for example, that if information that you have to supply is available in a machine-readable format, you have to deliver it that way.

The rules, in fact, can impose some big costs.  Some of the rules around e-mail are particularly strict and intrusive.  And after Enron, the rules about data retention are pretty sharp-edged.

"E-discovery software" is a thing these days....

                                                        -- Jerry

BTW, there's a nice story about the IBM data.  CDC (Control Data) had a private monopoly lawsuit against IBM.  One day, it was suddenly settled.  One of the most important features of the settlement from IBM's point of view (for which they probably tossed quite a bit of money on the table) was that CDC was required to immediately destroy a huge (for the era) database they had built of the thousands of boxes of material they'd gotten from IBM as part of discovery.  This was in the 1960's - the idea of building a searchable database of documentation was novel, and hardly anyone would have had the resources to do it even if they understood its value.  CDC had, and had used it effectively.  IBM knew that were the DOJ to learn of an impending settlement, they would immediately try to get an order that the CDC make it available to them.  So IBM insisted on that it be irretrievably gone by the time the settlement went public.