US agencies caution companies against deleting Slack or Signal chats
Federal antitrust enforcers have issued a warning, stating that companies currently being investigated must provide records of instant messaging usage by employees instead of relying solely on email.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission said they are editing the language they sent to the companies under investigation to make clear that they must retain and release conversations from platforms such as Salesforce Inc.’s Slack and ephemeral messaging apps such as Meta Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp and Signal. Failure to preserve these messages could result in fines or possible criminal charges for destroying the documents, according to authorities.
The announcement comes as cartel watchdogs have recently expressed concern about the deletion of conversations and messages.
The Justice Department has asked the federal judge overseeing Alphabet Inc’s antitrust lawsuit against Google to punish the company for failing to communicate internally among employees. Google’s top lawyer, Kent Walker, was reprimanded by another federal judge last year over the company’s logging practices that led to the destruction of messages on Google Chats, the tech giant’s internal messaging program.
Meanwhile, the FTC alleged that Amazon.com Inc. employees, including founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, used the messaging app Signal to hide communications from regulators investigating the company for antitrust violations. Amazon has denied that its employees deleted the messages, saying the company notified the FTC about Signal use and “carefully collected Signal conversations from its employees’ phones and allowed Agency staff to review those conversations.”
