True necessity of Records? [was: CryptoSeal]

[Peter Gutmann]

coderman <coderman at gmail.com> writes:

>we always had the data; i can't speak to negative effects.
>
>[...]
>
>to be clear, this was not a direct LEO mandate.

I got the same response from talking to techies at a large telco, they kept
the records just in case they needed them (not for any specific LEO use, but
just in case they needed the info at some point in the future), and because it
was easier to keep them than to delete them.  In other words, throwing a few
more drives into a server farm was relatively straightforward compared to
figuring out what to delete, when, under what conditions, and how (lots of
different formats, data all over the place, etc).

(This issue isn't unique to telcos, it seems to be near-universal, it's always
easier to keep data lying around than to figure out what to delete).

Peter.