[LAD] [OT] Richard Stallman warns against ChromeOS

[Dan Kegel]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:48 PM, gene heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> Now, if we can just get a law that when I have ... issued the delete to
> the server, it truly was deleted

For what it's worth, Google's caution in promising deletion
is probably because it's not quite sure how to do that
quickly.  Users would be Very Very Angry if a disk outage
or a fire in a datacenter resulted in the loss of their stored
email, so Google probably has some sort of offsite backup
arrangement, and that might complicate prompt deletion.
... yup,
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7401
says
"residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up
to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our
backup systems."

So, if you were google, would you use tape backup?  If so,
how would you do that permanent deletion thing?  If not,
how would you make darn sure you didn't anger users by
losing messages during a disaster?
- Dan

p.s. I used to work there, so I'm probably more sympathetic
to the problems they face than the average privacy activist.