Treating IMs like corporate memos is just plain stupid

ATHENS, GREECE -- Business, government and the courts impose a bizarre "double standard" when it comes to how we treat spoken and written communications. Anything written at work is fair game for corporate snooping, recording and legal liability, while spoken language is off limits. But what about IMs? What about text messages?

Companies are not only allowed to record and store every word you type at work, most companies are actually required by the government to do so.

It all started with the old-school "corporate memo," which was painstakingly crafted using a narrow formula and distributed by hand. These physical paper documents were clearly company property, and subject to subpoena in the event of legal action involving the company or its employees. Memos were fair game. Casual conversations at the water cooler or in the men's room were considered private, off-limits conversation.

Then e-mail came along. Because the company provided the software, bandwidth and backups, and because electronic communications were so easy to back up and store, a consensus emerged that e-mail was to be treated just like corporate memos -- as official government documents subject potentially to legal scrutiny.

Then instant messages (IMs) came along. And for lack of a better metaphor, someone decided these were just like e-mail.

Memos = e-mail. E-mail = IMs. Therefore, IMs are corporate memos. This is the very definition of the slippery slope. Why do we accept it?

Meanwhile, no company, government agency or court would even dream of requiring that microphones be placed in bathrooms and break rooms, hallways and parking lots to record every word spoken by employees to be transcribed, stored and delivered to the courts or the government upon request.

Written communication is simply spoken language codified. What's so magical and special about anything written that makes it fair game for snooping, storage and legal liability?

According to a Pew Internet Project study, 60% of teens surveyed do not think of SMS text messages or IM message as "writing." And I think the teens are right. There should be some kind of written communication that's considered as off limits as casual break room conversations.

Last week I told you about a BigString plug-in for AOL Instant Messenger that lets you send IMs that "self destruct" after some user-configurable period of time, and that can't be copied, forwarded or printed.  

I think that, by default, this is how all IMs and SMS should operate unless special effort is made by the user to retain them.

The reality is that people bang out IMs and SMS messages without much thought or care, much as they do in oral communication with a friend. To place these off-the-cuff conversations in the same legal category as official corporate memos is absurd, problematic, and just plain stupid.