"Do not archive your mail."

That was a quote from a Jim Allchin email advising Microsoft employees of the company "retention" policy. At the bottom of the same article we find that The Bill actually has an assistant whose sole job is to make sure that his little paw-prints aren't visible on any of the creepy things that he does in the course of his job.

Come again? I was under the impression that publicly traded companies had document retention requirements somewhere North of "feel free to delete everything immediately." Yet another example of those in charge trying to make sure that us peons don't have any way of knowing what all they are up to improving our lives, keeping us safe, etc.

People/institutions that take public money, work for the people, or are in other ways reliant on people like you and I for doing what they do owe us an explanation of what they are doing, period. Accountability is bi-partisan. Sure there are national security considerations in certain circumstances, but that's about it, and even that needs to be viewed less, not more expansively. Other than that, if you have to basically hide what you're doing from your bosses (us), you probably shouldn't be doing it.