MICROSOFT LAUNCHES its latest upgrade to the all-conquering Orifice suite of programs tomorrow, and one of the features incorporated into the new Outlook will be an email "self-destruct" function, which, it seems, it could have done with during its court battle with the US Department of Justice. During that trial, the court ordered Microsoft to hand over thousands of old emails, some of which turned up some very interesting stuff about how the Vole actively worked to annihilate its competitors.
Microsoft reckons its use of "Information Rights Management" to determine who is allowed to see emails and by which date emails should be deleted is supposed to increase security. We here, however, as journalists and chroniclers of the age, suggest that the software decreases security by allowing revisionist versions of our current history to appear, as the original documents are digitally shredded. Even in the US, destroying emails can be a federal offence. Indeed, just this year brokers Morgan Stanley were fined $1.65m for failing to keep proper e-mail records.