I don't know, but I think it is much more likely that she is being fired for sharing internal info with journalists, outside activists, or former employees, than for sharing it with her own counsel.

Your employer might not like you sharing their internal info with your own attorney (under attorney-client privilege), but if they fire you for it, they potentially expose themselves to significant legal risk. Maybe you are planning to file a complaint or lawsuit about discrimination or harassment, or considering reporting your employer to some regulatory agency, and firing you for sharing evidence with your own attorney could legally be retaliation and viewed poorly by the legal system.

Now, if you share internal info with someone else's lawyer, or if you ask your own lawyer to share that info with third parties (other than regulatory agencies), different story – I think your employer is on much firmer legal grounds in those cases.

> but I think it is much more likely...

...but you really have no idea.

You’re just speculating, in a way that conforms with how you’d like to interpret these events.

Which, to be fair, is what we’re all doing, with basically no information on what actually happened.

At this point, it’s all just the he-said-she-said from the Google PR machine.

I think in this case, there’s little reason for someone without bias to accept Google’s versions of events.

Maybe you’re right; if you’re not, maybe she’ll sue. Maybe not.

What is clear though is that what you think is likely, is probably not particularly indicative of what actually happened because, flat out, you have no idea.

None of us really do at this point.

Has she given a contradictory version of events?

> Has she given a contradictory version of events?

To be fair, if she were preparing a wrongful termination suit, publicly commenting would be an unforced error.

It wouldn't be the first time Google miscalculated legal risk.

And they didn't say they fired her for exfiltrating documents. That's how most people will interpret what they said. But they left room to say it wasn't material.

Isn’t that “actually” exfiltrating company documents? Not Google, but I don’t remember any of my NDAs mentioning that I couldn’t share confidential/privileged/company information unless I really wanted to with my lawyer...

Laws override NDAs. Legal counsel is a common exception. Different jurisdictions have different specific rules.

Your NDAs probably don't say you can cooperate with law enforcement investigations either. But it's very unlikely a court would say you can't.

You still might need a legal order to obtain the documents.

Or you might not. Different jurisdictions have different rules.

Everyone is assuming it’s email, but you don’t need “a script” to search your own email, and you don’t need to risk getting fired sending emails to your lawyer, you just print them out. Or wait to get fired and get them during discovery. Google isn’t going to go into conspiracy mode and risk hundreds of millions over a line manager getting fired, that’s absurd.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this “script” was trying to pull documents from manager or HR only sources and that they were related to Gebru’s employment—hence the need for a script to do a search. Which would imply she was looking for ‘dirt’ outside of her normal access and responsibilities.

That scenario would explain a lot of what’s going on here.

Saying documents could mean emails doesn't assume it's email. Axios said the unnamed source said Mitchell looked through "her messages" though. And what other relevant files would there be thousands of?

Google Apps Script can do things Gmail search can't. Like regex.

Lawyers I know say don't rely on discovery if you can help it.

You think Google doesn't monitor printing?

I mean, generally speaking you can’t get fired for printing your own emails.