alt Hacker NewsThere is a difference between keeping one's privacy and actively abusing and masquerading attorney client privilege to conceal criminal actions, knowing they are criminal actions. Because that is what Google was doing. They knew extremely well how they were violating the law and the implications.
And even worse, actively recruiting individuals to commit obstruction of justice and evidence spoliation (two distinct categories), so you as a company can thrive from crime a few more years.
The law is there to protect consumers.
Privacy law is there to protect everyone. Google could have easily said: I have the evidence, but I plead the fifth and not going to provide that evidence that you seek in discovery. The issue of course is in civil proceedings this means, the Court can instruct adverse inference or strike the pleadings -- that is a default judgment.
That's not how any of this works, at all. Please take the time to at least take a look an introductory Wikipedia article about the legal system. (For starters, "pleading the fifth" applies only to testimony of a human being which may cause him to be personally accused of a crime. It has zero relevance to the question of accessing archived emails and chat logs sitting on a hard drive which is owned by a corporation accused of a civil violation.)