I've found
In the handful of times I've asked "can I get that in writing" that nothing discourages dumb ideas more quickly than asking that the instruction to implement said dumb idea be in writing. I think it makes the source of the dumb idea wonder exactly why someone would ask for it in writing...
Didn't stop an ILLEGAL idea that came from above once, but once someone (not me in this case) was able to provide pretty conclusive proof it was illegal, and that proof was widely distributed to many higher ups, there was a big shitstorm that included eventually shooting the messenger (so luckily not me) but the support for it died.
They didn't ask to renew my contract but if they had I would have turned it down. Even if you have an instruction in writing I don't want to risk finding out the hard way what my liability would be for having a part in implementing it even if I was unaware it was illegal.
I don't recall the exact details of what exactly was illegal, it wasn't really cut and dried where the illegality would be obvious on its face. Basically they had retention requirements and wanted to "save space" in archive backups by excising some stuff that wasn't covered by the letter of the law. It would however make it much more time consuming to investigate what was covered.
The amount of space it would save was only a few percent so it wasn't really justifiable on technical grounds, there was some other reason behind it. The "messenger" was another consultant on the team whose wife was a lawyer - she did some pro bono digging for him and found a company had attempted something almost identical and got in some hot water when those records had to be produced in a trial.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
