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Comment by Rhapso | Hacker News Reader

This goes a few steps past just reading keywords out of my emails to place ads. This requires Gmail to have intimate knowledge of my emailing habits. While from the software point of view this is not scary, the "profile" data has to be stored someplace other then my machine and it makes me wonder who can read it. Will Google have to surrender my psychological profile upon a subpoena? This is sarcastic, but a real concern. Even if I somehow am magicked into trusting Google, no amount of magic will allow me to trust the government, and anything Google knows, the government has right to.

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"the data has to be stored someplace other then my machine and it makes me wonder who can read it"

Data being stored someplace other than your machine is the reason why people use webmail.

I think he meant the "psychological profile" data, not his email text.

Without knowing anything detailed about how all this is implemented, it looks to be derived from nothing more than is stored in your inbox:

The text of the emails, and whether they are read and replied to.

As such it seems like strictly less information than you are requesting that they store.

In the presentation they say that it's partially based on what E-Mails you read. So they're tracking more than just the information in your inbox, they're also considering how you use your inbox through the GMail web interface.

I'd be surprised if this kind of data wasn't already tracked.

Oh yes, Google has explicitly stated that they track stuff like this. I was just replying to the "it looks to be derived from nothing more than is stored in your inbox" comment by moultano. Which is obviously incorrect, and Google even states so in their introduction video.

It'd be interesting to what degree using GMail over IMAP v.s. over the GMail web interface affects the heuristics of this new feature.

The read/unread state of each email is obviously stored to construct the ui. That seems like data you are already asking them to store.

There will almost inevitably eventually be an enterprising district attorney who uses "The defendant's computer is configured to automatically prioritize his email by his interests. We obtained a warrant for, and received, the contents of the defendant's inbox. The subject line of his most important email of the day: Lurid Kiddie Porn."

It will probably be used against someone who actually has bona fide interest in child pornography. Probably.

After all, cache contents and network logs are used to help convict people all of the time. Most of them are factually guilty, but the legal system probably does not see eye to eye with technically inclined members of this audience as to whether cache contents mean that someone intended or attempted to view the cached content.

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