Google filing says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Plaintiffs in the case contend that Google's automated
scanning of e-mail represents an illegal interception of
their electronic communications without their consent.
However, Google, which uses automated scanning to filter
spam and deliver targeted advertising to its users, noted
that plaintiffs consented to the practice in exchange for
the e-mail services. Google goes on to say that courts have
held that all e-mail users "necessarily give implied consent
to the automated processing of their emails."
1. Machines scanning your email doesn't violate privacy 2. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account 3. It's impossible to provide email hosting without some level of automated processing of messages
Google's clearly in the right here, and the various outlets reporting this story need to learn some journalistic ethics.
Depends what the machine or the operator is doing with the result of that scan.
> 2. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account
Gmail users consent to scan from Gmail but if google holds in court that consent is implied to the automated processing of emails then someone might think this content extends to any machine touching the mail on its trip to the recipient. Which is not the same as "scanning mail content to get useful keywords for better ads".
I wonder if google is allowed to scan mails it has received but the user hasn't yet opened. It means google has access to the user's pen buddy mail without that pen buddy's consent. I agree consent from the user is given when he reads any mail that include or not his correspondent text But that correspondent might be using another mail provider and my point is that he hasn't given explicit consent to google to scan its mail... the one allowing that is the gmail user.
What happens if I say to my correspondent "don't share this" and he opens the mail. Has he betrayed me by sharing that mail with google ? If google has indexed that mail content before I (the gmail user) had a chance to read it... did google violate my correspondent's privacy ?
Is sending an email to a gmail address an implied consent to have mail read and indexed for ad targeting ? Excluding necessary and really automated non-profit machine analysis such as white listing, anti-spam, virus, domain verification, stp check, etc.
Automated processing (for making sure it's delivered) of emails certainly doesn't imply scanning content to build a social graph and an ad profile.
Well, this is how anti spam filter works
Why would google be allowed to build a johnchristopher@fastmail ad profile based on the mail sent to my gmail correspondents ?
The analogy with snail mail is blurry because every snail mail exchange doesn't include the full transcript of the conversation.
The actual statement itself is almost a tautology - when you give someone information, you don't expect that the information is private from them because you just gave it to them.
http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
There is NOTHING wrong with having stuff to hide. I have stuff to hide. Didn't break to law, either. This is why I'm moving away from GMail, and Google in general, save for some searches every now and then and perhaps image search. "Don't be evil"? More like "We don't care".
Privacy IS important; anybody who says not is definitely someone I don't understand at all.
In case you have't read it a hundred times before, he continues to say "But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
(1) I searched for this exact phrase (using Google :P) hoping to find the nuance to prove me wrong. I found it on Wikipedia [1] as well as on The Huffington Post [2], the latter actually containing the video in which he says these things. The problem is this: adding "but if you really need that kind of privacy, [you're screwed]" doesn't change the meaning of "if you have something to hide, you must've done something you shouldn't be doing" and that is still utterly, UTTERLY narrow minded.
(2) The terrible, terrible naive argument is made a lot today by all kinds of people (even by my own father, who is generally a huge role model for me), making my criticism of it, unfortunately, quite relevant towards today's spying of the US government. Even if Schmidt HAD added nuance to take away my criticism of what he said -- which he either didn't, or I haven't found it --, it would've stood as a more general criticism. I'm not convinced that Schmidt doesn't still stand by what he said back then, but it can't be too hard for him to make a statement if he feels his views have been improperly represented by the media. If he has, I would love to know about it. As it stands right now, I just cannot have private communication through any service which Google provides, and that means I actually might have to be careful about what I write, and THAT is very wrong in my opinion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/google-ceo-on-priva...
You have to be anyway, you are responsible for your actions and every action of everybody can result in something. The problem is what we as society want to be acceptable results, that is, where we as society want to draw the line.
I look forward to seeing bank robbers use that one. :P
While looking for that second date, I dug up a piece of spamming + domain hoarding history:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.protocols.tcp-ip....
(Note the date of that post and what domain shows up in his list...)
If you need to use your own domain, set up your own server or VPS and install https://kolab.org/ (it's all listed on https://prism-break.org/)