Google Email Spying Ruled Unlawful

That's not what the document says though! Scroll to the end.

It says that one of Google's motions to dismiss has suceeded, striking out part of the case as inapplicable, and that the case is being allowed to proceed. This is nowhere near even a first ruling. And it relates to "spying" in the sense of processing email to show adverts, not the NSA.

IANAL but the Court seems to have granted Google's motion to dismiss only for claims under CIPA Section 632 while denying it for all the other sections.

> the Court hereby GRANTS Google’s Motion to Dismiss with leave to amend with respect to Plaintiffs’ CIPA section 632 claims

This is Section 632:

> Section 632 prohibits unauthorized electronic eavesdropping on confidential conversations. To state a claim under section 632, a plaintiff must allege an electronic recording of or eavesdropping on a confidential communication, and that not all parties consented to the eavesdropping.

However, the Court has not granted Google's motion to dismiss claims related to other sections:

> The Court DENIES Google’s Motion to Dismiss with respect to all other claims.

So one of the sections that still stands is Section 631:

> Section 631 prohibits wiretapping or “any other unauthorized connection” with a “wire, line, cable, or instrument.” The California Supreme Court has held that section 631 protects against three distinct types of harms: “intentional wiretapping, willfully attempting to learn the contents or meaning of a communication in transit over a wire, and attempting to use or communicate information obtained as a result of engaging in either of the previous two activities.”

Which probably explains the title. I still don't agree with the title though.

Good. Google shouldn't be able to even "analyze" private communications and data, at the very least not without the user's explicit consent (opt-in). Being in the ToS doesn't count since nobody reads those.

Maybe if they aren't allowed to do it anymore, they'll finally take requests to encrypt their services end-to-end seriously. Because right now they probably aren't even considering encrypting Hangouts if that means they can't analyze it for ads anymore, which is just sad and frustrating.

The headline is a lie, nothing Google has been found to have done has been ruled unlawful. The order here simply allows the case against Google to proceed in part (while throwing out part of it in its current form). This is a very early ruling in the case, before any evidence has been presented, and is purely a ruling as a matter of law about the standing of the parties to bring the case, and whether the claims made are even valid legal charges.

Taken to an extreme, this idea of applying wiretapping law to federated services seems to be a danger to open systems. A closed messaging system can get all users, both senders and recipients, to agree to whatever is needed to make the system work (e.g. if they need to examine the content and not just the envelope)

However, when you have federation, two different sets of users on two different services may have agreed to differing terms. Applying terms like "interception" in these cases also seems strange.

It's bad enough that silos and vertical integration seem to be winning over the internet of old, but to have the legal system create a situation in which the open systems are much more risky to run seems to be a bad precedent.

(I also have to wonder who is really behind these cases. It's not very plausible that any of the plantiffs are really being harmed by automated ad serving, and then there's the whole Scroogled campaign...as Arsenio Hall used to say...things that make you go hmmmmm.)

no such thing as a free email account