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Consider how it would be if the NSA passed our email through a system that uses machine learning to generate a list of suspects, but no human analyst read the body text of any message.

Somehow I don't think we'd say that they haven't intercepted the email.

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Of course not. And they are doubtless doing something like that, because human analysts could not possibly keep up. The idea is to build a huge haystack, then go searching for needles in it, using as much automation as possible.

And, like any Gmail user, you did agree to their TOS? Well? Didn't you?

Where does the TOS mention indexing email to build an ad profile?

I'm not a gmail user, so no, I didn't agree to their TOS, and I don't know which of my emails are intercepted by google because I don't know who redirects their email there.

Also, the judge has already decided that even Gmail users are generally unlikely to understand that their emails are being intercepted for Google's business purposes.

Have you been following the Snowden case? That is exactly what the NSA is claiming.

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