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It's highly relevant. If we say Google can scan your email just to support an arbitrary business model, how can we make an argument that the NSA should be prevented from doing it in the name of national security.

It isn't a good thing for Google to try to make loss of privacy seem like business as usual.

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I don't like that Google would build a profile on me by scanning the contents of my emails, but it's an agreement I knowingly enter into when I occasionally use Gmail.

But what about a non-Gmail-using party who sends emails to one or more Gmail users? Is Google building a dossier on them based on their return address? Are they associating that person's email with other tracking mechanisms Google employs?

I don't know if Google does these things, but if they did, would it be OK?

If some or all of the collected raw data is at most a 'probably foreign' request away for military spies, is it OK to scan and store every bit of data that would be permissible in a mutual-trust-based civil society?

That's easy.

You signed up for Gmail knowing how your email service is being paid for.

As for National Security, well, the hell with it! No role for a nation or security unless I get to define the parameters of my privacy!

Snowden 2020! (When he'll be over 35 ;)).

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