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Google: Gmail users ‘have no legitimate expectation of privacy’

20 pointsby ferdoalmost 12 years ago

1 comment

anxiousalmost 12 years ago
Wow, talk about taking things out of context, but I guess this is what you get from &quot;consumer watchdog&quot; via RT.<p>The &quot;quote&quot; in question is that of a lawyer citing a previous ruling (they do that a lot) to counter a specific allegation:<p><i>“a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over tothird parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979). </i><p>The whole case is built on trying to make physical mail (snail mail) analogies applicable to email, they are accusing Google of &quot;reading&quot; emails when it&#x27;s computers &quot;parsing&quot; text. That particular part of the motion is in response to the argument that non-Gmail users class action is valid since they didn&#x27;t agree to the TOS. Google counters that &quot;automated processing&quot; is part of webmail.<p>Link to relevant page: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/160041493/Google-Motion-061313#page=27" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;160041493&#x2F;Google-Motion-061313#pag...</a><p>It&#x27;s either the author have never seen a court briefing before or he’s just pushing an agenda.<p>The case is about Gmail &quot;scanning&quot; emails to target ads, Google is arguing (rightly so) that machines parsing emails is not equivalent to &quot;reading&quot; it, and that &quot;automated processes&quot; are responsible for spam filtering, spell checking and other features.<p>The entire motion, read it and make you own conclusions: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/160041493/Google-Motion-061313" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;160041493&#x2F;Google-Motion-061313</a>