

Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal - OwGrk
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/09/google-says-scanning-text-of-your-emails-to-sell-ads-is-perfectly-legal.php 

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IanCal
> Google “unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people’s
> private email messages”

I don't understand the concept of "opening up" an email. Comparing digital
things to physical objects is always going to cause problems because they're
_not_.

> “all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be
> subject to automated processing.”

Of course they must, in at least some sense. They've got to be processed by
various programs to store them in the right place. We also expect them to be
scanned and filtered for spam and viruses, which require them being processed.

> The lawsuit notes that the company even scans messages sent to any of the
> 425 million active Gmail users from non-Gmail users who never agreed to the
> company’s terms.

1) Of course it must, for the reasons above.

2) If you send anything to someone else, they can do pretty much whatever they
want with it. You're sending an email to someone that has promised to let
another company scan it.

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dangelov
> "I don't understand the concept of "opening up" an email"

You can look at it same way as you look at "opening a file". Similarly, "read"
and "acquire" can also be thought of in a digital way, rather than analog and
it's perfectly comparable in this context in my opinion. It's also true, they
do "open", "read" and "acquire" contents, even if done by automated, digital
means (programs, algos). Now whether that is or should be unlawful, I don't
know.

~~~
IanCal
But the servers have to process the emails in some sense, they've got to read
the headers for a start. They also _must_ touch and process the body of the
email. You simply cannot process emails without "opening them up", such a
comparison makes absolutely no sense.

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dangelov
You had mentioned that you don't understand the concept of "opening up mail".
I was just making a point that it is in fact quite comparable (your analog vs
digital argument).

In essence though, I don't disagree with you. It must be done for email to
work at all.

"Acquiring" though, depending on how you interpret it, doesn't, unless we want
spam prevention, custom filters, search etc, which obviously people are used
to.

The bigger question is whether doing that to show ads is legal or not.

~~~
Oletros
> The bigger question is whether doing that to show ads is legal or not

What is the difference between "opening them" for full text search or spam
filtering and "opening them" to use them for advertising?

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dangelov
No difference in the opening. The difference is in what they do with the data,
which is what I believe the lawsuit is about.

~~~
Oletros
If this is is what the lawsuit says: “unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires
the content of people’s private email messages”

There is no difference between opening for spam filtering from opening for ad
serving

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Vivtek
Why is that even a question? Of course it's legal. It's in the terms of using
their service in the first place. Nobody's forcing anybody to use Gmail, after
all.

~~~
krig
Maybe this is a difference between the US and Sweden, but at least around
here, there are plenty of things that are illegal even if clearly stated in
the terms of use and there is no compulsion involved. For example, it's
illegal to sell yourself into slavery, even if you and your buyer both agree
to it. A better example might be that it is illegal to sell ones vote in
national elections.

(do not infer that _I_ think that scanning emails to show ads _should_ be
illegal)

~~~
Vivtek
We have the same sort of law, of course. It's illegal to sell yourself into
slavery, illegal to sell human parts even if they're yours, illegal to grow
and sell marijuana to your neighbor (um, well, that one's changing).

So clearly there are contractual acts that are illegal. This one isn't, and I
find it odd that people would expect it to be, especially given that people
don't otherwise seem to care about privacy at all - as long as somebody in
arguable authority says it's for their safety from Bad Guys.

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nohuck13
Probably the plaintiffs believe in good faith that they are pushing for
positive social change against a nefarious practice (and they certainly seem
misguided, at best, to me). But

-It's a class-action suit. It's not unlikely the driving force behind organizing the class was the plaintiff's law firm looking for a long shot bet at a cut of a big payout, a reputation-making case, etc. I have no idea if this is the case. The incentives around this kind of thing are varied and not necessarily at all high-minded though.

-It bugs me when people start to think of the Googles of the world as a public utility. Assuming that you could make the world a better place by regulating their behaviour into something socially desirable is short-sighted. We have gmail because Google can monetize it with ads. Treating firms like Google as public utilities subject to public interest based regulation is not that different from treating banks as public utilities that are too big to fail (granted that's a complicated issue on its own)

“People believe, for better or worse, that their email is private
correspondence, not subject to the eyes of a $180 billion corporation and its
whims,” said Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court.

-I automatically get suspicious when would-be social reformers throw in the market cap of a company like this, as if to say, come on, they can afford to share the wealth. In a system where there's rule of law, it should be that that the practice is either legal or it isn't, right?

-It could well be that California has statutes on the books that clearly make this sort of thing illegal. If that's the case, we should fully support the plaintiff's winning, followed by brisk lobbying of legislators to correct the ridiculousness. Selective enforcement of bad laws is a horrible practice that opens the door to all kinds of arbitrariness and manipulation by the state. See rule of law.

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mjs
You need to scan to detect spam, so scanning itself can't be a legal problem.

I don't see the issue here. The ads are not even slightly surreptitious, and
they don't seem to be linked to your non-email ad profile. (They don't follow
you across the web.)

(Would it be a problem if they were? Is there a fundamental legal issue here,
is it it more of a transparency/disclosure problem?)

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IanCal
> Would it be a problem if they were?

This is something I feel could be. I don't expect my emails to be somehow
secret to google, and having targeted ads within gmail is fine by me. However
I don't like the idea of them popping up on external sites when visited with
my browser, or a browser I've used. There they could be revealing information
about me to external parties.

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rtpg
I have a hard time imagining the problems with this. This is a case of the
"Chinese Room": The scanning in the advertising isn't 'understanding' what you
wrote, so its completely different from if a person was reading your e-mail.

I would like it if one day we could start to make that distinction.

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andyhmltn
Applying the same logic, would it be fine for me to sell someone a house, keep
a key and then take pictures of their rooms every few days so I can advertise
to them correctly?

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dangelov
Did you sell them a house, or let them live in it for free?

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Mordor
Google appear to be confusing the law with the loyalty of their customers.

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Oletros
How so?

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anxiousest
What is it 2004?! of course it's legal, same as "scanning" mail content to
identify spam or enable full text search. This lawsuit is ridiculous, it's
either a money making scam or a PR stunt or both.

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Revisor
Maybe today is the right time to ask the question again.

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anxiousest
It's a stupid question. They want webmail services (nay all cloud services) to
cease automatically processing data they store. It's nonsense, that is what
these services are all about, they want them to become useless, basically
destroying their whole functionality and the economy related to them.

