
UC students suit claims Google scanned accounts without permission - Jerry2
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20160513/uc-students-suit-claims-google-scanned-accounts-without-permission/1
======
luso_brazilian
From the article:

 _> However, the suits by the students, including 68 from Berkeley and 243
from UC Santa Cruz, have been thrown into uncertainty by a federal judge's
suggestion that each student in the largest claim should file separately so
the court can collect 710 individual $400 filing fees._

 _> "Our clerk's office is really unhappy you are circumventing our filing
fees by adding 710 cases under one case number," U.S. District Court Judge
Lucy Koh told the students' lawyer, Ray Gallo, according to a court
transcript._

 _> Gallo, who is representing the students in both cases, said he expected
Google to file a request to separate the 710 claims individually._

 _> "This is a mass case and the question is, 'Can these people who all have
essentially the same claim bring it together so that a lawyer like me will
agree to do it?" he said. "If these cases have to be filed individually, no
lawyer would take it."_

In one hand the lawyer is right, filling what amounts to the same complaint
under 710 different cases is burdensome and adds unnecessary complexity in the
process.

On the other hand it signals a very bad start by the part of the complainants
legal team. Not following judicial (and clerical) procedure to the letter is a
very easy way to have the case lost on a technicality.

Being a layman in this area my question is: what prevents them from filling a
proper class action?

Either that or what prevents them from filling the case with a single
complainant and, in case of success, using the precedent to get an easier time
for the rest 709?

~~~
rayiner
> Being a layman in this area my question is: what prevents them from filling
> a proper class action?

Litigating a class action involves not just litigating the merits, but
litigating the propriety of filing as a class action. E.g. is the class
composed of a definite and ascertainable group of people? Are the facts common
to all class members? Settling a class action also requires court approval,
whereas setting a lawsuit in which all plaintiffs are joined does not. This
adds a whole bunch of motions practice.

In a case like this the plaintiffs would likely win on class certification,
since the same alleged harm happened to an easy-to-define group of people. But
it's a bunch of extra work for the lawyer, who is probably proceeding on
contingency.

~~~
hackuser
> But it's a bunch of extra work for the lawyer, who is probably proceeding on
> contingency.

Aren't most class actions done on contingency? Also, if they are suing Google,
it's hard to believe the extra work of filing a class action would be a
significant expense for the plaintiff; there is discovery (and all the skilled
labor involved), experts, travel, etc. And it's billable time, which should
increase the fees the court approves.

Finally, isn't it usually a race by attorneys to get their class certified
first, so they are the lead attorney (and get more of the fees)?

~~~
rayiner
Both things you say are true, but here you've got 700 plaintiffs. How much
damages did they have? $500 each? Then you're talking about a fee award of
$100k, which isn't a lot to battle class-certification issues with Google.

I'm not sure if this happened at any other universities. If so, a class action
would make more sense.

------
adamweld
"Each Plaintiff received disclosures from his or her Educational Institution
that indicated his or her (Apps for Education) emails were private,"

I'm missing the part where Google told the students they weren't scanning the
emails; wouldn't this just be a failure on the school's part? If they removed
all advertising from the service in 2014, I can only imagine that the
licensing agreement before that point included some clause about advertising
and email content.

~~~
will_brown
You are best off reading the actual Complaint to determine who the parties are
and the specific allegations against Google...that said the article included
this single allegation against Google from the Complaint:

>"Google's lies," according to the lawsuit, included a statement on a privacy
page for Apps for Education, which was on the web from at least June 2011 to
September 2012, and said the apps were "completely ad-free -- which means your
school's content is not processed by Google's advertising systems."

~~~
upofadown
That statement from Google would only be a lie if the students were getting
ads. The article says the complaint is that "the firm harvested their data for
commercial gain without their consent". I could not determine from the article
exactly what harvesting was done or what commercial gain derived from that.

Google has maintained that the email scanning for targeted advertising is not
a privacy issue in that it is automated and there are no details leaked
outside the system. If it turned out that the scanning was done and no actions
resulted from that then the whole thing would become philosophical.

~~~
gunshigh
They lied because they claimed the emails weren't being scanned:

"which means your school's content is not processed by Google's advertising
systems"

~~~
upofadown
What does "processed" mean in this context? Can an advertising system which
produces no advertising be considered to have processed anything?

------
azinman2
So what did google actually do? What's the actual harm? Article is poorly
written.

~~~
personjerry
I thought it was pretty clear--despite saying they wouldn't, they sold the
students' data.

~~~
azinman2
I guess I missed the part where data was "stolen" and used in some bad way?

~~~
DanBC
The data belongs to the students and there was an agreement not to mine it;
the complaint is that this agreement was ignored and the data was mined.

That kind of thing carries regulatory fines in EU. There may be a bit of
culture clash happening in this thread between Europeans ("this is my data and
you need my permission to use it") and SV ("this data is gathered by the
company and it's theirs to do with what they wish")

~~~
azinman2
An important concept in American law is harm, and what's unclear to me is what
exact harm was caused.

------
mark_l_watson
I am a fan of Google (and I worked there as a contractor), so I don't intend
to be negative, but:

I am happy to be a paying customer of Google; for example: Play Music, Youtube
Red, Google Drive, etc.

I less happy with their making money from me indirectly via selling and using
data associated with me. I would like to pay a yearly fee for search and
gmail, in a privacy mode. I am surprised that this is not something that they
do as an option.

I think that Microsoft has hit a sweet spot with a yearly fee for Office 365
(I don't think that Microsoft scans OneDrive files, etc. and makes money from
that) and I would like Google to copy that business model.

~~~
niels_olson
> yearly fee for Office 365.

You can. You can subscribe to Google Apps. They don't advertise at you and
scan your stuff only for the purpose of providing you search and related
services.
[https://support.google.com/work/answer/6056650?hl=en](https://support.google.com/work/answer/6056650?hl=en)

Apps for Work is $60/user; Apps Unlimited is $120/user. That compares quite
favorably with Office 365, especially considering the Unlimited includes
unlimited Drive.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thank you for that! Apps terms of service do seem to satisfy my concerns.

------
genop
In the previous Gmail litigation a couple of years ago Google Apps for
Education users were one of the classes.

In that case Koh dismissed the 1967 California Invasion of Privacy Act
eavesdropping claims because users' lawyers could not show the emails were
_confidential_ (see Section 632). However she didn't dismiss the
wiretapping/interception claims (see Section 631).

Another element required for an eavesdropping claim is lack of _consent_.

How are you going to show that the granting of consent was in question for
each and every user and was thus a "common question"? Maybe some users read
the terms and other did not. Maybe some users paid attention to news reports
about email scanning and others did not. See Koh's Opinion.

For those interested search "paulhastings.com" "in re google". There is a copy
of the unreported Opinion, with some interesting redactions on the devices
Google uses to scan email. Content Onebox, Medley Server, Changeling, CAT2
Mixer, ICEbox Server, etc.

What if users started putting "CONFIDENTIAL", as between sender and recipient,
at the the top of all their emails? From there one could argue confidentiality
implies lack of consent to eavesdropping.

Apparently Google argued users understand that interceptions are part of how
all email, not just Gmail, is transmitted. Intermediary SMTP servers might be
"interception" but it seems like a reasonable judge could conclude if a
message intercepted says "CONFIDENTIAL" then there's no permission to read it,
whether the reading is done by a human or a machine programmed by a human.

------
ZanyProgrammer
Perhaps Judge Koh is too familiar with the rarefied world of 1% techies to
understand how burdensome filing fees are for college students.

------
ck2
In the age of 100% computer assisted lawyers and courts, why can't 710
lawsuits be filed?

Class actions just make lawyers wealthy.

710 lawsuits makes much more of a statement, no?

~~~
icebraining
Apparently it costs $28400 in filling fees, who is going to upfront that?

~~~
anonymoushn
That's $284000 in filing fees.

~~~
icebraining
Ouch, you're right.

------
oneloop
Knowing Google, they probably did. Don't be evil my ass.

