
Google Email Spying Ruled Unlawful - cbolat
http://cryptome.org/2013/09/google-gmail-spy.pdf
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pjc50
That's not what the document says though! Scroll to the end.

It says that one of Google's motions to dismiss has suceeded, striking out
part of the case as inapplicable, and that the case is being allowed to
proceed. This is nowhere near even a first ruling. And it relates to "spying"
in the sense of processing email to show adverts, not the NSA.

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r0h1n
IANAL but the Court seems to have granted Google's motion to dismiss only for
claims under CIPA Section 632 while denying it for all the other sections.

> the Court hereby GRANTS Google’s Motion to Dismiss with leave to amend with
> respect to Plaintiffs’ CIPA section 632 claims

This is Section 632:

> Section 632 prohibits unauthorized electronic eavesdropping on confidential
> conversations. To state a claim under section 632, a plaintiff must allege
> an electronic recording of or eavesdropping on a confidential communication,
> and that not all parties consented to the eavesdropping.

However, the Court has _not granted_ Google's motion to dismiss claims related
to other sections:

> The Court DENIES Google’s Motion to Dismiss with respect to all other
> claims.

So one of the sections that still stands is Section 631:

> Section 631 prohibits wiretapping or “any other unauthorized connection”
> with a “wire, line, cable, or instrument.” The California Supreme Court has
> held that section 631 protects against three distinct types of harms:
> “intentional wiretapping, willfully attempting to learn the contents or
> meaning of a communication in transit over a wire, and attempting to use or
> communicate information obtained as a result of engaging in either of the
> previous two activities.”

Which _probably_ explains the title. I still don't agree with the title
though.

~~~
dingaling
Interesting, re: Section 632

> and that not all parties consented to the eavesdropping.

Are they indicating that when someone sends an e-mail to a Gmail account that
they are implicitly consenting to the 'eavesdropping'?

As another poster pointed-out on HN a few weeks ago, sometimes it's not even
clear if a domain is using Gmail. One would have to check the MX RRs first,
before making a decision on sending.

Sounds like a useful postfix plug-in, actually...

~~~
dragonwriter
> Are they indicating that when someone sends an e-mail to a Gmail account
> that they are implicitly consenting to the 'eavesdropping'?

No, not at all.

There are, per the order, three requirements identified for a 632 violation:
"(1) an electronic recording of or eavesdropping on (2) a 'confidential
communication' (3) to which all parties did not consent."

The order finds the plaintiffs' case deficient on this point because:
"Plaintiffs have not established that the communications at issue are
confidential pursuant to section 632."

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devx
Good. Google shouldn't be able to even "analyze" private communications and
data, at the very least not without the user's _explicit_ consent (opt-in).
Being in the ToS doesn't count since nobody reads those.

Maybe if they aren't allowed to do it anymore, they'll finally take requests
to encrypt their services end-to-end seriously. Because right now they
probably aren't even considering encrypting Hangouts if that means they can't
analyze it for ads anymore, which is just sad and frustrating.

~~~
cromwellian
Analyzing emails is what email service providers do. If you can classify a
message as spam, you can also classify it as being about shoes and target ads
against it.

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dragonwriter
The headline is a lie, nothing Google has been found to have done has been
ruled unlawful. The order here simply allows the case against Google to
proceed in part (while throwing out part of it in its current form). This is a
_very_ early ruling in the case, before _any_ evidence has been presented, and
is purely a ruling as a matter of law about the standing of the parties to
bring the case, and whether the claims made are even valid legal charges.

------
cromwellian
Taken to an extreme, this idea of applying wiretapping law to federated
services seems to be a danger to open systems. A closed messaging system can
get all users, both senders and recipients, to agree to whatever is needed to
make the system work (e.g. if they need to examine the content and not just
the envelope)

However, when you have federation, two different sets of users on two
different services may have agreed to differing terms. Applying terms like
"interception" in these cases also seems strange.

It's bad enough that silos and vertical integration seem to be winning over
the internet of old, but to have the legal system create a situation in which
the open systems are much more risky to run seems to be a bad precedent.

(I also have to wonder who is really behind these cases. It's not very
plausible that any of the plantiffs are really being harmed by automated ad
serving, and then there's the whole Scroogled campaign...as Arsenio Hall used
to say...things that make you go hmmmmm.)

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semjada
no such thing as a free email account

~~~
ciucanu
"Free Is The Most Expensive Price" or another popular expression on these
days: "If You're Not Paying for It, You're the Product"

~~~
Oletros
Popular but wrong

~~~
ciucanu
Wrong as not ethic or wrong like false?

~~~
Oletros
Wrong like false, you are not the product, the product is ad space

~~~
AjithAntony
I feel like you have something more you want to say that makes you point more
clear. I think this audience would say ad space is not far removed from the
eyeballs that make the ad space valuable.

