[aklug] Re: Google: If you send to Gmail you have 'No legitmate expectation of privacy'

From: Royce Williams <royce@tycho.org>
Date: Wed Aug 14 2013 - 21:28:50 AKDT

jOn Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Greg Schmitz <greg@amipa.org> wrote:

> On 8/14/13 1:56 PM, Arthur Corliss wrote:
>
>> Greetings:
>>
>> Interesting article:
>>
>>
>> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/GOOGLE-If-You-Use-Gmail-You-Have-No-Legitimate-4730587.phpArthur,
>>
>
> You beat me to it. See also:
>
> "Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy"
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-privacy-email-lawsuit
>

s/Google/corporations and governments/g;
s/Gmail/the Internet and all other forms of communication/g;

;-/ (that's a winky-but-ambivalent smiley)

Though specifically in the case of email, everyone who runs email servers
knows that plain-text email is subject to operational inspection.
Anti-spam measures benefit from this access. If someone pressed another
Internet provider that provided email service, I would expect all of them
to give similar answers to Google's.

The real question is whether or not email carriers should be restricted by
law to only access that data for direct operational purposes -- or whether
they should be allowed to abstract, monetize or aggregate it. If Google
would step up and explicitly disclaim the latter -- or if the law made
non-operational common-carrier access to these communications illegal --
that would be something, but if they have any operational access, they
could be compelled to hand it over to third parties. Client-side PGP
integration would help with this (but keep us from benefiting from spam
filtering).

But heck, if the QEMU guy can emulate an x86 system with Javascript[1],
something tells me that Gmail could have PKI. But there'd be no business
case for it at that point. TANSTAAFL.

1. http://bellard.org/jslinux/

Royce

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Received on Wed Aug 14 19:02:05 2013

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