Google’s legal counsel says Gmail users should have no legitimate expectation of privacy
In response to a lawsuit Google has disclosed that, from the company’s perspective, no one should be expecting their emails to remain private.
This is likely news to most gmail users who create a password thinking
that limits access to their account and probably expect their emails to
be private.
“Plantiffs
accuse Google of violating the privacy of its users by mining their
personal messages for information that it uses to inform which targeted
ads it displays. The suit calls for Google to fully disclose exactly
what information it’s taking from emails, and to pay damages for these
alleged violations of privacy.
The
company argued in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit that “all users of
email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing. “
That is an
interesting attitude. A clear implication would be allowing the NSA to
automatically process everyone’s gmail account emails.
Just as a
sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the
recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email
today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the
recipient’s ECS provider in the course of delivery. Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979).“
On the
surface this seems reasonable, that once you send information to someone
else you can’t expect them not to share it with other people. However,
that is not what Google is saying.
Instead,
Google is saying that users of gmail should realize that Google is the
third party. By writing an email in gmail the user is essentially
sending Google the email and therefore cannot expect privacy. If Google
shares those emails with whoever it wants, well, you should have known
better.
Comments
Post a Comment
Don't Try to Spam Here !! You Use English in Your Comment !!