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Google sued for data-mining students' email

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Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#61

Post by Houshalter »

belorn wrote: post #59
Houshalter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you send a letter to an address of course you are consenting for the postman to read your mail. It's more like if the person you are sending to hires an assistant to sort and organize their mail for them (which people actually do.) You then go and sue the assistant.

If the assistant read confidential mail that they have not been approved to do, yes, they can get sued for that. Many people sign NDA's. If you have an assistant read mails covered by the NDA, then the party who sent the mail can sue. and so on and so on.

Perhaps, but that seems pretty unreasonable. The assistant doesn't know that, and we can't ban assistants entirely because some people aren't responsible with their own mail.

I'm not sure how common it is, and it's probably less so now with email, but I'd guess a lot of important people do have their assistants screen their confidential mail. For example, I know politicians often have people help with their mail.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#62

Post by genericuser »

dagw wrote: post #24
Houshalter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the option to opt out: don't use gmail. It's not a reasonable expectation that every single web service should be legally required to make every single feature opt-out-able.

It's kind of hard to do your job or complete your education without ever using your company or school email address. I suppose you could counter argue that you can opt out of going to university or working for a company the uses Google Apps, but that is starting to get kind of silly in my mind.

If you believe that strongly that none of your personal emails should fall into the hands of Google, how is it silly to choose a school / job that will respect that belief?

I realize for the majority of people who would simply 'rather Google not have their information' the trade off and the additional effort on their part are simply not worth it,

My point is that everyone who is 'forced to use Google mail' is unconsciously weighing their objection to it against the inconvenience it would cause them to avoid using it, and chooses to use Google (is forced to, if you prefer) because the possibly ill informed cost benefit analysis tells them using Google is worth it.

I am sorry if this whole comment comes off trollish, but the the idea that people are forced to do things they are strongly against because they do not find the alternative to be convienent I believe to be a symptom of entitlement which is a problem with society (not a new problem) that I believe should be combated.

Edit to clarify - My quotes come from no where and are not actual quotes just hypothetical, probably straw man statements that I have come to expect when issues like this are discussed.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#64

Post by throwaway2048 »

facepalm wrote: post #55
throwaway2048 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the exact same arguments could be applied to the NSA

Except that the NSA doesn't have a website for checking my mail and I am not explicitly sending my mail to them.

your post had nothing to do with that, you claimed google wasnt "reading" email because it was all automatic scripts, behind some facetious rhetoric.

The situation with the NSA collecting and reading email is no different, specificly in terms of datamining the contents.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#65

Post by belorn »

Houshalter wrote: post #61
belorn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the assistant read confidential mail that they have not been approved to do, yes, they can get sued for that. Many people sign NDA's. If you have an assistant read mails covered by the NDA, then the party who sent the mail can sue. and so on and so on.

Perhaps, but that seems pretty unreasonable. The assistant doesn't know that, and we can't ban assistants entirely because some people aren't responsible with their own mail. I'm not sure how common it is, and it's probably less so now with email, but I'd guess a lot of important people do have their assistants screen their confidential mail. For example, I know politicians often have people help with their mail.

Lets pull apart this analogy a bit more.

A new cleaning company called CleanU create an app where people can easy order office cleaning by a single press of a button. In the ToS/service/liability contract on page 43, it says in legalize: "any document found by our assistants might be used to improve service and decrease costs".

This might sound as a great way to start a legit industry espionage service, but alas, it would be illegal under several laws. First, a judge would ask if there had been a merging of minds, and thus declare the contract void since no buyer could possible have agreed to such terms. Second, as a product (sale), one could ask if "theft" could reasonable be expected when one purchase cleaning. Since it can't, the contract can be made void in that way. Thirdly, if the intent is to hide an otherwise illegal activity under the assumption that people do not read EULA, that would qualify criminal charges under Mens rea, thus fraud.

In all, reading peoples mail because you managed to get people to click a box during registration is a deal on a very unstable legal ground. Law suits like this will explore exactly how unstable it is.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#66

Post by joshuaheard »

facepalm wrote: post #39

What do they mean by "Google is reading our mail" - has Google reached sentience? Just to display it on GMail, one of Google's servers has to read the mail. If they claim that Google has achieved sentience, the implications could be very far reaching... I mean perhaps this lawsuit will clarify when algorithms will be considered sentient.

By "reading" I think they mean analyzing the content versus merely serving up text.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#67

Post by izzydata »

ronaldx wrote: post #13
not_paul_graham wrote: post #4

The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011. So assuming at least 1 million users, they are seeking: 1,000,000 users * $100 per user * 365 days per year * 2 years = ~ $73 billion in dama…

The cost of the product is surely irrelevant here: If the product damages your life (in an unexpected way), you should be able to sue to recoup those damages. In this case, presumably the individuals may have been signed up to Google Apps for Education without their direct consent (or, it was an unstated requirement of their courses to sign up). Also note: companies have access to liability insurance to cover them fo…

The problem seems to be that there actually haven't been any damages. Not a single person has been negatively affected by these targeted ads and nobody has had their personal information actually read. They have no chance with this lawsuit.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#68

Post by e12e »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #48
account99282 wrote: post #17

The suit maintains that, because such non-Gmail users who send emails to Gmail users never signed on to Google's terms of services, they can never have given, in Google's terms, "implied consent" to scan their email. This. One victim is the private mailing list: There's always at least one sap who subscribes using google mail. My personal hope is that suits like this will one day push them to discontinue gmail.

But this is nonsense. The sender doesn't need to consent; the recipient has all the legal power over his mail. If I want to engage a company to keep files on all my paper mail, and all associated metadata, there's nothing you can do to stop me.

> If I want to engage a company to keep files on all my paper mail, and all associated metadata, there's nothing you can do to stop me.

(my emphasis)

Well, in Norway I could report the company for storing personal data without a license to do so. Essentially any database (even list of phone numbers[1]) that contains personal data (name, contact information, any other information) is regulated. The laws have been somewhat modernized, so that it is assumed that it is ok for a school to give out (and keep) contact information to households/parents of a class -- or for a business to keep a database of customers, for example -- but you most certainly are not allowed to "just keep a lot of data on people because you can".

If you were to do it as a private person, you would most likely never get caught, of course -- but as a business you'd essentially be committing a crime -- and could face (rather steep) fines.

This is why Norway (along with a few other European countries) have taken a rather dim view of Facebook -- and note that with Facebook, users do consent in general (barring the shadow profiles, information uploaded by users regarding non-users etc).

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#69

Post by facepalm »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #64
facepalm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the NSA doesn't have a website for checking my mail and I am not explicitly sending my mail to them.

your post had nothing to do with that, you claimed google wasnt "reading" email because it was all automatic scripts, behind some facetious rhetoric. The situation with the NSA collecting and reading email is no different, specificly in terms of datamining the contents.

I wasn't claiming anything, I am asking what it is supposed to mean. It's interesting that a machine reading something can be described as the action of a juristic person. I do think the implications would be that web mail becomes impossible.

What exact part of "reading" is a privacy violation?

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#70

Post by svenkatesh »

dalke wrote: post #50
svenkatesh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps for Education targets Universities.

Quoting from the article: "Apps for Education is used by K-12 schools and institutions of higher education throughout the world..." Go to the Apps for Education page at Google, select "Customers", choose "K12" and it lists 10 primary and secondary education school systems as profiled "customer stories". For example, "Saline Area Schools is a suburban/rural public school district of 5,450 students K-12 located in sout…

This is the full list of places where they're used: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/customers.ht...

Most are universities.

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