[nobody31]

Except that Lucent have no real reason to put firmware in a fiber switch to read your email as it goes down the tubes.

A company that makes all it's money from targetted ads - might

[cma]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NarusInsight

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70621

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)

[patrickaljord]

Did you even read parent's post? We all agree that google (and yahoo, and hotmail) parse our emails to offer better ads and to index them for search. What we're talking about is bad employees reading your emails for their own curiosity.

[brendn]

This is getting off-topic, but did you forget about AT&T's secret rooms that were recording internet traffic? It's not just Google that wants to read your mail. Governments want to spy on their citizens, and ISPs are (allegedly) cooperating in the effort.

[dotBen]

sure but that's basically a "constant" in that it's going to happen regardless of where you receive your emails.