[magicalist]

Why are you posting this shit on HN? Everyone here knows how contextual advertising in gmail works, and excepting those too young to have been aware back then, have known about it since 2004. If you have a point, make it, but scare quotes specifically made to induce an emotional reaction from those without technical knowledge really have no place here.

[001sky]

Here's your footnote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy

[magicalist]

I'm not sure what your point is. If you don't want your email accessed, don't send it unencrypted from your client, and definitely don't send it via a service that has features (search, spam, google now, etc) and is payed for by a system (contextual advertising) that explicitly accesses the contents of your email.

Download Thunderbird and a PGP client[1]. Boom, done.

Use another email service. Boom, done.

I'm not objecting to the idea that you'd find it objectionable to have your email contents used for advertising. I'm objecting to a useless quote that tries to turn this into a soundbite-off instead of an actual discussion (little hope as this thread has).

[1] https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/digitally-sign...

[001sky]

Diluting the expectation of privacy about e-mail in general has implications under constitutional law. The 4th amendment only protects against unreasonable searches by the governmnet. The use of mail connotes private communication. As in contrast to post (which is presumed public). Implied consent to forfeighting the right to stop 3rd parties reading your e-mail is not something the public has an interest in establishing. Regardless of the purpose of such 3 party incursion. I don't want to get into a side-bar explanation or legal debate TBH, but its not mindless fear mongering.[1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/us/politics/legislation-se...

“This has been the stuff of wild-eyed accusations for years. A lot of people are heartbroken to find out it’s not just wild-eyed accusations.”

[magicalist]

No, this is not correct. The particulars of your agreement with a third-party for storage of your email does not extend government rights to examine that data (the ads in your inbox are as non-public as the email in there too). Even the horribly flawed ECPA recognizes that (it buttresses it, in fact). Moreover, Google[1] is currently standing behind the US v Warshak shield and requiring warrants for email contents.

The problems with the third-party doctrine are much more fundamental than the ways in which that third-party is storing and displaying your data, activities that continue for any webmail client even in the absence of ads when doing spam filtering, searching, etc. Merely the fact that a third-party is involved at all is enough for the outdated sections of the ECPA to rear their ugly heads. Here's hoping the Supreme Court takes up a case like US v Warshak soon.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/google-stands-up-...

[001sky]

No, this is not correct.

Your talking statutes, not the constitution. Obviously the constitution trumps both statute and executive readings. Reasonable is per the constitution, an it is plastic in case law. That's why the questions are important, fundamentally. In any event, its worth keeping in mind the right level of abstraction.

[magicalist]

> Your talking statutes, not the constitution

I'm talking both. The ECPA was important in that Congress avoided decades of court cases by making explicit the protections afforded electronically stored media, though they did not extend those protections far enough (which today in practice weakens protections that may have been more clearly delineated by now had the ECPA not been enacted).

Constitutional protection superseding (among other things) the fairly arbitrary 180 day requirement for a warrant set by the ECPA was clearly recognized by the Sixth Circuit in the US v Warshak second (criminal) case, stating that "The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause."[1]

In both US v Warshak cases, though, the Sixth Circuit emphasized the higher protection afforded content over transactional data just for being content by the the tests established by both Katz v US and Smith v Maryland. They laid out that even the supremely terrible precedent of Smith v Maryland (which is the proud parent of allowing the government to seize "metadata" without a warrant) did not allow the government to "bootstrap" limited access to full access, including the access needed for automated processing of email contents by the email provider:

"The government also insists that ISPs regularly screen users’ e-mails for viruses, spam, and child pornography. Even assuming that this is true, however, such a process does not waive an expectation of privacy in the content of e-mails sent through the ISP, for the same reasons that the terms of service are insufficient to waive privacy expectations. The government states that ISPs “are developing technology that will enable them to scan user images” for child pornography and viruses. The government’s statement that this process involves “technology,” rather than manual, human review, suggests that it involves a computer searching for particular terms, types of images, or similar indicia of wrongdoing that would not disclose the content of the e-mail to any person at the ISP or elsewhere, aside from the recipient. But the reasonable expectation of privacy of an e-mail user goes to the content of the e-mail message. The fact that a computer scans millions of e-mails for signs of pornography or a virus does not invade an individual’s content-based privacy interest in the e-mails and has little bearing on his expectation of privacy in the content. In fact, these screening processes are analogous to the post office screening packages for evidence of drugs or explosives, which does not expose the content of written documents enclosed in the packages. The fact that such screening occurs as a general matter does not diminish the well-established reasonable expectation of privacy that users of the mail maintain in the packages they send."[2]

I have not personally seen a good argument for differentiating between spam filtering and contextual advertising in terms of access. Regardless, this is a clear argument for automated access being immaterial to the question of an expectation of privacy of the contents of an email.

[1] http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/10a0377p-06.pdf

[2] http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0225p-06.pdf

[SilliMon]

Ditto for Google Drive, encrypt it with something like Syncdocs[1] to keep files private.

Encryption keys are like car keys - you need to own them, not Google.

[1] http://syncdocs.com

[obituary_latte]

If nothing else, it reminds people that it's going on. Which is a good thing. Myself, with adblockXYZ installed, often forget or don't notice. And when these do come up, I'm grateful because it reminds me to stop being a lazy bastard and set up an email server (as I've done many times for others) for myself. I appreciate that.

[magicalist]

I guess. There are plenty of other people in this thread who have brought up the fact that if your email service can read your email you are inherently vulnerable without quoting the plaintiff's attorney in a suit about the practice talking to ABC news. Talk about your lowest common denominator.

I didn't come here to be propogandized at, so, yes, I will object to the dumbing down of debate to appeals to emotion (especially on a subject that's obviously already so emotionally charged).

[001sky]

magicalist: It was a widely reported national headline because it came from AP. It was not a story by some perma-tanned fake news-anchor. Alternative sources, same headline. This is also very much a PR war, on both side (google, NSA, etc). In case you haven't also icked that up. Everyone is in the business of manufacturing headlines.

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2013/09/google_argues...

http://news.yahoo.com/google-argues-continue-scanning-gmail-...

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/google-argues-right-continue...

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24021944/google-argue...

[obituary_latte]

Ok. Maybe you came to the wrong place then. Or maybe your perspective is off... Who could know such things?