[reddiric]

What I got from reading the excerpt of Judge Koh's response in the article was that she was maintaining a vertical separation between the business / activities of sending and receiving mail and other business activities. From my following, I'd imagine that filters and priority inbox and other details would be related to the business of sending and receiving mail.

If Google can win the argument that the way they're using their interception and reading of messages in serving personalized ads is a part of their everyday business activities, it seems to completely undermine the purpose of the law. Google, with G+, is trying to itself be a single unified product with all of these features. Social networking is a feature, videos are a feature, websites, blogs, instant messaging and email and targeted advertising. If Google can say that displaying targeted ads is a part of their normal business activities, then what activity does the law against wiretapping actually protect against?

If Google can read your email for the purpose of enabling a tangential feature of displaying targeted advertising to you, how does that same logic not apply to me if I claim my normal business activities are delivering your mail while opening it, reading it, and selling useful information I find inside of it? I could say it was essential to my business, because I actually deliver for free and just pay my bills with the info I sell.

[notatoad]

It's definitely an interesting case. It seems clear that scanning email solely for the purpose of providing advertisements against it would be illegal (let's ignore the discussion of whether or not this is a stupid law). It also seems clear that scanning emails for spam and categorization is legal. So given that google has a legal reason for scanning the content of emails, is there anything prohibiting them from using the data from that scan for their other business activities? It sounds to me that once you have the reason to get the data, how you actually use it is just up to the product's TOS.

and regarding your last paragraph, you have to remember that this is all consented to by the user. it's not akin to somebody reading and selling your mail before they deliver it to you, it's akin to somebody doing that because you hired them to.

[reddiric]

There's lots of liability you can't skirt by saying it's implied that the other person consented. It seems like saying someone consented to waving the accessibility rights afforded under the ADA because it was a condition of patronizing the store.

And I don't follow why you think once you have a reason to use data for one purpose, you automatically have the right to use it for any purpose.