Justin <justin-cypherpunks@soze.net> writes:

Riad S. Wahby (2004-04-13 01:49Z) wrote:

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040412/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_1

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A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely nothing to do with the state, period. The bitch supporting this shit should be removed from office forthwith.

It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties. It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract.

No privacy is lost in the gmail system; no information about either party is disclosed to any third party. The information contained in the message still remains private to the sender and recipient (well, to the extent that any web-based mail can be considered "private"). Exactly what "traditional legal guarantees" do you think would be lost in the gmail system?

There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail is intercepted and parsed.

So what? The average sender doesn't understand that mail is "intercepted and parsed" by each SMTP or POP server encountered in the path from sender to recipient. Or that their message is written to the hard disk of each of those systems as well. What the average sender understands is irrelevant unless there is some bearing on his expectation of privacy in the message contents. Really, what's the difference between scanning the message in order to, say, render HTML tags it may contain, and scanning it in order to generate targetted advertising based on keywords it contains? The latter could also be considered as merely part of the rendering process. - GH _________________________________________________________________ Persistent heartburn? Check out Digestive Health & Wellness for information and advice. http://gerd.msn.com/default.asp