[PLUG-TALK] Google asserts you have no expectation of privacy in your email

[Ronald Chmara]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Aug 2013, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
>
> >
> http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/google-tells-court-you-cannot-expect-privacy-when-sending-messages-gmail-people-who-care
> > If you want privacy get your own email platform.
>
>    That's interesting, Michael. I've always assumed that mail stored on
> someone's server (whether Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft) was subject to
> compromise, but not necessarily by the application provider.
>

Compromise? It was given to a third party. They can then do with it as they
wish. You're not giving your mail to a mailman, a registered federal
employee, you're giving it to a cut-rate courier service with no guarantee
of delivery.


>    The last paragraph seems weak since the Post Office scans the front of
> every letter sent through its system and stores the image so they know to
> whom we send an envelop. At least we can expect that they do not open the
> envelopes before sending them on.
> <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk>
>

Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act

In short, there is a much lower expectation of privacy for external access,
and almost none for internal access.

Also, envelope opening has been going on since the 50's, especially at the
borders, much like deep packet inspection is today...and after the
"UNIBOMBER"/"anthrax attacks" the post office is free to open any package,
anywhere, anytime. It's just not worth their time to do that, just like
inspecting *every* international IP packet would be a waste of time.

The thing I find most culturally interesting about the latest round of
"privacy" alarms is how many folks thought there *was* all this privacy
left, or that it ever existed. Yes, the source and destination of every
email is recorded by the big bad ISP's. Always has been. If you leave your
mail spools at the ISP's, yes, there's a record there of that, too. Do they
want to record every website you visit? Sure, if they want to proxy and log
it. We're geeks, we built all of this, so why are we acting surprised that
it works as we designed it?

-Ronabop
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