The Electronic Privacy Information Center is arguing that Gmail must be shut down because it “represents an unprecedented invasion into the sanctity of private communications,” and they further claim that “Gmail violates California’s wiretapping laws, subjecting both Google and Gmail users to criminal and civil penalties.”
I’m getting quite a chuckle out of the idea that the users would be criminally liable …
News.com is reporting that Sec. 631 of California’s criminal code applies to any person or business who “in any unauthorized manner, reads, or attempts to read, or to learn the contents or meaning of any message, report, or communication while the same is in transit.”
So it seems that EPIC is just trying to make headlines, since it’s perfectly clear that:
- Google’s use of your email to present advertisemens is not unauthorized.
- Your email on Google’s servers is not, in fact, in transit, since they are proposing that with their GB of storage space, their servers will actually be the final storage space for your email.
Legal analysts are calling EPIC’s analysis Luddite and pointing out that most Web based services have been doing essentially the same thing for years …
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