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Penkava v. Yahoo: dismissed

Carson Penkava, who was suing Yahoo! under California wiretapping laws, filed for dismissal with prejudice at the end of November. No reasons were given.

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Judge sides with plaintiff, refuses to dismiss wiretapping suit against Google

Judge Koh published her ruling on Google’s motion to dismiss today.
It’s a 43 page ruling, which I’m still digesting. But the short answer is that Google’s motion was denied almost in total. Google’s motion was granted for two of the claims: that email is confidential as defined by the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA, section 632) and dismissal of a claim under Pennsylvania law.

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No expectation of privacy, says Google

I spent yesterday afternoon in Judge Koh’s courtroom listening to arguments on whether or not the class action suit against Google based on their scanning of emails for advertising purposes can go forward. This is the case that made news a few weeks ago because Google stated in their brief that users have “no expectation of privacy” in using online services.
That does appear to be what Google is actually saying, based on the arguments by attorney Whitty Somvichian. He made it clear that Google considers everything that passes through their servers, including the content of emails, covered under “information provided to Google” in the privacy policy. Google is arguing that they can read, scan, and use that content to display ads and anything else they consider to be in the normal course of business.
I have pages and pages of notes but I have some paying work to finish before I can focus on writing up the case. There were multiple reporters and bloggers in the courtroom, but I’ve not found many article. Some I’ve found are:

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