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Gmail says no expectation of privacy, kinda.

Consumer Watch put out a press release yesterday about a court filing made by Gmail that says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy. I pulled a bunch of the docs yesterday, but have had no real time to read or digest them.
For recap users everything I pulled (and stuff other people have pulled) are available at Archive.org.
The initial complaint was filed under seal at the request of Google. The redacted complaint doesn’t tell us a lot, but it’s available for people to read if they’re interested.
The doc everyone is talking about is Google’s Motion to Dismiss. Everyone is up in arms about Google saying, in that filing, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” (page 28, line 9). What no one seems to have mentioned is that this is actually a quote from a case that Google is referencing. The whole paragraph may lead one to a different conclusion.

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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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Google wiretapping case, what the judge ruled

Yesterday I reported that the judge had ruled on Google’s motion to dismiss. Today I’ll take a little bit deeper look at the case and the interesting things that were in denial of the motion to dismiss.
Google is being sued for violations of federal wiretapping laws, the California invasion of privacy act (CIPA) and wiretapping laws in Florida, Pennsylvania and Maryland. This lawsuit is awaiting class certification for the following groups.

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