Slashdot Mirror
California Senate Passes Preemptive Strike Against Gmail
Technically Inept writes "The California Senate has passed a measure to force Google to limit search capabilities on Gmail to real-time, with no records. What if I want them to search my mail in advance?"
In other news Google announced it was moving out of California to get away from the usual knee-jerk legislation that plagues the state.
Seriously, what's wrong with these people?
It seems to me that companies ought to have a right to exchange services with people on terms that both sides agree on. If Google wants to offer a gig of email in exchange for being able to stick context-oriented ads in it, they ought to be able to do so -- if you don't like it, buy your own damn email.
Hell, if Google wanted to offer me a gig of email in exchange for being able to read my messages, print out the embaressing ones and pass them around their offices, they should be able to do that, too. If I don't like it, I don't have to sign up.
But no, here in CA we never met a regulation or inhabition to business that we didn't like. God forbid the legislature not spend yet more time not fixing our insane budget problems.
* - Don't kid yourself. We still beat the hell out of your crappy state/country.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
...how what a company does with its website users has anything to do with the California state law.
Google has yet to actually give us even the slightest notion that they would use Gmail in ways that would invade privacy. This is simply an act, I believe, by worried politicians that something good might dominate the Internet and threaten their pockets.
It's was never designed to do that...
If you don't agree to their terms, then don't sign up.
Google should just say that it's illegal to use their service in California. Eventually enough angry Californians will complain, and the law will go away.
.Mac, your ISP, your own server, etc, etc. It's called a free market...
But what's the point of a law? Nobody is forcing you to use gmail. If you're worried about privacy, don't use gmail. Use Hotmail, Yahoo!, Hushmail,
My other car is first.
You don't have a right to free email. In fact, I would go so far as to say there ain't no such thing -- you're paying for it one way or another. If you find one certain payment method objectionable, don't use it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The bill, as I've read in other articles is agaisnt any service retaining information about the contents of people's emails. They can still scan it realtime and give ads based on keywords, but they can't store it in a database or share that information with other people.
It is a good thing, in my opinion, because you know as soon as Google announced they were going to do it and let people know about it, hundreds of others figured it would be a good idea to do it and not say anything and then sell email information to advertisers.
And Google approved the legistation as well. It is *NOT* a Bad Thing.
That's the trick... all of the hoopla about Gmail's ads, and they're no different from the ads you see when you search Google normally.
California Legislature: "OMG Google knows I'm searching for pr0n, I'd better pass a law against it!"
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Yeah, great, so people can't make their own minds up?!? If you want to have your e-mails scanned, use it, if you don't, then don't use it! Do they really think people are so stupid that they can't make up their minds for themselves!?!
Give me a break, this is just taking it too far, what next, making it illegal to eat McDonalds because it's bad for you?
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
"The bill by Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa would require Gmail to work only in real-time and would bar the service from producing records.
The bill also would bar Gmail form collecting personal information from e-mails and giving any information to third parties. "
Doesn't Google state that GMail already works this way? So in effect they are legislating it to do only what it already does. Unless Google turns evil and wants to invade our privacy, they won't mind at all.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
GMail is John Ashcroft and John Poindexter's wet dream: billions of messages nicely indexed and ready for mining.
Fortunately experience shows that Google doesn't much care to help the USG.
Where the hell does the Senate get off telling Google how to run their email service? This doesn't seem right. Not that I want Google harvesting my email for personal information they can use as they please, but it just doesn't seem like its the government's place to make that decision. This is something that should be decided in the free market. Don't like the terms of service? Then don't f-ing sign up. Anyways last time I checked, the Hotmail terms of service basically said that anything you send through Hotmail belongs to them. I'm sure there are similar provisions in the TOS for the others too. The article was a little light on details. Does this single out Google or does it apply to other providers as well?
This is pretty much what I've been saying.
Google's a good company. They've never done anything that has raised my eyebrows before in terms of violating someone's privacy, or anything really. It's not like humans are going to scan your emails and decide what ads to put next to them. (Side note: the article was misleading in that it said gmail would place ads IN your email. Pure FUD. They're NEXT TO your email, which is way different). The whole system is automated, just like their AdSense program. It figures out what ads to display based ont he content of the web page.
The only argument that I've heard that makes any sense is if someone is against Gmail beacuse of this ad thing, so they dont sign up for the service, but then all their friends do so when they send email tot hem, their emails are scanned for content, even though they're not signed up with the service. Seriously though who cares. Google's not going to do anything like sell your email content to third party's so they can email your ads and stuff. People need to stop getting their panties all in a knot.
Joseph?
Many people commenting on this issue say "If you don't want Google to read your mail, don't sign up." That assumes that the only person who has a potential privacy issue is the recipient of the e-mail. My problem is on the other end: when I SEND someone e-mail I don't want someone else to read it. Why should I compromise my privacy so you can get a bigger mailbox?
- It has to pass the Assembly
- It has to be signed by the Governator.
Lots of Weird Crap gets through one house and then dies. If Google doesn't have enough cash to buy^H^H^H lobby a sufficient number of Assembly Members to block this, they're in way worse financial straits than everyone thinks.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I don't understand what the big deal is regardless. I mean, if you're sending plain text e-mails, they're going through multiple third parties anyway. If any of them wanted to keep and read your e-mail, nothing is stopping them now except encryption. What's different about Google other than they explicitly tell you they're going to do it.
I'm all for privacy, but all this hoopla just sounds like a bunch of techno-losers who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, but think it's a good "issue" to start screaming at the top of their lungs on.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I think he means before you view it, like how google pre-indexs the web before you search it. It would be handy if google pre-indexed your email before you searched it instead of doing it real-time.
And from the looks of things, they're also legislating against technology people already use. What about the Spam filters? Bayesian filtering is based on a very similar principle of scanning for key words and phrases, and if they block Gmail from recording the results it could stop them from flagging the results as Spam until you actually open the e-mail.
Having said that, it's likely that they have specified "for the purposes of advertising" in wording of the law - but the privacy concerns are exactly the same.
--This is a self-referential sig--
Many people here are saying that "If you don't like it (GMAIL), then don't sign up for it.". However, what people fail to see here is that once Google launches this service, other e-mail providers are sure to follow in their footsteps. Imagine, two years from now, all of your free e-mail accounts will be scanned; be it hotmail, yahoo, etc. Why wouldn't others want to follow in this path if they give their advertising a target audience in exchange for more $? Google has changed how we searched the web and now they are changing how we use e-mail. These laws are probably not going to be targeted just at Google but at any e-mail that uses similiar technology.
How many fields can I pick where your own stupidity would kill you? Chemicals? Insulation in your home? Guess what, you aren't so smart. If not for legislation, think-they're-smarts like you would probably be dead due to misuse of a consumer product that "any idiot" should know how to manipulate.
The reasoning behind it was simple: while YOU (the gmail acct owner) may not have a problem with Gmail scanning your e-mails, *I* (the sender of e-mails to you) might.
I'm not saying I agree with it, rather, I am just pointing out why they did it.
If lawmakers are passing laws that are almost exclusively designed to target google and their services, this just shows how much influence google has. I find it amazing that the internet as a whole hasnt changed copyright law except make it more strict, yet google is able to cause people to pass laws within a very short amount of time. Kind of strange dont you think?
Playing devil's advocate here:
Now can anyone tell me why should the govt even consider thinking about voting anything concerning General Motors!?
No one is FORCED to use their cars. General motors is private and the users are free to use it or not.
Hopefully you can see from the example above that regulation is legitimate. With any product or service, people should be able to assume that it meets certain base requirements. That most definately includes a reasonable level of privacy.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, 99% of our laws are to protect people/society from malicious intent. Read the Constitution, read the writings of the Founding Fathers. The Government's job is to protect you from outside threats, not yourself. If you want to light yourself on fire the government has no business telling you not to, as long as your not hurting anyone else.
There is no vested interest for ANYONE but despots and tyrants to allow people to live their lives completely ignorant. The less you require people to know and pay attention to, the less they will know and pay attention to. Want proof? Ask one hundred ranom people on the street to identify the president and vice president. I'd be surprised if you got over ten correct answers.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
It *is* wrong, however, to force a company to abide by certain terms in regards to totally legal activities.
I agree with the point you were making, but this line is pure nonsense. Forcing people (or companies) not to do certain activities that were formerly totally legal is the whole point of making laws. When laws against (say) monopolistic practices were proposed, they were also restricting totally legal activities.
--This is a self-referential sig--
And what if that new cellular service became so profitable that all the other cellular service providers also adopted that as their only business model? How would you like it if you never had to pay for a call again, but you couldn't find a provider who offered ad-free service, or who promised not to listen in on your calls? After all, if 90% of the market loves the free service and doesn't care about the privacy issues, who are you to say they shouldn't have it? And who are you to demand that the service providers go out of their way to deal with your antiquated notion of what their service *ought* to be? Presto, you no longer have a right to choose what kind of service you want, because the service you want is no longer available.
There's a grey area here. The net is infrastructure just like the phone system or the highway system or the mail system. As such, the government (federal government at least, and perhaps the state government too) has not only a right, but also a responsibility to regulate to some degree how it works and what we should be able to expect from it.
E-mail is one of the most widely used services on the net, even if you toss out all the spam. The general public uses it without necessarily knowing how it works, and there's a widespread presumption that even if e-mail isn't exactly guaranteed to be private, it's also generally not parsed and analyzed by the service providers. Given that, it seems reasonable for a government to try to protect that expectation.
I don't know if it'll work or not -- it seems like there's probably plenty of room for a legal challenge. But it also doesn't seem like a huge obstacle, and I can think of a dozen ways to abide by the regulation and still implement exactly the same sort of advertising model that Google is trying to use.
Clearly stated that provisions will be made for spam filters. Sorry, the legislature did its homework on this one.
Let me get this straight - you pass your thoughts through a medium that gets beamed all over the electromagnetic spectrum, passes through who knows how many private systems that backup their contents for millenia and are controlled by untold numbers of admins of unknown background
And you're worried about the idea that a box along the way would scan your email's content?
Actually thats the problem... The majority of people who are rich have become so because they don't spend. Sure they may have nicer things, but its not like they're bankrolling the economy. The collective spending of the everyday average joe does MUCH more for the economy than a few million/billionaires.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I'm not exactly sure, but it sounds like this law, the way it's being stated, would prohibit Google from creating the full-text indexes that are *absolutely necessary* to do fast searches. The *point* of GMail is to have email with the power of google. If I'm gonna be doing searches without any indexes, I might as well stick with my Mozilla Mail client getting mail by POP3 - I already have well over 1Gig of free space on my HD to store mail, and Mozilla has some mail searching capabilities built in.
The only reason GMail is appealing is that I can apply the power of Google (which is built on indexing content) to my mail. *sigh*
what's worse? a tax and spend liberal or a borrow and spend neocon?
I think a borrow and spend neocon is worse because WE have to pay interest on THEIR accumulating debt.
cpeterso
All of this extreme anti-Google privacy concern crap is so suspicious.
Of all things to be concerned about in regards to privacy, a free, web-based email service seems hardly enough to even loose any sleep over. I can think of a TON of other privacy concerns that would and should come miles before a GMail account.
Which leads me to believe that there's more going on here than we know and realize. Specifically, at least two well-known companies with a lot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ENORMOUS lobbying power would have reason to want Google's GMail to fail -- Hotmail, Yahoo. And we all know what kind of anti-competitive tactics one of those is known for.
All of this blatant extremist attitude towards GMail could stem from these facts. Since I'm wearing my hat, I'd wager that it probably does.
In any regard, if I was a California citizen, I would be e-mailing these so-called representatives and inform them that they would not be receiving my vote next election and that I would be spreading the word to my friends, neighbors and family.
You can kill yourself, your passengers and other motorists with a General Motors product. Gmail will probably not kill anyone.
Nobody HAS to use GMail so what is the real problem here? Don't send mail to people with gmail.com accounts if you don't want it archived and scanned. Duh.
I think the problem lies in that Google will be scanning users email, and that includes email sent to them not just by them?
And so, with my choice to not use Google email but the need to send a message to someone who does use Google email that means I don't have a choice whether or not my message is scanned by Google before it reaches the intended recipient.
It's like, any letter you write to your aunt in Town X is read before they deliver it. My aunt may not mind her mail being read, but I do, and so by her choice of no privacy I have no other choice but to not write to her if I want my message to be private.
It's a moot point, as far as I'm concerned. But I do understand the concern. There's no consent from those sending to a google email that their message is to be read by any one or any thing other than the intended recipient.
Read more than the intro paragraph (it is BS), the detailed analysis is quite interesting. The big argument is that even though the Gmail account holder agreed to have their email profiled, the other party(ies) did not.
Now one has to think! If MS tried this, we would cry foul. But Google is one of the good guys...but guess what, they are going public! In a few years, they might be owned by Bill Gates, The Home Shopping Network, or the Direct Marketing Association.
Bad legislation should never be rewarded. And they're singling out GMail. If that law was rewritten to be non-discriminatory, almost the entire Internet would suddenly become illegal in California.
1) Unless you encrypt them, your emails are not private. No encryption == no privacy. It's that simple. The ignorance of the masses regarding this fact does not make it any less true.
/dictate/ those policies will have ill effect sooner or later.
2) The internet is far more transparent (and is far more scannable by the common man) than the phone system. See (1).
3) Laws like this have a way of coming back to bite us in the ass. Suppose you want your emails scanned and routinely data-mined, for example. In such a case, there is no victim, so what good is the law?
I'm ok with laws that say that companies must make their privacy policies publicly readable, but laws that
And so, with my choice to not use Google email but the need to send a message to someone who does use Google email that means I don't have a choice whether or not my message is scanned by Google before it reaches the intended recipient.
If you are sending e-mail, assume it is read by a dozen people between you and the recipient. Why do so many people assume that cuz there's no paper trail, there's absolute privacy? Have we learned nothing about technology around here? E-mail is not private, has never been private, will never be private.
It's _VERY_ different from a letter to your aunt that is sealed in an envelope and is strictly private. In fact, it's a federal offense to open said letter if you aren't the authorized recipient. Your letter analogy only applies to encrypted e-mail communication, which is used, I'm guessing, less than 10% of the time.
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
And how about those people who are forwarding their OTHER email addresses to their gmail accounts? How can we tell that joesixpack@hotmail.com is forwarding to joesixpack@gmail.com?
Merely being ELECTED does not grant an official to trample on any persons -- or entities -- rights.
If the California government voted to pass a bill sensoring all the speach of Ars-Fartsica, would you say it was OK simply because they were ELECTED???? That those who don't agree with the bill (probably nobody but you) could just vote them out of office?
This bill treads the dangerous waters of restricting the activities of a person or entity, not because such activities are dangerous or harmful to themselves or others, but because they just don't LIKE what google wants to do.
The law may be unique to Californians, but all Americans have an interest in the preservation of rights and common sense all across the U.S. Any time rights are infringed, it affects everyone in the U.S. and becomes of interest to everyone. Your claim that we should just "shut up this does not affect you," is completely irrational -- such events set precidents which eventually DO effect everyone. Basically, if you don't like that were not Californian's but we still express an intreset in the issue, then you can bite us.
The government has no rights -- it is only given responsibilities by us, the people. At no time ever in our history have we given the right to the government to dictate what features they want/don't want in someone's software.
Next thing you know there'll be a rider on a "Three Strikes" type bill that prohibits Linux OSes from offering low level TCP/IP access. After all, we don't want all that packet sniffing going on.
-Chiem
Once you send your email off, it's no longer yours to control. This follows the laws of nature and the laws of the land.
And yet, the aunt in question still has the right to show your letter to someone else, scan it and publish it on the internet, ask someone else to open it for her, etc.
In other words, the sender still has no control over the letter once he has sent it to the recipient. The responsibility falls on the recipient to do what she wants with the letter. And it seems to me, people are trying to control something they never had the control of in the first place.
Those in Silicon Valley are going to either buy back they Democrats from the Unions (and they have tons of money to fight back) or vote for Republicans.
It's more likely that they will move out of state, to more tech-friendly areas that tax less, and have cheaper cost-of-living. A lot of talent is still concentrated in California, but it's mainly momentum - we're benefiting from earlier investments in technology and education, and all of our research universities.
They are charging and enforcing a huge use tax on all internet purchases.
Of course, how else are they going to save face and keep their bloated pork-barrel programs/bureaucracies in place? The alternative is to scrap them, and they're not ready to admit that they're spending more than Californians can afford to pay. Between the chain that starts at the local level, percolating all of your tax dollars up to the top, then back right down, there's a lot of friction - many departments take their cut up and down the line. To fund that many mouths requires a LOT of money, money that comes from you and me. And this is just state and local taxes - federal taxes (including FICA, Medicare, and SDI) are another story!
Mind you, I appreciate it when my tax money goes to fund important things, like health and safety (ie, disease control, mosquito abatement, proper street signage, maintaining sewers and storm runoff channels). It's all of the crap that I don't want, like having to spend money on enforcement of stupid laws, for example, asset taxes, processing and court/jury time for frivolous lawsuits (enabled by stupid laws), the endless committies that publish multiple binders that must be distributed, printed, revised, and updated - that nobody ever reads, politicians getting paid to grandstand (ie, passing stupid laws in a very public manner) in order to get reelected, and the DMV with their multi-million dollar, decade-long computer upgrade, that still doesn't work.
Politicians should be penalized for stuff they promised, they either doesn't work, or that they didn't deliver. In the same way employees get performance reviews that IMPACT THEIR PAY, we, the residents of the state, should be allowed to do reviews of our elected officials, which determine how they're paid. Too bad that this will never happen, and that the "servants of the people" will continue authorizing pay raises for themselves in order to "attract top talent", to DO NOTHING.
Sorry, having to pay more than half my paycheck in taxes during the year (property taxes, asset taxes, sales taxes, employment taxes, retirement taxes, phone taxes, city taxes on utilities, use taxes) just because I'm working tends to make me a bit bitter. As the rules are set up, I'd be happier, healthier, and making almost as much money (after taxes) if I did half the work I did now and took a pay cut. Not a great incentive to try and be successful...
I live in California. I'm glad our legislators have decided to spend their time working on a bill which affects something I can *choose* whether to use or not (it's not like Google's got a monopoly on free e-mail services), rather than... oh, say, sorting out the State's budget defecit, dreadful school systems, lack of decent health care, the flight of businesses because of exhorbitant taxes and workers' comp requirements, etc etc etc.
On the other hand, working on those problems wouldn't have resulted in nearly as many soundbites and TV appearances, so I quite understand the reluctance to tackle them...
It's hilarious watching people pee their pants about a product that MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Did'nt the founders of google say that gmail is being TESTED. It just does not occur to people that they may not ever deploy it in production....for reasons completely different than all the hair pulling that people are doing.
If we are going to start passing laws against "possible products" why don't we go into the research labs of Microsoft or Orcale or Sun or RedHat or whomever....write down all the things we object to and then pass laws to restrict their development. THEN we'll all be safe and secure! Riiiight
Wait until it comes out...then bitch and moan, but to do so while it's in development is goofy. Ideas (even bad ones) are routinely batted around inside places like google and other companies. Just because you see them in alpha or beta does not MEAN you are going to see them in the final.
The tin foil hat doesn't defense against things that already were allowed into the geek conscious. Google needs to be kicked out of the geek mind as a good thing before the tin foil will be put up betweeen us and them. Personally, I'm hoping that day never comes.
Google == Trusted Friend.
Government == Get more foil.
That's scary.