Slashdot Mirror
Bank Goofs, and Judge Orders Gmail Account Nuked
An anonymous reader writes "The Rocky Mountain Bank, based in Wyoming, accidentally sent confidential financial information to the wrong Gmail account. When Google refused to identify the innocent account owner's information, citing its privacy policy, the bank filed in Federal court to have the account deactivated and the user's information revealed. District Judge James Ware granted the bank's request, with the result that the user has had his email access cut off without any wrongdoing or knowledge of why." The Reg's earlier story says, "Rocky Mountain Bank had asked to court to keep its suit under seal, hoping to avoid panic among its customers and a 'surge of inquiry.' But obviously, this wasn't successful."
Why is the bank sending sensitive customer information to an email account hosted by a provider known for rifling though it's user's emails for information?
...if a judge in, say, Korea granted the same request to have a gmail account blocked, an innocent user in, say, Germany would loose his email...even if that email contained confidental and critical information to be used by its owner...this is quite pathetic and something should be put in place to stop these low level distric judges making decisions that could affect users across the globe.
At least Google offers free POP and IMAP access, so it's trivial to back up your email locally. I'd still be pissed if something like this happened to me, but Google isn't to blame.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Wouldn't this be like having a package wrongly delivered to your house (through no fault of your own: the sender had the wrong address), and since it contained highly confidential information, a judge ordered your house to be burned to the ground? (Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get my point.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
If I get e-mails from banks that I have no relation with, it is usually spam and gets instantly deleted.
Perhaps that's why the recipient of the bank's private data didn't respond to any of their e-mails.
Or maybe the mailbox holder was simply on vacation? Is there a legal obligation to check your inbox on a regular basis? (There's a reason legal papers aren't sent by e-mail.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The bank requested the user's identity. Google refused to provide it. So then the bank goes to court not only to get the user's identity but to deactivate the user's account. I'm missing the logic. Okay, maybe the bank fears that enough time has passed that the user has seen the errant email and wants to prevent the user from misusing the information. Now, that might work if the user does not have a local copy of the email. On the other hand, if the user has a local copy and is now angry at the bank for having had their gmail account shut down, the user, who might otherwise have done nothing, now has both the means and the motive to do something. Good move. Wouldn't it have been possible for Google to contact the gmail user and ask him to delete any local copies? And Google, presumably, could have deleted the email from its own servers. I like Google's policy of protecting user identities. But this whole mess sounds like two bureaucrats blindly following policy to the detriment of the end-users. Can't anyone think anymore?
linquendum tondere
Also having a moment of gratitude that I don't use gmail.
What email do you use that would disobey a judge's order?
His own server, perhaps?
Ezekiel 23:20
My email is on my own computer. My ISP could delete my account, but not erase my old emails.
San Francisco Photographers
I run my email on my own email server... In my house. What would they have done if they accidentally sent the email to me?
Google should have fought back against this.
They did. They could have just shut off the account. This is a problem with a judge, and I will backfire badly.
Authoritarian types just love arguments like this. That obvious intended meaning is a pesky thing to them, so to deal with it they created the ingenius device of separating the text into two concepts: the "spirit of the law", which they have made into something they can disregard whenever convenient, and the "letter of the law" which they can carefully examine to find any needed loopholes (incidentally, the same tactic was used when "freedom," a holistic concept, was split into "economic freedom" and "personal freedom"). That argument you are making is like a path, and I will give you a perfect example of one of that path's many destinations: free speech zones. The "logic" behind them is that the 1st Amendment guarantees your right to free speech, but does not specify where you may exercise this right. So, the free speech zones are located where the impact of contrary opinions can be most effectively minimized. Result? "Get with our program, or be censored, except we won't call it that."
Of course, for the free speech zones, they COULD decide that because the Constitution does not specify the specific locations to which the INALIENABLE RIGHTS it enumerates should apply, then obviously any fool can recognize that it's intended to apply throughout every last crumb of American soil. But, that would mean you can't use clever tricks to censor people without having to call it censorship, which is why such a concept is frowned upon by authoritarian types and other would-be tyrants.
Don't kid yourself. Massive injustices usually start out very small. If it's now considered okay to make you suffer in any way, however minor or however great, for the actions of a third party over which you have zero control, then this system is already terminal, we just don't know it yet. The entire concept is diametrically opposed to all of our notions of due process, the right to confront your accuser, the presumption of innocence, you name it. To fully support this ruling without being a hypocrite you would first have to throw out centuries of American tradition and jurisprudence. I for one am not prepared to do that.
In summary, this is a step in the wrong direction and the fact that a bank might suffer a little inconvenience due to its own damned screw-up is emphatically NOT a worthy reason to support it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Heck, it could be a gmailfs user. They wouldn't even necessarily know they got the e-mail.
Those "other victims" as you call them chose to do business with Shitty Bank And Trust.
This is America. If they don't like how that choice turned out, they can vote with their feet. This decision by this judge only serves to preserve as many customers as possible for the bank, and dare I say that the bank does not have the right to have its customer-base preserved via the judicial system.
What I'm saying is that I dont care if it was 1 account, 50 accounts, or 1 million accounts. Shitty Bank And Trust does not deserve preservation here. They deserve to lose all the customers directly affected, plus other customers who go unaffected but or now severely concerned about their privacy.
"His name was James Damore."
Who represented the rights of the user to the court?
Was a public defendant even involved, or was no one assigned because there was no face to the account that was deleted?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The owner of the gmail account should be able to sue the bank for damaging their business.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
What email do you use that would disobey a judge's order?
His own server, perhaps?
What makes you think that you won't arrive home to find that all of your electronic equipment has been confiscated?
"Every one should email the bank banker@rmbank.com to ask them of their shady practices." No. Everyone should email some personal information to banker@rmbank.com, then insist that their domain be shut down.
There is a debate between economists on whether inflation should just include the price of products excluding food and energy or should it include housing and health insurance. Both housing and insurance have trippled since the late 1990's. Sure on paper it looks like you make the same but a $175,000 home in 1999 costs $350,000 even during the recession. Suddenly $55,000 a year is not worth jack in most metropolitan areas even if prices do not necessarily show it.
If you health care costs were put in the inflation equation with housing we would see a totally different side of economics that economists should have prevented if they only knew.
Something does need to be done.
http://saveie6.com/
Have you looked at the cost of "every little thing" on the list of charges from an average doctor's visit? Even the most trivial item or service is ridiculously expensive.
It would make plenty of sense to cover oil changes, tune-ups and brake jobs if the cost comparison were similar to what you see in medical costs. An oil change costs anywhere from $10 to $25 out where I live. Brake jobs can range anywhere from $50 to $150 for basic stuff. If a doctor visit cost that and included anything other than an examination, that would be terrific. And if the cost of prescriptions were somehow less than the price of 4 cans of motor oil, I'd be right there with you. But that is simply not the case. Drugs are ridiculously expensive. (When my youngest was an infant and was experiencing some severe allergies, the doctor prescribed a ridiculously expensive tube of something that cost over $100 at the pharmacy! I bought it but my out of pocket was like $50 versus $10-$15 because my insurer didn't want to cover that drug.)
If people don't need their medical stuff all the time, they wouldn't need to be so concerned about it. But when a medical problem arises, it often involves months if not years of continuous treatment all on the same scale as I have been describing... expensive drugs, expensive office visits, expensive procedures, expensive tests. And people who are well insured are still getting hit hard because the cost of the insurance is still prohibitively expensive.
I consider myself lucky. I don't have any medical problems. My wife and children don't either. That is really fortunate. But there are lots of people who aren't so fortunate... lots. And it does often cost people their homes because it often comes down to completing medical treatments or paying the mortgage. Insurers drop or deny coverage QUITE often which is yet another talking point in favor of healthcare reform.
I get the feeling you simply don't understand what healthcare costs really are because you haven't really paid any before.
The owner of the gmail account should be able to sue the bank for damaging their business.
That might not be very easy to prove. Especially since it was the action of the judge that nuked his account. Good luck suing him. But you're right in that the judge was way out of line in capriciously disrupting someone's life when he has done nothing wrong.
This brings up another point: there is an increasing tendency for American companies to conflate US Law with World Law. If I, a gmail account holder living in Australia, had my account nuked by some craniorectal US judge, I would be mightily pissed off, since no US judge has jurisdiction over me. But no matter how pissed off I was, I would have no redress.
This just makes me glad I run my own mail server...
I think google could do more. After they lose. Have the front page logo for google search in the whole state be a link to this bank's incompetence... for a month. Perfectly legal, costs them nothing and would gain them some good customer rep.
Have the front page logo for google search in the whole state be a link to this bank's incompetence... for a month.
That would be a fucking awesome display of power
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
Why should I have all of my electronic equipment at home?
Ezekiel 23:20