Google Pushing Back On Law Enforcement Requests For Access To Gmail Accounts

Virtucon writes "Ars technica has an interesting article on how Google is handling requests from law enforcement for access to Gmail accounts. With the recent Petraeus scandal where no criminal conduct was found, it seems that they're re-enforcing their policies and standing up for their users. 'In order to compel us to produce content in Gmail we require an ECPA search warrant,' said Chris Gaither, Google spokesperson. 'If they come for registration information, that's one thing, but if they ask for content of email that's another thing.'"

Comments

Re:service centralization = bad idea

[adamjgp]

Users are going to choose the service that best fits their needs. If there were other options out there that offered services similar to gmail, and were widely advertised and known to the public, then email usage would be more distributed. Also, there's the perception that your email address gives others

Re:What about contacts graph?

[NatasRevol]

Stupid answer.

How many mail servers do you think Google has? Lots. Geographically distributed.

And guess where the traffic goes to get from one to another? Public internet.