Between the NSA, Facebook, and Google, your life is an open book. But, a federal judge in San Jose ruled Thursday that Google will have to face a wiretapping lawsuit over the claim that it illegally scans Gmail users' email for keywords that are used to deliver ads. Google doesn't refute the claim but says that users waived their right to email privacy when they clicked Agree on the user agreement for the software.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh writes, "The court finds that it cannot conclude that any party -- Gmail users or non-Gmail users -- has consented to Google’s reading of e-mail for the purposes of creating user profiles or providing targeted advertising." At issue seems to be whether the privacy polices Google had users consent to were sufficient in granting consent for the specific purpose of intercepting email for improving their own business model.
Read the whole ruling here, which relates to a proposed class action in the Gmail case.
This is the second wiretapping case Google is contending with, the first being this earlier case in which they could be potentially liable for intercepting open wi-fi signals and inadvertently collecting user data while trolling the streets with their Street View mapping cars.
