[Ben Richmond reporting on Judge Lucy Koh’s decision to let the case move forward][1]:
> She wrote in her decision that, “a reasonable Gmail user who read the Privacy Policies would not have necessarily understood that her emails were being intercepted to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements.”
And:
> “Google has cited no case that stands for the proposition that users who send emails impliedly consent to interceptions and use of their communications by third parties other than the intended recipient of the email,” Koh wrote.
In other words Google is going to have to defend against federal and state wiretap laws, as Koh sees it, because: a) it’s not easily understandable by any layperson reading the privacy policy that this email scanning happens; and b) that it certainly is not reasonable to expect people emailing Gmail users to expect their emails are being scanned.
This is going to be a huge decision and will have huge ramifications to all online service providers. We all know I loathe Google (to put it mildly), but I hope this works out badly for Google for no other reason than the good it would likely bring to the openness of privacy policies. Of course, it could just be bad all the way around.
[1]: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/federal-court-allows-lawsuit-against-googles-email-scanning-to-proceed
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