A federal judge today found Google may have breached federal and California wiretapping laws for machine-scanning Gmail messages as part of its business model to create user profiles and provide targeted advertising.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh was rendered in a proposed class-action alleging Google wiretaps Gmail as part of its business model. Google sought to have the federal case in California dismissed under a section of the Wiretap Act that authorizes email providers to intercept messages if the interception facilitated the message's delivery or was incidental to the functioning of the service in general.
"Accordingly, the statutory scheme suggests that Congress did not intend to allow electronic communication service providers unlimited leeway to engage in any interception that would benefit their business models, as Google contends. In fact, this statutory provision would be superfluous if the ordinary course of business exception were as broad as Google suggests," U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh wrote.
It was the second time this month that a federal court has found Google potentially liable for wiretapping.
Just yesterday, Google asked a federal appeals court to reconsider a recent ruling finding Google potentially on the hook for wiretapping when it secretly intercepted data on open Wi-Fi routers.
The Mountain View-based company said the September 10 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will create "confusion" about which over-the-air signals are protected by the Wiretap Act, including broadcast television.
That case concerns nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open Wi-Fi networks from its Street View mapping cars. The vehicles, which rolled through neighborhoods around the world, were equipped with Wi-Fi-sniffing hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of routers to improve Google location-specific services. But the cars also gathered snippets of content.
The search giant yesterday petitioned the San Francisco-based appeals court to reconsider its decision that allowed the case to proceed at trial - a ruling that upended Google's defense.
Like the appeals court ruling, Judge Koh's decision guts Google's wiretapping defense in the Gmail case.
No trial date has been set.
"The ruling means federal and state wiretap laws apply to the Internet. It's a tremendous victory for online privacy. Companies like Google can't simply do whatever they want with our data and emails," said Jon Simpson, the privacy director for Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica, California.
Google said in a statement that it was "disappointed" with the ruling and was considering its legal options. "Automated scanning lets us provide Gmail users with security and spam protection, as well as great features like Priority inbox," the company said.
Will be updated.
David Kravets is a WIRED senior staff writer and founder of the fake news site TheYellowDailyNews.com. He's a dad of two boys and has been a reporter since the manual typewriter days. His PGP fingerprint is 066F 245D 22A0 7511 B36B CB4F 0F53 B742 5919 4A18.
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news by September 27, 2013 at 01:57AM
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