more on Govt claims warrantless access to e-mail via third party servers

Begin forwarded message:

From: kim brooks wei <[email protected]>
Date: December 26, 2006 10:15:02 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Govt claims warrantless access to e-mail  
via third party servers

This subject received quite a bit of attention when Google unveiled  
its policy about email stored on its servers. Google apparently  
doesn't delete your gmail emails when you trash them, but continues  
to keep them on their servers in storage. And once they've been there  
for 180 days

 From a post this week on my new weblog
http://blog.kim.thewei.com/2006/12/23/does-your-email-belong-to-you/

Email privacy is an enormous issue. The EFF [Electronic Frontier  
Foundation] <http://www.eff.org/> informs us that companies which  
offer both internet search and email storage can collect a massive  
amount of personal information about users. It's possible to extract  
information about you from the searches you make. It's also possible  
for an email host to scan your emails to collect other personal  
details about you. Not only possible, but apparently the big players  
[Yahoo, MSN and Amazon] actually do this.

Google Watch <http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html> reports that  
Google scans all of its clients' emails and reserves the right to  
"give this information to whomever they wish. . . After 180 days in  
the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected  
communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Here's a list <http://blogs.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001425.php> in  
not-too-technical terms of steps for protecting yourself against your  
email-plus-search provider accumulating a big fat file with details  
on each of your lifestyle and shopping preferences.

More on the subject of Google's email privacy policy at EPIC  
[Electronic Privacy Information Center] <http://www.epic.org/privacy/ 
gmail/faq.html>."


--
Kim Brooks Wei
http://blog.kim.thewei.com/
1.201.475.1854