Joe Abley wrote:
On 2010-01-13, at 11:31, Anthony Uk wrote:
The ability to automatically discern users' political positions from their inbox is not one that any email provider reasonably needs.
It's arguably something that gmail users consent to when they give Google rights to index and process their mail, though.
Or... Maybe account X is attacked, and it is registered to somebody named Liu Xiaobo, and Liu Xiaobo turns out to be a prominent human rights activist. After some investigation, it turns out accounts belonging to people whose names match known human rights activists were attacked and those that don't, weren't. Sure, assuming Google is being Sinister Santa Claus (brings gifts ostensibly from the goodness of their hearts, but mysteriously knows what you want, knows when you've been sleeping, knows when you're awake, etc) through data mining makes a good story, but it isn't the obvious conclusion.