illegal g-mail

California State Senator Liz Figueroa (D) of Fremont is drafting legislation to stop Google's free e-mail service G-Mail, as she is under the impresssion that g-mail constitutes "an absolute invasion of privacy" due to its policy of using keywords in your e-mail to present targeted advertisements.

While I can understand the feature may be unsettling to those who don't understand how it is being achieved, this may be a case of a politician trying to legislate something they do not understand. Please people, a little research might be in order before you put your pen to paper. Only a computer sees the content of a g-mail e-mail, not Google employees. More importantly, Google's advertisers do not know anything about you nor have any access to you unless you choose to click their link and go to their site. G-Mail is also very clear and upfront about how and when e-mail data is used. Contrast that to Hotmail or Yahoo!, who provide banner ads that can allow advertisers to place cookies on your machine and track you across different websites.

Any online e-mail service has the potential for privacy violation. People's personal data are sitting on Yahoo! and MSN servers as well, leaving the same potential for within-company violations. Furthermore, as Kevin Fox has pointed out, both Yahoo! and Hotmail collect a ton more demographic info about you than G-Mail currently does. It is completely understandable that members of our society will at times be uncomfortable or uninformed about new technologies. It is not acceptable, however, for politicians to perpetuate misunderstandings, let alone attempt to inscribe them into law. Perhaps something like Derek Powazek's open letter will help focus Sen. Figueroa's perspective.

I do think there are important privacy concerns that this debate brings to light. When do machines "reading" our e-mail cross the line? If G-Mail is "bad", aren't spam filters (which scan our e-mail with greater sophistication) and Amazon's collaborative filtering violating our privacy as well? What levels of data mining are we comfortable with and which aren't we? These things need to be discussed and made subject to social negotiation, but knee-jerk legislation may short change people under the rubric of protecting them.

Another, larger, concern was raised earlier today in a conversation with Joe and Yuri. Yuri noted that what bothered him was having all his primary internet activities (i.e. search and e-mail) monitored by a single body. Given that this is the direction in which Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are all headed, I think he has a point. Safeguards for preventing "omniscient" companies from abusing people's data are not a bad idea (and one which normal market pressures might resolve, if people are properly educated on the matter). But legislation preventing useful technologies for the wrong reason doesn't help.