Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-15 Thread Gabriel Rocha
On Wed, Apr 14, at 08:22PM, Justin wrote:
| I'm not concerned with the advertising itself.  My concern is that the
| Gmail service would provide an unacceptable level of detail on message
| content to whoever's monitoring the advertisement logs.

I only say something because I have seen this point before and find it
ludicrous. How much more detail than the message itself does the
advertizing agency need? Google is the one targetting the adds at its
customers. Google is the organization with all the emails. If they want
to know what's in your emails, they don't need to bother to come up with
an elaborate scheme for it... You never have to delete email doesn't
have to be an advertizing pitch for customers. Rather, it can be a nice
nifty advertizing pitch for the feds. Why subpeana the advertizing logs
when you can subpeana the emails themselves?



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-15 Thread Bill Stewart
At 01:22 PM 4/14/2004, Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I'm not concerned with the advertising itself.  My concern is that the
 Gmail service would provide an unacceptable level of detail on message
 content to whoever's monitoring the advertisement logs.


Unacceptable to whom, and what should they do about it if they don't accept it?

If Joe Sixpack to trade the privacy issues for the convenience,
because like most of the public his value systems prefer dancing pigs
to security, that's his business, and if he doesn't, that's his business too.
But if Liz Figueroa doesn't accept it, and makes laws banning it,
because she knows better than Joe what's good for him,
well that's typical tacky legislator behaviour, and she need to be
educated on why the free market really does make people more free.
It would be especially tacky if she argued that Google was somehow
abusing their quasi-monopolistic powers here - after all, there are
probably over 1000 different free or cheap email providers out there,
and you can look them up in Google, and of course many of them are
out of her jurisdiction.
Personally, I'm also concerned about the depth of detail
that might or might not be visible to the advertisers.
Do they get queries on keywords or phrases the way banner ads do?
How much user information gets passed along with them?
Does it only get passed if you click on the ad, or on all queries?
Do the advertising calculations get done when the mail is received,
or only when you read any given message, or also when you
search your inbox for keywords?  I'm guessing they don't do the former,
because you'd otherwise see lots of banner ads for things you
receive email about, and I get enough spam already, thank you :-)

Bill Stewart  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-14 Thread Justin
Dave Howe (2004-04-13 14:11Z) wrote:

 Justin wrote:
  It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties.
  It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating
  traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from
  sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract.
  There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail
  is intercepted and parsed.
 
 And this differs from normal mail how?
 most free email services add advert footers, and many email servers offer
 virus and spam filtering via just such a parsing method.  the Google

I'm not concerned with the advertising itself.  My concern is that the
Gmail service would provide an unacceptable level of detail on message
content to whoever's monitoring the advertisement logs.



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Dave Howe
Riad S. Wahby wrote:
 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California state senator on Monday said
 she was drafting legislation to block Google Inc.'s free e-mail
 service Gmail because it would place advertising in personal
 messages after searching them for key words.
Is she planning to block all the advertising supported email services, just
those associated with search engines, or just those who actually try to make
the ads relevent?



Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Riad S. Wahby
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California state senator on Monday said
she was drafting legislation to block Google Inc.'s free e-mail
service Gmail because it would place advertising in personal
messages after searching them for key words.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20040412/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_1

A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely
nothing to do with the state, period.  The bitch supporting this shit
should be removed from office forthwith.

-- 
Riad Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIT VI-2 M.Eng



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread J.A. Terranson

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Riad S. Wahby wrote:

 A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely
 nothing to do with the state, period.  The bitch supporting this shit
 should be removed from office forthwith.

And based on this [quite valid] criteria, we should remove 90+ percent of all
the little vermin running around in various gubmints protecting us.

Instead of removing her, they'll likely reelect her for watching out for
their interests.  :-((

-- 
How do you change anything, except stand in one place
and scream and scream and scream and then make more people
come and stand in that place and scream and scream and scream?

Sally Fields



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Justin
Riad S. Wahby (2004-04-13 01:49Z) wrote:

 http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20040412/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_1
 
 A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely
 nothing to do with the state, period.  The bitch supporting this shit
 should be removed from office forthwith.

It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties.
It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating
traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from
sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract.
There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail is
intercepted and parsed.

-- 
You took my gun.  It's just your word against mine!
Not necessarily.
  -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Dave Howe
Justin wrote:
 It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties.
 It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating
 traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from
 sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract.
 There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail
 is intercepted and parsed.
And this differs from normal mail how?
most free email services add advert footers, and many email servers offer
virus and spam filtering via just such a parsing method.  the Google
advertising system has for a fair while now offered a number of
targetted services, ranging from bought links displayed (differentiated)
on search results keyed on certain words, to targetted links for
advertisting supported browsing packages that are appropriate to the
websites visited using that package.  Google are careful to point out that
the actual user is in no way identified before or after the parsing - the
parsing engine merely identifies the appropriate advert, then drops the
data and moves on to the next job

besides, if you want privacy in email, you encrypt - although the mind
boggles as to what googleads  you would get for cryptotext.



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Gil Hamilton
Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Riad S. Wahby (2004-04-13 01:49Z) wrote:

 
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20040412/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_1
  A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely
 nothing to do with the state, period.  The bitch supporting this shit
 should be removed from office forthwith.

It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties.
It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating
traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from
sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract.
No privacy is lost in the gmail system; no information about either
party is disclosed to any third party.  The information contained in the
message still remains private to the sender and recipient (well, to the
extent that any web-based mail can be considered private).  Exactly
what traditional legal guarantees do you think would be lost in the
gmail system?
There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail is
intercepted and parsed.
So what?  The average sender doesn't understand that mail is
intercepted and parsed by each SMTP or POP server encountered in the
path from sender to recipient.  Or that their message is written to the
hard disk of each of those systems as well.  What the average sender
understands is irrelevant unless there is some bearing on his
expectation of privacy in the message contents.
Really, what's the difference between scanning the message in order to,
say, render HTML tags it may contain, and scanning it in order to
generate targetted advertising based on keywords it contains?  The
latter could also be considered as merely part of the rendering process.
- GH

_
Persistent heartburn? Check out Digestive Health  Wellness for information 
and advice. http://gerd.msn.com/default.asp



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread An Metet
 Really, what's the difference between scanning the message in order to,
 say, render HTML tags it may contain, and scanning it in order to
 generate targetted advertising based on keywords it contains?

That's irrelevant.  These arguments that Gmail is just like other services
are nothing but red herrings.

Surely cypherpunks should understand that the recipient of a message
can do whatever he wants with it.  He can save it to disk, he can
share it with his friends, or he can contract with Gmail to add targeted
advertising.  It's contrary to everything cypherpunks stand for to suggest
that the sender of a message should have some power or authority over
what happens to it once it is in the receiver's hands.

Even if Gmail were completely new and nothing like it had ever existed in
the world before, it would be perfectly acceptable for mail recipients
to use the service.  That follows from their inherent freedom to use
the information under their control.

Please save these tired arguments by analogy for another forum.
Cypherpunks agree on the basic desirability of individual freedom,
and that is enough to settle the question.



Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

2004-04-13 Thread Shawn K. Quinn
On Tuesday 2004 April 13 17:26, sunder wrote:
 Pete Capelli wrote:
Since when is there a guarantee of privacy in email??

 Smartass reply Since PhilZ wrote PGP?/Smartass reply

But then, only if you use PGP (or GnuPG or what have you).

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn