[ale] What's so special about gmail invites?

[Jason Day]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 09:28:30PM -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Jason Day's complaint about Gmail stems from the idea that they who run
> an e-mail system can do what they want with the e-mail - read it, keep
> it, retransmit it, print it on microfilm and send it to Jupiter, etch it
> into the marble on the floors of their office buildings.  

Er, I wasn't complaining, I was just trying to point out that filtering
mail based on the gmail.com domain is, for all practical purposes,
pointless.  Robert Reese's initial comment about gmail seemed, to me, to
be a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived invasion of privacy.  I would
argue that one should not expect *any* privacy or security with regards
to email in the absence of encryption.  There is nothing that prevents
an unscrupulous person from storing all email sent through a server
under his/her control (whether that control is legitimate or the result
of a breakin is irrelevant).  This same person could run any number of
programmatical analyses and/or build profiles based on captured email.

Maybe we should be able to have a resonable expectation of privacy with
regards to email, but the reality is that the current infrastructure
does not allow it.

Jason
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9