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

[Jason Day]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 03:07:09PM +0000, runman at speedfactory.net wrote:
[...]
> However, when I send an
> email to someone's gmail address - a "private" email - I shouldn't
> have to worry about it being in the public domain

Why not?  This is the point I've been trying to make since this thread
started: email is not private or secure.  Period.  If it's a truly
private email and you don't want anyone but the recipient looking at it,
your only choice is to use encryption.  But even then, there's no
guarantee.

> and if I don't want
> Google to use it, then how do I get it out of their system ???

I suppose the same way you might try to get usenet posts out of their
system.  Or emails out of the ALE archive.

I can already hear the arguments: "But those are public messages, I'm
talking about private messages".  There are no "private" email messages.
Even if there were a strong legal precedent, the infrastructure simply
cannot guarantee it.  There is also user error: when the reply-to
behavior was changed for the ALE list so that replies went to the list
by default, instead of to the recipient as it was previously, a lot of
people sent obviously "private" messages to the list, instead of the
sender.  Those "private" messages are still in the ALE archive, and who
knows how many search engines/caches/etc.  There's no way to get those
messages out of all of the systems involved.

> >> I mean, corporations wouldn't do anything *illegal* now, even for
> >> profit, would they?
> 
> .. and what planet are you living on ??? Can I get tickets to go there
> ???  Until the law gets rid of seeing faceless corporations as a legal
> entity in criminal matters and starts to hold real live persons
> accountable for their actions ...

I think he was being facetious, but he raises a good point.  How do you
know that [insert big faceless corporate ISP] doesn't scan all emails
for keywords and build profiles?

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