Sex Offender Google'd and Arrested

Note the first part of my original post.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people are willing to give up their own rights. I lead a pretty straight and narrow life and reading my emails will probably only put a Googler to sleep, but that doesn't mean I want them doing it.

Giving up that privacy might catch a few criminals. The more likely scenario is that the ones doing the reading will use the information they come across to commit crimes of their own, such as identity theft, fraud, insider trading, or any other of a thousand things they can do by collecting sensitive data.

I'm as guilty as anyone of not reading Google's terms of service, so my guess is that this not illegal on their part. But it's a pretty good wake up call that they aren't just collecting so-called "big data" and analyzing trends. They're very specifically reading individual emails and scouring its content.

 

"Reading" isn't the correct word.

They are "scanning" them.