By Evan Hansen, 28 May 2004 09:15
NEWS The California state Senate on Thursday approved a bill that takes aim at Google's new Gmail service, placing strict limits on email providers seeking to scan customer messages for advertising and other purposes.
The bill passed after revisions that removed a key provision that would have required email providers to win the consent of anyone sending messages to their service before scanning messages.
Senator Liz Figueroa, Democrat and the bill's author, said: "My legislation guarantees that our most private communications will remain just that private."
In a statement, Google said it is taking a neutral position on the bill as it continues to work with Figueroa on the measure.
A statement from Google read: "Google has worked in good faith with Senator Figueroa and her staff to address her concerns about privacy and online communications. We believe we have reached conceptual agreement on most of the key points, but we have not yet reached agreement on all the details. As is the norm in the legislative process, work still remains on the specific language of the bill."
The Senate action comes as Google is seeking to fend off an unexpected backlash against Gmail, a web-based email service that turned heads when it was unveiled in late March with an offer of 1GB of free storage. Evan Hansen writes for News.com
Comments
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1. anonymous
Okay, so they want to prevent ALL scanning of email? Would that include virus and anti-spam scanning?
2. Harold Fuchs
This article seems to me to contradict itself quite seriously:
1. The sentence starting "The California state Senate" says the bill places strict limits on scanning.
2. The next sentence says that a key provision requiring users' permission for scanning "was removed".
Huh?
Why does the article not say what the "strict limits" are?
3. anonymous
so users should just have to agree to having their email scanned in order to use gmail, i actully like having google ads, they are teh usefull