user: Q:
Gmail does scan all emails, new Google terms clarify
Google has clarified its email scanning practices in a terms of service update, informing users that incoming and outgoing emails are analysed by automated software.

The revisions explicitly state that Google’s system scans the content of emails stored on Google’s servers as well as those being sent and received by any Google email account, a practice that has seen the search company face criticism from privacy action groups and lawsuits from the education sector.

“We want our policies to be simple and easy for users to understand. These changes will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we've received over the last few months,” said a Google spokeswoman.

The automated systems scan the content of emails for spam and malware detection, as many other email providers automatically do, but also as part of Google’s “priority inbox” service and tailored advertising.

“This is not the worst thing Google does,” said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group. “But like anything like this, if people are concerned about it they should be able to completely switch it off if they want to.”

Google’s ads use information gleaned from a user’s email combined with data from their Google profile as a whole, including search results, map requests and YouTube views, to display what it considers are relevant ads in the hope that the user is more likely to click on them and generate more advertising revenue for Google.

The updated terms of service were clarified to specifically state:

“Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”

Google’s email scanning practices stretch across consumer-facing Gmail displaying ads to support the service, as well as its products for business and education which have the option of being ad-free.

Such scanning and indexing of emails, which cannot be fully turned off, could be in violation of a US law called Ferpa, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which is the main law guarding student educational records and the law being used as the basis for a lawsuit filed against Google in California.

While email scanning has taken the headlines recently, leading from the revelations that Google considers that users have no “reasonable expectation” of privacy, the Open Rights Group considers other aspects of Google’s practices most troubling.

“The really dangerous things that Google is doing are things like the information held in Analytics, cookies in advertising and the profiling that it is able to do on individual accounts,” said Killock.

“It is the amount of information they hold on individuals that should be concerning us, both because that is attractive to government but also sometimes that information leaks out in various ways like the NSA’s use of cookies in general as a means to target users,” Killock explained.

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Search giant modifies terms of service to specifically state ‘automated systems analyse your content’. By Samuel Gibbs
Q:
Saying Goodbye To America's Post 9/11 TV Hero
After eight seasons, the Fox series 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, America's one-man do-or-die counterterrorism force--is due to go off the air when the current season wraps up on May 24.

I'll miss Jack. It's only television, but I think he's summed up something important about the American spirit: a will to defend his country, against all attackers, no matter what the odds. That fighting spirit is still evident among American troops on the battlefield. But in Washington's political quagmires, over the nine years since Sept. 11, it's been substantially snuffed out. Instead, policy revolves endlessly around denial of real threats and the impulse to Mirandize enemies on foreign fields of war and bestow upon them the rights of U.S. citizens at home--even if that means releasing them to kill Americans again.

24 is a thriller wrapped around a gimmick: Each season presents a single, action-packed day, spread out across 24 one-hour episodes (occasionally doubled up for an extra kick), all supposed to take place "in real time." Each second of the ticking digital clock is meant to correspond to a second in yet another day from hell for hero Jack, as he battles to save America from scheming terrorists and their weapons of mass destruction.

Conceived before Sept. 11, and scheduled to air in the initial fall lineup of 2001, 24's premiere was briefly delayed. The producers were worried that the subject cut too close to the horrors of the real attacks. In November 2001, they went ahead. 24 was a hit. America was ready for a hero devoted round-the-clock to foiling terrorists.

When I first tuned in, with the pilot show, I found the real-time premise ridiculous. Jack was working for the "Counter-Terrorism Unit" (CTU) in Los Angeles. If the show had lived up (or down) to its billing of horological verisimilitude, he would have spent most of the episode stuck in L.A. traffic.

But I also found the show utterly addictive. It takes more than gridlock to stop Jack, who will do anything and everything to honor his word, defeat the terrorists and save America. Moving at a hectic clip, communicating via an endless supply of cellphones with the faithful tech-wiz Chloe (his most enduring sidekick), Jack tackles at least one deadly crisis per episode, and usually more. Meanwhile, the subplots proliferate into love interests, treachery, coup conspiracies, shootouts, inter-agency rivalries, anguished decisions and--always--some weapon of mass destruction being hauled around, dickered over and primed to go off. Since 2002, the show has rung all the changes on major WMD, some more than once, from chemical to biological to nuclear weapons.

This season the chief setting is New York City with trouble spilling out from a summit at the United Nations. The weapon, courtesy of Middle East politics and the Russian mob, is a rogue cargo of nuclear fuel. Over the past 14 hours, Jack has already been knocked flat by an exploding helicopter, stabbed in the belly, tortured with electrical shocks and, above all, impeded by the usual in-house idiocy and conniving of CTU's latest bosses. Yet he goes on, apparently recovering from his wounds during the commercial breaks.

But as the episodes have stacked up, so have the controversies and the scars, both on-screen and off. Though he struggles on, our hero is weary. It's not just the extras who bite the dust. Every so often, major characters die too--felled by everything from poisoned gas and car bombs to radiation and bullets. Part of the suspense is that you never quite know when something is going to go mortally wrong. Since the show began, Jack has seen his wife murdered and close friends killed. Jack himself has suffered heart attacks under torture, acquired (and kicked) a heroin addiction in order to infiltrate a WMD-dealing drug mob, and received what should have been a fatal whiff of a horrendous bioweapon that would have killed anyone else on the planet.

Meanwhile, out there in the real world, there have been protests over Jack's no-holds-barred interrogation techniques--never mind that this is just a TV show. The producers have been increasingly at pains to weigh down Jack with angst and provide a multicultural parade of villains, including stock Hollywood variations on the motif that the worst enemies are those within. A recurring theme is perfidy among trusted characters, with shadowy groups and ruthless traitors--including at one point Jack's own brother--plotting to attack the country and seize the White House.
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assistant: Why I'll miss 24's Jack Bauer.