Re:Google sued for data-mining students' email
by Houshalter on Thursday March 20, 2014 @01:53AM
(#7434108)
But this isn't a cleaning service. It should be reasonably expected that they automatically process your mail for spam filtering and image caching and other parts of the service. They are not using the service for espionage.
Re:Google sued for data-mining students' email
by belorn on Thursday March 20, 2014 @02:08PM
(#7437431)
And Gmail isn't sold as an advertisement service. The espionage for profit is not the same as filtering and image caching. That is the crossed line which this kind of lawsuit is asking about.
Cleaning services are also reasonably expected to clean desks. They might even temporary hold confidential documents in their hands while doing so. However, once they start reading the document and interpret them, a line has been crossed which no legal fine print can fix.
A new cleaning company called CleanU create an app where people can easy order office cleaning by a single press of a button. In the ToS/service/liability contract on page 43, it says in legalize: "any document found by our assistants might be used to improve service and decrease costs".
This might sound as a great way to start a legit industry espionage service, but alas, it would be illegal under several laws. First, a judge would ask if there had been a merging of minds, and thus declare the contract void since no buyer could possible have agreed to such terms. Second, as a product (sale), one could ask if "theft" could reasonable be expected when one purchase cleaning. Since it can't, the contract can be made void in that way. Thirdly, if the intent is to hide an otherwise illegal activity under the assumption that people do not read EULA, that would qualify criminal charges under Mens rea, thus fraud.
In all, reading peoples mail because you managed to get people to click a box during registration is a deal on a very unstable legal ground. Law suits like this will explore exactly how unstable it is.