This is for the second time in a row that a federal judge has refused to outlaw a lawsuit against Google accusing the tech giant of improperly scanning customers’ email content to place advertisements violating the wiretap laws.
Lucy Koh, U.S. District Judge, San Jose, California, on Thursday, said in a 43-page ruling that users can proceed and sue the tech giant in a proposed class action lawsuit for unofficially scanning their private Gmail accounts for targeted adverts. Google is evidently disappointed with the decision and Matt Kallman, spokesman Google, said that they were looking at the options.
Google has insisted that the scans are automated and the email contents are not viewed by any human operator. In August, Google filed a motion against the complaint saying that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”
Earlier this year nine plaintiffs including some Gmail users had brought litigation before Koh claiming that Google has allegedly violated the Federal Wiretap statutes by crossing the line in order to read private email messages for advertising purpose.
Google argued saying that by agreeing to the Google’s terms of service the plaintiffs had consented to the scanning and so the lawsuit must be dismissed. But Koh disagreed. Koh wrote in the ruling “Nothing in the policies suggests that Google intercepts email communication in transit between users, and in fact, the policies obscure Google’s intent to engage in such interceptions”.
However Koh has dismissed two of the plaintiff’s claims and has given them an opportunity to re-file the claims with additional facts.
