People are complaining about gmail, google’s proposed 1-gig storage web-based email service. While I think that being concerned about privacy is a legit way to spend your time, I don’t think that gmail is going to threaten my privacy. Having a search engine locate keywords and serve me a text ad isn’t very intrusive. I believe google when they say that they aren’t going to associate my ID with the keywords that are found. Beyond all that, though… if you aren’t using encryption, what makes you think that your email is private now? If hackers, corporations, or the feds want to read your mail, archive it, detect patterns in it… they can. The US government is almost certainly “reading” mail now… certainly overseas email, and I would be very surprised if domestic mail isn’t scanned. All in the name of national security, of course! Forget gmail… worry about Uncle Sam.
