Mashable - In a challenge to one of Google's more controversial practices, a group of students in California are suing Google, claiming that the company's monitoring of Gmail violates federal and state privacy laws.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is currently hearing the complaint from nine students whose emails were subject to Google surveillance because Gmail is a component of Apps for Education. Apps for Education is a suite of free, web-based education tools that has some 30 million users worldwide, most of whom are students under 18 exposed to the software via their schools.
A Google rep told Education Week that the company scans and indexes emails from all Apps for Education users. The company uses the data for potential advertising, among other purposes.
Education Week speculates that the case could have "major implications" for how the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is interpreted. FERPA, which was issued in 1974, ensures the privacy of records of students under the age of 18. The Department of Education's recent guidance on the issue also appears to indirectly state that Google's Gmail practices run afoul of FERPA.
The students are seeking class-action certification for the case.
If successful, that could lead to a payment to millions of Gmail users. However, in a victory for Google, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday declined to combine other related suits against Google's Gmail on similar grounds into one class-action suit.
No comments:
Post a Comment