more news from Google

[fred at cisco.com (Fred Baker)]

On Jan 13, 2010, at 8:31 AM, Anthony Uk wrote:

> The ability to automatically discern users' political positions from  
> their inbox is not one that any email provider reasonably needs.

I'm not Chinese, but putting myself in their position...

I would be surprised if they were trying to determine anyone's  
political positions. Google's observation that the targeted parties  
were dissidents suggests that they are known to be dissidents without  
looking at their gmail content. If I were of the specified mindset and  
were looking at their mail, I think I might be mapping dissident  
networks to identify potential dissidents I was unaware of and looking  
to see if they mentioned any specific plans or pointed to specific  
content.