Google is facing a lawsuit for privacy violations of student data. Students from University of California, Berkeley filed the complaint on Jan. 27 at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
The petitioners allege that the internet giant uses email scanning on its apps used for educational programs. Such intrusion provides Gmail and other Google products information about the students. They said that Google misled the school into thinking that the email accounts are protected from scanning for commercial purposes. The suit raises issues on US child-protection laws and wiretap laws.
As reported by The Guardian, in its filings, Google admitted that they do bulk scanning of the contents and emails sent by the students of the schools that use Google products. The plaintiffs argue that the "bulk scanning" of the company for the purpose of creating advertising profiles for every user is illegal because it was done without their consent, Daily Californian reported. Under Electronic Communications Privacy Act, electronic communications are protected both in transit and in storage.
In 2014, Google announced that the company had "permanently removed all ads scanning" in its email service which means that Google will no longer collect nor use student date on its education app services for commercial purposes. The petitioners are hoping to start a class suit to gain civil damages as compensation for violation of privacy and to force the company to be more transparent about its policies.
Furthermore, the plaintiffs want the company to delete any information derived from scanned emails and pay $100 for every day that the privacy of the students has been violated, The Washington Post reported. Legal representative of the petitioners Ray Gallo of Gallo LLP said that other students from other institutions such as Harvard University and Yale University may also join the suit pursuant to the privacy statements of the schools.
UC-Berkeley Privacy law and Internet law professor Chris Jay Hoofnagle said that he's far more concerned on what Google with do with the data it gathers aside from creating customized advertising profiles.
"In effect, Google could act as an intelligence agency, deeply mining relationships and ideas among groups of people," Hoofnagle said in The Washington Post.
