Comments on: California Senate approves anti-Gmail bill

The revised measure would place strict privacy restrictions on e-mail providers in the state, but it appears to fall short of barring Google's new service.

[winfidel]

I heard differently

My understanding was that the senator finally got a clue as to what was going on, and took out the language banning GMail, and basically saying that no human could read the mail. It's a stupid law anyway, since it's totally voluntary, and not sneaky in any way. Politicians should learn to think, not just react emotionally. I was one of the ones that wrote her to express these opinions; hopefully, she read it (I did get a canned reply).

[unknown unknown]

Not much of a backlash

at least if you look at the number of people begging to be invited by someone with a GMail account. There are people selling invitations on EBay for $80.00.
Personally I'll just wait for Gmail to open to the general public (that is if those damn congress critters don't ruin it).

[Mr. Dave]

ePostcards are not eMail

I don't think people realize (or care) that without encryption, their mail can be read about as easily as a post card in the mail. So, it does not suprise me that Gmail is going to be a big hit, however, I wonder what the Gmail companies are going to do if people choose to use the electronic version of a "real world" solution to privacy and actually encrypt everything. After all, if people realized that they are actually using the electronic version of a Post Card, how many messages would be sent unencrypted? Also, I wonder if they will allow you to store encrypted (letter in an envelope style) information at all?

[unknown unknown]

Well said

This is what happens when officials in government try to regulate technology they know little or nothing about.

Are you kidding me???

If you don't like whatever intrusion you think there will be using gMail, DON'T USE IT! It's your choice. Why does this legislature think they have anything to say about it? Pathetic!

The Story Was Hard to Follow

In one paragraph, the story said the bill got revised from the original, apparently irrational, dopey version so that it now explicitly allowed computer scanning (as long as humans didn't read or learn anything).

Then the next paragraphs said an electronics group protested the bill because of its regulation of scanning. The story didn't explain whether the group simply didn't understand the revised bill, or if it was actually protesting something else about it (like the ban on human involvement), or what. It's not really coherent.

What's the Bill Number? Any recent changes?

It would be really helpful, when you write about legislation like this, if you include the bill number, and a URL if there is one. California and the Feds are both good about putting bills on the web.

The original version of this bill was cluelessly and carelessly written, and I wrote a rant called "Three dozen things Liz Figueroa's anti-Google bill would break" about how it bans almost all of the current webmail services based in California (certainly any with friendly user interfaces), as well as interfering with many obvious and useful things that can be built on Instant Messaging systems. It'd be nice to know if Senator Figueroa has fixed anything in response to comments from the public or from Google, or whether it still breaks most of them.