Google wants email mining data to be secret
By Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg
Google Inc., the world’s largest Internet-search provider, is seeking to black out portions of a transcript from a public court hearing that includes information on how it mines data from personal emails.
Google, fighting a lawsuit claiming its interception of emails amounts to illegal wiretapping, asked U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in a filing last week to redact “confidential” information from the transcript, without being more specific. The main revelation at the Feb. 27 hearing was the existence of “Content Onebox,” used by Google to intercept emails for targeted advertising and to build user profiles, Sean Rommel, a lawyer for plaintiffs, told the judge at the time.
Google’s latest move to keep records in the case out of public view comes as Koh is weighing a request by companies including National Public Radio, New York Times Co. and Washington Post Co. to unseal other key documents filed earlier that the company contended were too sensitive to be revealed.