Thursday, May 27, 2004

Figueroa's bill would explicitly allow e-mail and instant-messaging providers to scan the content of messages to deliver advertisements, as long as the providers meet certain restrictions on how the data is used. Information gleaned from e-mails cannot be retained, shared with a third party, or shown to any employee or other "natural person," according to the bill. [CNET News.com] What could they mean by "information gleaned"? From an information-theoretic point of view, any statistic on one's messages carries information about the messages. Would all such statistics be blocked from human eyes? The average length of messages? The distribution of languages used in messages? Even the distribution of ads served would of course carry information about messages, preventing advertising-supported email that the bill supposedly authorizes. 8:05:36 PM