14 DAY TRIAL // A judge has ordered Google to suspend the account of a Gmail user and reveal details about their identity after a bank employee sent a document containing highly sensitive information to his e-mail address by mistake. According to law experts, the unusual ruling raises a lot of privacy and civil liberties questions.
Last week, we reported on Rocky Mountain Bank suing Google after an employee from its Wilson, Wyoming branch made a serious error that resulted in a privacy and security breach. Being asked by a customer to e-mail some loan statements to his representative, the bank clerk inadvertently attached a private document containing sensitive personal and financial information associated with 1,325 other accounts.
However, not only did the employee attach a private document, but he also sent the e-mail to the wrong Gmail address. Upon discovering the incident, the bank officials contacted Google to ask for the identity of that account holder, but the Mountain View-based giant told them to get a subpoena.
Out of alternatives, as no one replied to the subsequent e-mail sent at the address, the bank filed a case in the California Northern District Court. It asked for the case to be sealed in order to avoid generating possible unnecessary panic amongst its customers, but District Judge Ronald M. Whyte denied that request.
The case took a new turn earlier this week when it was transferred from Judge Whyte to U.S. District Court Judge James Ware. Ware ruled in favor of the bank and ordered Google to deactivate the account that received the erroneously sent e-mail. Additionally, the company is also required to divulge the account holder's private information, even though they did nothing wrong.
It will be interesting to see how Google handles this situation, as it claimed in the past that in such circumstances, it would first give the user a chance to file a counterclaim in court. Nevertheless, civil liberties advocates are edgy about this ruling, which they say violates the user's right to communicate.
"It's outrageous that the bank asked for this, and it's outrageous that the court granted it. What right does the bank have and go suspend the email account of a completely innocent person?" John Morris, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, commented on the situation for MediaPost. "Losing an email account is a big deal. It's very disconcerting to think that a judge could simply order my account deactivated," Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, also noted.