Earlier this week an employee at a Wilson, Wyoming-based Rocky Mountain Bank inadvertently sent confidential information including names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information for more than 1,300 customers to the wrong Gmail address. Realizing its mistake, the bank sent a follow-up email asking the recipient to destroy the information. When it received no reply, the bank asked the courts to force Google to disclose the recipient's identity and deactivate the account. Judge Ware, remarkably, agreed.
Google turned down the initial request from the bank to reveal the identity of the mistaken recipient, according to the rules of its privacy policy. When that tactic failed, the bank went straight to the courts with its demands. Northern California district judge James Ware granted the request and has now ordered Google to deactivate the user's email account.
Lawyers have been quick to cry foul on First Amendment grounds because the ruling affects the user's right to communicate online, besides being troublesome to their privacy rights. General counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology John Morris said, "At the end of the day, the bank obviously screwed up. But it should not be bringing a lawsuit against two completely innocent parties and disrupting one of the innocent party's email contact to the world."
We're not legal experts here, but it seems far-fetched to place liability on this Gmail user when the bank is clearly the entity at fault. Did it suddenly become a crime to not check your email every day? And why are banks apparently sending sensitive data over insecure channels in the first place? It seems like a dark example of the depths to which our litigious society can stoop. What's your take?