More on the privacy concerns over Gmail. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s main worry is that we have to rely on trusting the benificence of the Google people’s commitment to not abusing the info-mining capabilities they will have on anyone using Gmail. One of the EFF’s points is that Google could link the data it derives from your email to your Google search history…unless you frequently delete the Google ‘cookie’ on your machine. While Google doesn’t plan to do anything with that potentiality, they would probably comply with subpoenas to do so in the case of law enforcement investigations. Does it take a privacy extremist to be worried about that aspect of the issue? If your answer is that a law-abiding citizen ought to have nothing to worry about on that account, you are living in an April Fool’s world. Google is essentially handing the Ashcroft Justice Dept. the surveillance capability they have been seeking all along with Carnivore, and none are immune to its abuses. I repeat: use this boondoggle at your own risk, law-abiding or not.