Google wants e-mail scanning information blocked from public

Google, 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 e-mails. Google, fighting a lawsuit claiming its interception of e- mails amounts to illegal wiretapping, asked US District Judge Lucy H Koh in a filing yesterday 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 e-mails 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. The February 27 hearing in federal court in San Jose, California, was to determine whether the lawsuit will proceed as a group suit, or class action. Koh's ruling will have implications for other e-mail privacy cases assigned to her that were filed last year against Yahoo! Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. Google in September or October 2010 moved Content Onebox to "the delivery pipeline," to extract data before users received the messages.