Declan McCullagh of News.com reports that America's FTC has issued a subpoena to Google for the entire contents of a Gmail account, including deleted mail. According to McCullagh, the subpoena asks for "All documents concerning all Gmail accounts [...] including but not limited to all e-mails and messages stored in all mailboxes, folders, in-boxes, sent items and deleted items, and all links to related Web pages contained in such e-mail messages." McCullagh points out that under standard Google policies, deleted mail can be stored forever. I can't think of any good reason for one's deleted messages to be retained, particularly in light of this development.

In February of this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned that a feature launched for Google Desktop "greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy." Google's "Search Across Computers" feature allegedly stores copies of a user's files on Google's own servers. The EFF urged consumers not to use the feature "because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password."