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They can build up a graph and they'll see your emails when sent to a gmail recipient or from a gmail originator to you.

With a very large fraction of all email now passing through Google's servers you can expect them to be able to piece together the missing bits with high fidelity.

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How come we have clowns getting elected, terrorism and financial meltdowns then? There are so many interesting things one can do with this power beyond monitoring what the plebs are upto. No great evidence exists that the power is being used despite the data and computing power having existed for 15 years now.

It can be used in many ways that do not stop clowns from being elected, from terrorists to be able to carry out their act and to protect you against financial meltdowns.

The clowns are being elected by the voters, not by companies, terrorists will always be able to do their deeds in an open society, if some fail just throw more bodies at the problem, and financial meltdowns can be prevented by banking oversight (and a lot of that oversight just got canceled by the stroke of some clowns pen so you can brace for the next round in ~5 to 10 years from now).

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