"Rejecting Google’s reasoning, Koh effectively reinterpreted old U.S. privacy laws for the Internet age, said Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford University doctoral student with a law degree who tracks online privacy issues.
“Federal privacy law mostly makes sense for phone calls and messages, but it’s deeply ambiguous on newer technology,” said Mayer, whose February 2012 blog post drew early attention to Google’s attempt to bypass privacy settings on Apple browsers, which ended with the search giant’s $17 million payment to 37 states in November."