Here the mail room does need permission, but it's usually one of the standard policies you agree to as part of being hired. But there's this: if you give permission for the mailroom to check your mail and sort or route it appropriately (eg. call you if you get documents from certain important people/clients), does the other party also have to give permission? I've never heard anyone claim that. The mailroom's acting on your instructions, and the other party simply doesn't get any say in the matter (with a few exceptions such as for legal matters, and those cases are usually special policy for the mailroom too).

I don't see where Google is any more a third party. My ISP runs procmail on their servers following my instructions in .procmailrc. Google runs their scanning software on their servers. The instructions aren't as explicitly from me as with procmail, but still if I didn't want Google doing the scanning according to the published rules I probably wouldn't have signed up for a Gmail account.

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