Ask Slashdot: What Country Has the Best Email Privacy Laws? 236
An anonymous reader writes "Given all that is going on with the ability of the government to go through my email if it is on a third-party server, I was wondering: what countries have the best privacy laws and what are some good hosts to use? I would rather pay a token fee to have secure private email than have members of the government able to read it as soon as it's 180 days old if I keep it at my email provider."
privacy laws won't fix a broken privacy model (Score:5, Insightful)
Email is inherently insecure, since it is transmitted in clear text and stored in multiple hops between destination and recipient, where its contents may be intercepted, altered, copied, stored, etc.. If you're relying on the law to keep your email private, you've already lost. Use digital signatures for authenticity and integrity, and strong encryption for confidentiality. At that point, you really don't need the law's help to keep your emails private.
Storing email? (Score:3, Insightful)
If this is really worried about this...Why are you storing any email on a 3rd party server? As new email arrives, save it to your local computer, removing it from the inbox. No email is then left to become 180 days old. Nothing to worry about. Actually that is not true since you most likely will be worrying about something else then too, but...
What Country Has the Best Snail-Mail Privacy Laws? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given I can't be bothered to take the most basic steps to gain a little privacy for my letters, like using envelopes, writing everything on postcards that let everybody in the postal industry in contact with my mail read it, what are the best couriers for me to send my letters with?
Honestly, I think some articles are just deliberate trolls for the computer-security folks on Slashdot.
Re:Privacy laws (Score:2, Insightful)
(Score:-1)
This is what I get for pointing out that our 'anonymous' submitter here is a company troll grasping for page hits.
So one more time for posterity, privacy on the internet, and any expectation thereof is pure mental masturbation.
This site is being compromised by too many sockpuppets and zombies. It used to be fun when was a small group of friends, but not any more. Maybe it's best to just stay away from the front page.
Re:privacy laws won't fix a broken privacy model (Score:4, Insightful)
Email is inherently insecure, since it is transmitted in clear text
Most mail nowadays is transmitted over SSL [wikipedia.org]. Yes, that's still vulnerable to MITM-ing, but it's no longer a simple matter of passive snooping.
If you're relying on the law to keep your email private, you've already lost.
Please. Strong privacy laws won't prevent ISPs from occasionally snooping on their users, granted. With no privacy laws, howver, expect your ISP to routinely spy on you, and sell the data to advertising companies.
-- jch
Re:RETARDED (Score:4, Insightful)
legally private, as opposed to "secure"
I'm not sure this term has any meaning when applied to information that is instantly, cheaply and undetectably duplicated, especially if this duplication is the whole fucking point. How many servers did that mail pass through while it got to the recipient?
What we really need is to define encryption as a basic human right.