I would be more inclined to use Gmail as my primary email provider if I could trust Google never to show my data to the feds without my knowledge.
By
Ryan Grove
on March 28, 2007
On the one hand, I don't really have anything to hide and if I did I'd encrypt it. But on the other, it really bothers me that the FBI could send Google a secret "national security letter" and get complete access to all my email without my knowledge.
By running my own email server I at least know that the feds will have to go through me if they want to get their hands on my email.
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Discussion (7)
if i worried that much about the feds, i'd never sleep. i worry more about the reasons they have that kind of power.
Since I do use Gmail as my primary, I can't vote. They're in the business of shedding light, not keeping secrets.
What's Yahoo!'s policy?
Oscar: Google has already demonstrated willingness to comply with user-hostile policies at the request of governments (viz. their censorship of sites in China at the demand of the PRC government).
They're in the business of making money. They've already shown that they're willing to compromise their user base for that goal.
Google, Yahoo! and other companies all have to abide by the laws of the countries in which they operate. The law in China required Google (and, in a separate incident, Yahoo!) to hand over user information, so they had to either comply or break the law. They'd be faced with the same situation if they tried to deny access to the FBI after being served a subpoena or sent a secret "national security" letter.
As noble as it would be for a big company to take a stand against an unjust law, it would be corporate suicide. China would've been all up in their shit, stockholders worldwide would've been livid, and the Chinese government still would've found a way to persecute the people they wanted to persecute.
I would never expect a company (or an individual, for that matter) to go to bat against a government on my behalf, and I certainly wouldn't consider them evil if they didn't. Ultimately, the only person I can fully rely on to stand up for my rights is me.
I'm already inclined enough to use them over any other provider due to their excess of features.
That being said I would most definitely be further inclined if I had their word on this.
Thanks to a signing statement, the feds can read citizens' dead tree mail without a warrant, too, so I can forgive Google for caving occasionally.
Personally, I still trust the government to be skilled enough to steal my information WITHOUT Google's permission.