Email accounts offshore and safe from U.S. prying eyes

[SethM]

Originally Posted by Hadology

btw, i'm not using the account for anything illegal. I am involved in the human rights scene & some of my clients would rather not be known to the DoJ or State Department.

I would suggest downloading Enigmail and read up on how it works if you're worried about email being stored in an IMAP account or intercepted in transit, irrespective of the country. Or colocate your own server somewhere with whole-disk encryption. But then you've got a different research project: it's a crime in some countries to refuse to hand over the key if they ask you to do so.

[Tsunami]

Originally Posted by Ennis

You would rather deal with the Russian government...

Really?

Similar to the question if I'd rather settle in Russia or the States.

[Tsunami]

Originally Posted by xmailer

Perhaps most don't agree with your assessment and consider governments less trustworthy than most businesses. Just a thought...

I realise that, I just find it quite astonishing.

I mean, a government can find out whatever they want anyway if they wish to. Enough methods for that. A business however cannot rely on laws and warrants that easily to surveil you, so to begin with if there's one preying eye that is possible to avoid it is a commercial one.

Secondly, you gotta ask yourself the question what a government would do with an email conversation of yours, or what a business wants to do with it. The government will do nothing with it unless the content is highly illegal ; they have no commercial interests so they don't have any reason to look for commercial value in your emails. A company ONLY has commercial interests when surveilling.

Seriously, would you rather have the likes of Facebook or MySpace possess and deal with your emails than the government?? I find the government a lot more trustworthy and secondly, leaving that question aside, the government can easily know whatever they wish to know. From commercial preying eyes, there is an escape possible.

Then we leave aside access to emails for non-commercial but mala fide intentions...

Of all people that could possibly look over your shoulder, the government should be the least worry... Now it's normal to prefer NOBODY looking over your shoulder... However, email providers are likely to adapt to the wishes of the largest group asking for certain applications when it comes to privacy. I fear this will only strengthen the likes of Facebook-esque providers who may pretend to not pass your information to the government, but meanwhile have access to it themselves and probably would use it for worse purposes than the government.
(PS I just name Facebook as an example but you can easily replace it with ANY internet-orientated service that has commercial values)

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

Secondly, you gotta ask yourself the question what a government would do with an email conversation of yours...

I respectfully disagree. The flaw in your argument about "government" is that there are far too many governments in the world that not only *can* use your personal information against you, but *will* use your personal information against you. Obviously, it depends quite a bit on the government, and your situation relative to that government. And when it comes to abuse, nothing matches governments, especially when it comes to incompetence and lack of true accountability in the end. So you need to choose if you *trust* a government and/or *agree* with a government, but in the cases where you can't or don't (for a variety of reasons, not necessarily illegal, of course), government is the *last* place you really want your email flowing through.

Unfortunately, I do agree that it is difficult and in some cases impossible to avoid the potential of governments eavesdropping into your email, without taking strong measures like full end-to-end encryption, etc.. I will also agree that most representative-based governments are unlikely to invade your privacy like that without due cause (i.e.: suspicion of illegal activity). So for most law-abiding citizens, it's not really an issue to worry about. Besides, most governments don't have the resources, time or competence to really waste time poking through email without cause anyway. But just remember that potential abuse of power is directly proportional to the amount of power that entity has.

Conversely, businesses are actually more accountable, have less power, and most of them have it in their best interest to maintain your trust, or they simply go out of business. I'm not saying that businesses don't abuse your privacy either... it does happen far too often... but if you look closely at the TOS and agreements you make with companies like Google or Facebook, for example, buried in all that legal text that you agree to, you'll usually find what you are *really* agreeing to, and you'll see that you have legally surrendered much of your privacy in exchange to use their services. It's already in writing, but most people just don't bother reading those agreements. So it shouldn't surprise you that Google, for example, uses your profile for lots of things that you might not like... it's actually directly implied in the user agreement, if you read it. In those cases, you can ultimately "opt out" in effect, by simply choosing not to use those services. Compare that to governments where there is NO real opt-out.

[Tsunami]

As you say yourself (your post is very well structured by the way and I agree with some of your points made) it very much depends on the country you're dealing with. If I were a resident of Saudi Arabia or Iran for example, I'd not like the government to mix in my private life even to limited extend (I must admit that in that perspective, I would indeed prefer another government --even the Russian-- than the USA gov reading my emails). But as you say, the governments have limited time and resources to dig into your emails. I am confident (maybe you'll disagree with this) that the average government won't waste time on monitoring email traffic unless they suspect you of illegal activity. In the latter case, a certain surveillance is justified, not to the extent of an armed police force suddenly entering your house, but the government still has the duty to protect citizens against the minority of persons with a malafide agenda. In that perspective, I think it's not unnormal that email services are subject to regular laws and not places where you can be totally anonymous and spread whatever message you wish in a hidden place.

As you rightfully say, a lot of governments will simply lack resources, or have other priorities, and will only monitor those who are suspect of criminal activities. The average citizen should not worry.
The average company focussed on gaining profit from the web, has the resources and prioritises on gaining your information. Hence why, regardless of competence and likelihood, I'd still prefer the likes of Facebook, MySpace, etc to stay out of my life. By that I am not saying the idea of the government reading my emails is nice, but it's the better of two unpleasant evils.

[Tom Gallagher]

Tempest in a teapot.

[zimmermanfan]

Originally Posted by Hadology

GMX is kinda iffy, but their purchase of Mail.com makes me think they will stick around.

GMX servers are US-based.

[zimmermanfan]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

no email is safe from preying government eyes.

This is somewhat of a false dichotomy. "Safe" is not a yes or no. "Safe" comes in countless many grades of quality. Some e-mail is safe enough from various kinds of surveillance from various types of eavesdroppers, and some is not, depending on a number of factors.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

I mean, every single nation has laws which allow surveillance under certain circumstances....Every provider is subject to the law of the country he's based in, and every country allows some surveillance.

I hope you're not also claiming that all nations are equal. Some LEAs need a warrant for surveillance, and some do not.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

There is no such thing as a totally isolated email account where under no circumstance no authority could ever look into.

The OP is not looking for absolute privacy from all governments. S/he is looking for a solution with respect to one particular gov, which makes it a very possible and practical problem to solve.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

If you have nothing to hide, you won't be an interesting target for surveillance in the first place.

The OP said s/he works with human rights issues, so s/he obviously does come in contact with information interesting enough to hide.

[zimmermanfan]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

As for governmental preying eyes, there's only a reason to worry if you're doing something the government would be concerned about as being a threat

The OP is working in connection with human rights issues, which quite obviously is a threat to governments.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

why be so concerned if you're not doing anything wrong?

This has been explained to you previously. You really need to read about Martin Luther King, Jr, seriously.

[zimmermanfan]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

While I still wonder why this is suddenly such a big issue/hot topic: surveillance has existed for ages in different forms and ways, in each country or jurisdiction.

Pre-internet and pre-telephone pre-globalization days, you would whisper a secret in someones ear. Now that the net is here, people still want to be able to whisper a secret, but from a greater distance.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

Either by police investigations, by listening in to phone calls, storing your data in databases of local governments, ... Monitoring emails is just an additional rule introduced to expand already existing surveillance to new communication methods.

And encryption is just a technology introduced to expand on the existing ability to whisper in someones ear.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

I am much more concerned about commercial monitoring ; that is surveillance for commercial purposes and that does concern me. Government surveillance on the other hand is
a) less likely to happen
b) been existing for so long that we hardly realise that surveillance goes back way before email and internet even existed

Commercial monitoring is being combined with gov. eavesdropping. Governments have intercepted trade secrets, and then passed the information along to domestic companies in the relevant industry. Do you see a problem with an EU nation surveilling a Boeing communication, and passing sensitive info on to Airbus? Or the US surveilling Airbus, and the disclosing trade secrets on to Boeing?

Originally Posted by Tsunami

Commercial surveillance however is a relatively new phenomenon (or at least, internet makes it easier to do so) which in my opinion is worrying.

We know industrial espionage goes back as far as the invention of RADAR, and I suspect it probably goes back further yet. I would not be surprized if it went back to ancient Rome.

[zimmermanfan]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

The government will do nothing with it unless the content is highly illegal ;

Pure nonsense. Again, read the MLK story.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

they have no commercial interests so they don't have any reason to look for commercial value in your emails. A company ONLY has commercial interests when surveilling.

Pure nonsense. Industrial espionage is not a conspiracy theory. Governments have leaked information about bids on RADAR contracts to companies that are domesticated on their soil, to give them an advantage, and probably also so that the gov would also automatically know the capability and limitations of the technology that ends up getting installed.

If governments were not interested in the commercial performance of companies in their region, we would not see the Airbus/Boeing disputes that go on, and the finger pointing whenever the US unfairly gives a bail-out to Boeing, or the EU unfairly gives a bail-out to Airbus.

[Tsunami]

To some extent I can understand the concern. I am a member of a political party and for that reason have sometimes wondered if it is really wise to communicate with fellow party members using American based email providers. Then I noticed that many of my fellow party members use US based providers for their email, that the party created a Facebook page and Twitter page, and that some of our members have blogs with Blogspot (which I would personally not trust as much as Wordpress but anyways). So then I thought that maybe my concern was going a bit over the top, since it seems I was a bit on my own with those concerns. Human rights activism is a different thing than politics (with the overlapping background that both are done from idealism) but the privacy concern could be a mutual issue. Standing up for human rights or being a member of a political party is however still not a crime. So even when using US based servers, you're not exactly doing something criminal. (and this comes from one who is suspicious -- I didn't say for no reason I'd rather deal with .RU than with .US, but in the end I accept that on this subject I may be a bit over-concerned)

Also, obviously one government isn't the other. I know well enough that in some countries you need a warrant before they can surveil, in other countries it goes a lot smoother. The point is, a warrant is given easily enough if they are really thinking you're doing illegal practises, and every government has a database with basic info on its citizens. So surveillance really is happening everywhere, regardless where on the planet you are. The extent may be varying from country to country, but nobody is totally unsurveilled.

I read most of the MLK story, but we can sum up multiple examples of governments abusing their powers, or secret services doing so. Let's not generalise and assume this is happening on frequent basis.

Another important question is: does a government has the right to surveil? Then ask the question: does a commercial entity have a right to surveil? As I said, it's a choice between the lesser of two evils, but I surely know which one to choose (ideally, there'd be no surveillance at all, very much agreed, but Utopia is a far cry from present times)

[xmailer]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

I read most of the MLK story, but we can sum up multiple examples of governments abusing their powers, or secret services doing so. Let's not generalise and assume this is happening on frequent basis.

Given that governmental surveillance is generally clandestine, how do you know how frequent it is? Regardless, how frequently it happens couldn't be more irrelevent to those subject to it.

Another important question is: does a government has the right to surveil? Then ask the question: does a commercial entity have a right to surveil? As I said, it's a choice between the lesser of two evils, but I surely know which one to choose (ideally, there'd be no surveillance at all, very much agreed, but Utopia is a far cry from present times)

Whether either "has a right" is a meaningless question devoid of context. Whether either has a moral right is a subjective question, and whether or not a legal right varies. But they are two different questions. However, in either case, whether or not they have a "right" to do so may be equally irrelevent to people's concerns about it.

[Tsunami]

I fully understand that ; I've been through that phase as well. One of my fellow party members has a political blog, I admire him for that but was unsure to post my own political opinions (which I won't post here due to forum rules - happy to explain on other forums) because of surveillance issues. In the end though, many people within the party use US based services and use blogspot.com or US based webhosts for their political blogs or sites. They register their domains through US based registrars. At that point I told myself to still be careful but also not to go paranoid and be over-anxious about that ; in the end outing an opinion is legal in the US.

My main concern now (which doesn't mean the other surveillances should not be concerning to others) is that launching a political blog myself would maybe make me a target for internet users taking offense to my opinions. Hence why I am more concerned about surveillance by entities other than the government. That doesn't mean I think governments should spy, but it worries me to less extent than the others that may monitor. The government in my specific case I don't mind that much since, by affiliating to a political party, they pretty much know my political orientation without having to see which sites I visit.

I understand though that this situation is different for each of us, and that some may have their reasons for being mainly concerned about government prying eyes. Personally, since I'm on the member list of a legal party anyway, I'm more concerned about the other prying eyes online. I hence abstain from those with a bad reputation (eg Facebook) but still regret that for example blogging my opinions requires some self-censorship to not worry over it.

[Dutchie007]

At last yahoo seems safe for "preaying eyes"from the belgian authorities;-)

http://www.express.be/sectors/nl/ict...cht/154236.htm

The article is in Dutch and says that yahoo doesn't need to give information to the Belgian court.

D