Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Country Has the Best Email Privacy Laws?
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."
My country has the best laws.... I can read anyone's email and not get prosecuted.
if that's not the definition of "the best", I don't know what is.
My-own-email-server-istan.
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.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Even if you host your own email server or use a server in a country with great privacy laws, every email you send or receive is stored on two servers, each with your name (email address) attached to it. Unless everyone you email has the same security policy as you, your messages are little more secure than they would be if you used any other email server.
Haven't clicked the link but I'm positive it's Goatse.
I clicked and its worse than a Goatse! (Or may be I got conditioned to Goatse after these years)
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...
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.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
All the accounts above 203XXXX are spam/troll/sockpuppet accounts. Slashdot registration has been compromised... We need better filtering to tune them out.
That's easy: Sealand!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Use procmail and gnupg to encrypt each unencrypted message you receive. Or, even simpler, use pop3 to receive your mails, i.e. do not keep the mails on the server.
I would not solely rely on any privacy laws. Anticipatory obedience on the ISP side might kick in as soon as anyone asks for your mails, with or without any legitimacy..
Not Goatse, but still disgusting and off topic... I am just trying to figure out why someone takes time out of their day to repeatedly spam Goatse to Slashdot. Is this a bet or something? Either way, perhaps you should consider that while virtually no one is "normal", you should get checked out for your obsessive compulsive tendencies...
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
When I told my daughter that glitter comes from unicorn poop, I thought I was being original and making that up. (I try to keep her as misinformed as possible.) Now you come along and point out this is not an original idea! By the way, she insists the color of the glitter matches the color of the unicorn, so only gold unicorns would poop gold glitter.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Redact everything yourself. Problem solved. Stick it to those government snoops!
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
(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.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I'm not sure "retarded" is a necessary epithet. The question is easily interpreted as legally private, as opposed to "secure". And this is a good question. For instance, in many European countries, there is a right to privacy, as opposed to the United States, where no such enshrined right exists.
Many European nations nominally have better privacy laws, but they have lots of exceptions for national security, police enforcement, and privacy law enforcement, as well as other loopholes.
But you're likely also no better off storing it on your local disk; for your government or your ISP, accessing data on your disk is likely no more complicated than pushing a button.
If you want your E-mail to be private, encrypt it, whether it's on a local disk or a server, and even then, there's a good chance others can intercept the key and read it anyway.
The 'asker' is probably a troll/flame script. Doesn't sound human to me.
FYI: for the believers, from 2007
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
> Learn English for fuck's sake.
I don't know who fuck is, but why should I learn English for his sake?
I tried to post warnings about the goaste loving jerk yesterday but was modded into oblivion as a karma whore. Go figure. I couldn't post often enough as AC to keep up with his many accounts.
capthca: imprison
How exactly does this work in the real world? A cop has a grudge against you and he gets to read all of your old email on a whim?
Are you even notified?
Dammit, by the time I clicked it was gone. Now I want to know what horrid image was up there.
I am intrigued by your daughters ideas and would like to subscribe to her newsletter.
Oh, and I can -uh- "babysit" any time. Please.
I think some people here have fair knowledge of computers and the internet but don't know about all the details either. They want to learn more, they try to ask questions, and the experts here have two options:
1) Be nice, teach them how it works and let them improve their knowledge
2) Be arrogant, push them down for asking 'stupid questions' and keep them in ignorance.
I have good enough understanding of computers so that I can understand most of the articles here and find them interesting. I'm also concerned about e-mail privacy. I often here "encrypt your mail", "use POP3", "download the mails from hotmail/gmail/yahoo to your computer"... The problem is, I have no idea how to encrypt mail, what POP3 is or how to download my e-mails. I'm also not sure doing this would cover every weakness in my privacy protection - for instance I recently heard that deleting e-mails on gmail only makes them invisible and does not remove them from their servers.
It would be helpful if someone wrote and posted here a serious tutorial on how to protect your privacy. Unfortunately, most advice I could find on the web is incomplete (thus useless) and most of the time the 'experts' would rather complain about the ignorance of the persons who are wise enough to ask questions.
tl;dr : it's not obvious to everyone that e-mail is like sending letters not enclosed in an envelope. Teach people or STFU.
Because we all know that all govenments can be trusted to respect such laws when their own interests are at stake.
If you have secrets that you must protect against goverments why are leaving them (unencrypted, evidently) on third party servers? And why are you discussing that fact on a public forum?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Are you sure you're always communicating with people that live in countries with privacy laws that are just as secure? Unless you're really good about keeping your contacts secure as well, all it means is that they have to issue more subpoenas.
In some countries, the UK say, you must turn over encryption keys if asked.
But many countries you don't have to. The most secure is to GPG your mails.
Without encryption, there is no privacy AT ALL in email. They are sent as cleartext.
Why does everyone try to solve some problem instead of just answering the anonymous reader's question?
What countries have the best privacy laws?
Except the data retention directive requires providers to store email for at least 6 months.. (minimum in directive, actual period can be longer in individual countries)
If the government sends a letter to your email host and say 'give me access to this guys email' and the email host says yes, no laws were broken. At that point you are asking what email providers have the best privacy agreements that may say no to government requests.
Also, where does 180 days come from? Do you not have access to a pop3 client? Is there a law I'm unaware of that says it forwards to the government email system after 180 days of idle time on the server? I am so confused!
Thanks - fixed, just click now...
I am intrigued by your daughters ideas and would like to subscribe to her newsletter.
I assume constant monitoring of her outbox may be required.
Because, he'll get you laid.
Ask Slashdot: What Country Has the Best Email Privacy Laws?
And here's why I say this:
It depends on who's metrics we'll use to determine what is 'best'. So that's the question.
I am pretty sure that the North Korean government does not provide the US government access to email stored on their servers.
See my post above. NSFW!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Laws change. Laws are written on paper, and don't determine how anybody really acts.
I recommend looking for whatever government you can either ignore or resist the most effectively.
In the Netherlands we have a quite good anti-spam policy (see spamklacht.nl, in Dutch).
Although, I wonder for the rest... they might be able to ask hosting providers to read mail.
But hey: why don't you host your own mail? Or just use PGP.
You know the People's Republicans of China are going to read your email, but would they share with any other government? Doubtful.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Whatever country you're living room is, where you would obviously be keeping your mail server in a rack running under truecrypt.
If you don't want to bother than that, then, your privacy just isn't important. As soon as you put your personal information on someone else's hardware you lose control of that information.
Not necessarily. I don't know about Zeus, but there may be a parallel with Jupiter (the Roman Zeus, "Jupiter" = "Zeus Pater").
Jupiter was the supreme Roman god in most things, and he was rightly respected for hurling lightning bolts, but there was one greater than he:
Terminus, the divine personification of boundaries and boundary-stones, to which even Jupiter was subordinate. (The Romans were very, very big on property law.)
-kgj
This site is being compromised by too many sockpuppets and zombies.
Agreed. Besides all of the obvious ones, I've noticed some generic-commenting ones. Check a story fairly early after posting, and you'll see a post, then the one right below it will read the exactly same points, even written in the same paragraph format, except that the words are subtly changed and rearranged.
If somebody is using HBGary's persona management software, it's still way too obvious to anybody with half a brain. They'd be better-off paying a unique Indian (utilizing a spell and grammar checker) for each persona -- Indians are cheaper than shoats.
Asking a simple question, which country has the best legal protection from privacy. What this means is what countries have laws restricting invasions of e-mail privacy. A lot of countries have mandatory ISP e-mail retention and are required to produce those e-mails to public authorities without a warrant. What the hell, Slashdot? Can't you answer a simple question? I honestly thought Slashdot had become better then this.
I'm not a legal expert in this field, so I can't answer it myself, but it's still a legitimate question. Okay, a few comments about how e-mail needs to be encrypted would make sense, but outright insults, slander, and the throwing of feces?, all of which calling the poster a Troll for asking a simple, legitimate question.
Considering how many countries are getting worse and worse for e-mail privacy laws, this is certainly a valid question that affects everyone's lives here, (how many geeks can really live without e-mail, huh?)?
Don't put anything you want to keep private on a third party server. If you must use email, find one with encryption. Microsoft Outlook has had it since at least version 2003, and there are lots of other programs available.
That troglodyte crawled up a chicken's ass and waited for days, and still couldn't get laid.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
They're also using:
http://freeblogspot.org/journalism/2011/04/03/post/
http://tinyurl.com/42kdzgp (uses a data:text/html;base64 eventually redirect ending up at goatse.ru)
http://tinyurl.com/5szfvml (uses a data:text/html;base64 eventually redirect ending up at goatse.ru)
Why not just host it yourself using the open source mail server and transport of your choice?
In a 3 day old article, http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/parDc6QiCaw/Obama-Administration-Wants-Your-Old-Email discusses how any email older than 6 months is considered discarded and can be "trivially subpoenaed". I think this question is in response to this article.
I was wondering: what countries have the best privacy laws and what are some good hosts to use?
You are a foreign national routing allegedly innocent e-mails through an unfamiliar host 1,200-12,000 miles distant. Do you really think that won't attract unwanted attention on both sides of the border?
... at least in germany and most european countries.
If you want to read them you need a search warrant.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
The ones that don't require you to put a return address on the post card, let you send to an anonymous PO BOX number and don't require all post cards to be signed for and the postal office to retain copies of the sender, receiver and signatory and hand them over to people left right and center.
I use BASE64 encoding to transmit all my AES encrypted numbers via number stations.
really, some people just haven't been here long enough to know that number stations even exist or that you can base64 encode AES and stick it on a post-card.
Have you ever had to sign for mail or return a letter?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
There are third party services (like messagelabs offered by Symantec) that provide email scanning and archival. This puts an interesting kink into the model, because now the path includes more than just other email hosts. These services can have their own retention and privacy policies, and you, as merely one endpoint in a communication process, may have no idea that such a third party is being used.
or something like that
What we really need is to define encryption as a basic human right.
I wholeheartedly concur.
Unfortunately this won't happen anytime soon due to all the import and export restrictions.
When I wad the question, I assumed the following:
1. The originator already encrypts his email (to the extent possible - you cannot force senders to encrypt the email they send you).
2. The originator lives in a country that can legally force him to give up his encryption keys.
Obviously, I'm having a charitable day.
Given those assumptions, keeping one's email on a server in another country MIGHT be a legal workaround.
I don't know which country has the best protection for users of online services now, but Iceland most certainly will be a contender when the IMMI legislation has been passed as per the Parliamentary Resolution passed on June 16. last year. Check it out: http://immi.is/
The governments most likely to be interested in you are your own government and any you might be trying to overthrow. So don't go there. And use your own mail server to store your mail on, not your mailbox provider's.
Pick some country other than your own, not the US, not a notorious spam or cybercrime haven. (The latter's obvious, just because you don't want your mail discarded automatically by your recipients.) The countries that have good privacy laws mostly have police agencies trying to pass data retention laws, so it's not much of a win. Preferably pick somewhere that your language isn't the primary local language.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Most SMTP servers will use encryption for mail transfer these days, not just for mail submission and mail reading. klapaucjusz's reply to your article has more details on how.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Are you sure you're always communicating with people that live in countries with privacy laws that are just as secure? Unless you're really good about keeping your contacts secure as well, all it means is that they have to issue more subpoenas.
This brings up a point - I wouldn't be at all surprised if data isn't routinely sent out of the country for analysis and decryption to countries who have no laws against such things.
Our wise and benevolent government ensures that we are happy and safe by protecting us from bad emails.
Best laws are one thing, but I'm more interested in best enforcement.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
IAAL. From what I know, you don't want your email crossing a national border. At least here in the USA, that gives the authorities tremendously more authority to scan it.
Your ideal setup for moderate security is going with a provider here in the USA with a good TOS. Be careful, the TOS often says that they will give your email over to the govt without a warrant or subpoena. That vitiates your reasonable expectation of privacy. SOME provides will actually renegotiate the TOS.
For high security, you have to host it in a box in your house.
The above is not legal advice.
Sorry to say it, guy, but no one gives a shit about you.
If you're doing something they'd actually care about, odds are you're smart enough to use PGP for your illegal dealings.
And if not, you're just not that special. No one cares what your e-mails say. Get over yourself.
I often here "encrypt your mail", "use POP3", "download the mails from hotmail/gmail/yahoo to your computer"... The problem is, I have no idea how to encrypt mail, what POP3 is or how to download my e-mails.
Search Google for "how can I encrypt my email"; first two results are step by step guides on how to encrypt your email, either with Thunderbird or Gmail.
Dilbert RSS feed
or a router or a mail server in the chain between the sender and recipient, then you can just read it to your hearts content with no one the wiser. seriously if you are relying on governments or providers to keep your privacy then you have already lost. Sign it if you want to be sure it wasn't altered, encrypt it if you want to be sure it wasn't read. otherwise all bets are off.
Encrypt your mail: That's fairly easy. You need to get yourself set up with GPG, the Gnu Privacy Guard. If you use Linux, then most e-mail clients support it (like Evolution), but if you're a Windows user, then you need Thunderbird and the enigmail add-on. What GPG does allow you to sign / encrypt e-mail. It does this using public key cryptography. First you create a public key and a private key. These are tied together. Never give away your private key. The public key can go to anyone and everyone. Now what happens is, when you send an e-mail, you sign it with your private key. Now, anyone who reads your e-mail can get your public key and verify that you are in fact the person who sent it. To encrypt e-mail, you need the other person's public key. Then, when your friend receives the e-mail, he can decrypt it with his private key. Anyone without his private key will see nothing but gibberish.
POP3: Also fairly easy. Once you have yourself set up with an e-mail client like Thunderbird, Evolution, or Outlook, you just need to check if your e-mail provider supports POP3. If it does, you just have to change the appropriate settings. This downloads the e-mails to your computer and deletes them from the server, making your computer the only place that stores the e-mail.
I hope that helps.
Cynical Idealist
Hilarious.
Really.
My ass is somewhere on the floor.
Seriously.
Ok...now...
If you're afraid of someone being able to read your email when it's hosted somewhere out of your direct control, then host it yourself.
A combination of fetchmail, Apache, and Squirrelmail/Horde/GroupwareOfChoice, along with a free dyndns.com account, and you've got all your mail completely under your control, and still available anywhere.
Assuming you use Linux, when you set it up, make sure you use encrypted LVM, and even if the government/police seize your equipment, they still can't read your email.
You can also set it up to use SSL exclusively, which makes things even safer.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
This is what I get for pointing out that our 'anonymous' submitter here is a company troll grasping for page hits.
Errm...
There's no link in the posting. How exactly would this generate page hits?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
"I wonder who he has been talking too? Quick, put a sniffer in last month! Case closed!"
Damn! I have mod points, but I have already posted in this thread. But thank you for being the first one with an on topic answer. I may just hunt you down in other threads and mod you up.
Encryption! Even the most basic form of encryption -- writing in a secret language -- solves this problem. Don't drink the coolaid; remember to drink your ovaltine!
Run an SMTP/POP3 server in a VM that loads from an encrypted partition, use a dynamic DNS service so that you can be found. Or rent a COLO in a third world country, etc, And send everything/receive everything as an encrypted attachment. Use steganography to distribute embedded keys in mainstream porn images on annoying pop-up web-page ads.
Live in a skid-row hotel room, move often, use prepaid cell phones, don't use snail-mail, if you have a beard, shave, if you don't grow one, large dark glasses, broad-brimmed hat (lined with tinfoil) look behind you, AAAHHH!!!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
You are more subject to interception, but not datamining.
Your main problem is not the wide availability of intercept laws - it's the abuse thereof.
I wish that we could get any form of expiry date on mails that we send, that would be honored by mail servers like Google.
a) we could have mail expiry dates like Microsoft Outlook on headers, that would make the mail client or server delete them;
b) we could have a working version of something like this http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/
Its easy. Enigmail and Co have been there for ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_lamo#Personal
Popularly called the "homeless hacker" for his transient lifestyle, Lamo spent most of his travels couch-surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings and traveling to Internet cafes, libraries and universities to investigate networks, and sometimes exploiting security holes.[2] Despite performing authorized and unauthorized vulnerability assessments for several large, high-profile entities, Lamo refused to accept payment for his services. During this period, in 2001, he overdosed on prescription amphetamines.[5][6]
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
China has arguably the best privacy laws. In China the state really will go the extra mile to protect the privacy of all government agencies that have access to your emails.
I wonder, how the adoption of IPv6 will cause a paradigm shift here. It would allow every user to host his very own mail server right at home (though technically already doable even with v4), incl. SSL etc.. Subpoenas for your mail would need to be real search warrants, the entire (mail) hosting industry would mostly become irrelevant and people could send mail the good old-fashioned way *directly* to each other ('s IP). Snoops would have an awful time with this, when they have their established live-feeds from the various Telco's providing (your) connectivity, but all they see is encrypted SSL traffic with Un-MITM-able self-signed (and out-of-band verified) certificates going on between people. A whole mesh could be created this way, even defeating traffic-analysis. Every user a remailer....oh the possibilities....
Back when clients started sending emails to lawyers, it was questioned whether lawyers had a responsibility to warn clients on their web sites that email was insecure. The courts decided that lawyers needn't publish public keys and tell clients to use them because it was considered almost always secure enough for almost all clients. Obviously some clients and lawyers need all the security they can get, but they apparently don't consider that the case in general. The situation was likened to telephones, snail mail, and faxes, which can be intercepted by a variety of adversaries, but apparently rarely are. The last time I sent an email to a lawyer a year or so ago, I checked the lawyer's web site and found no public key.
One argument against lawyers encouraging clients to encrypt email is that even encrypted email is so insecure that the false sense of security might do more harm than good for the clients if they put things in emails that are better left unwritten.
but in many places that warrant is presented to your email host, not you.
"Email Privacy" does not exist.
1. I'd go with an EU based company over almost anywhere else, except maybe Switzerland or Norway. EU privacy law is the most mature; it has the broadest definition of personal data so it is more likely to apply to any given situation; it provides you with the most rights, including rights to access/correct/delete your personal data, and some rights to obtain redress; it obligates EU companies to provide reasonable and adequate protections for your data (i.e. some security). In addition, they have some legal restrictions on transferring data out of the EU or allowing it to be accessed from outside the EU. While there are exceptions for access to your personal data for law enforcement, national security, judicial or other reasons, this is true of every privacy law that I'm aware of globally.
2. I'd go with a company that doesn't have business operations outside of the EU. Even with the EU's cross-border transfer restrictions, when you do business with a company with business operations outside the EU, you are at greater practical risk, imo, of your data being transferred to a jurisdiction that doesn't provide as many rights or obligate as many protections.
3. Within the EU, for too many reasons to go into here, I'd probably go with a company in Germany, Denmark, or Sweden.
Nah, no warrant need to read them -- done all the time. Warrant only needed to convict you for something in them. But -- no need for a warrant then either. Just use the email to figure out who to watch, and then they bust you for whatever they see you do. Just like the way you are entitled to confront your accuser. Some guy calls the cops on you, they show up, and they see, you name it, and bust you for it. The cop is now "the accuser" and you never find out who called them. Just ask the cops sometime if they know, or are allowed to tell (yes, and no).
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
1. I'd go with an EU based company over almost anywhere else, except maybe Switzerland or Norway. EU privacy law is the most mature; it has the broadest definition of personal data so it is more likely to apply to any given situation; it provides you with the most rights, including rights to access/correct/delete your personal data, and some rights to obtain redress; it obligates EU companies to provide reasonable and adequate protections for your data (i.e. some security). In addition, they have some legal restrictions on transferring data out of the EU or allowing it to be accessed from outside the EU. While there are exceptions for access to your personal data for law enforcement, national security, judicial or other reasons, this is true of every privacy law that I'm aware of globally. 2. I'd go with a company that doesn't have business operations outside of the EU. Even with the EU's cross-border transfer restrictions, when you do business with a company with business operations outside the EU, you are at greater risk, imo, of your data being transferred to a jurisdiction that doesn't provide as many protections. 3. Within the EU, for too many reasons to go into here, I'd probably go with a company in Germany, Denmark, or Sweden, maybe UK.
Sorry, that is not how it works in germany or any EU country I know about, like france, italy or UK or netherlands.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Encrypt it with quad ROT13!! Only then will your secrets be safe.
In Sweden, the law is very clear, providing very strong protection for paper mail. It has, however, been ruled that electronic correspondence is not covered by the same protection.
if you don't want it to be associable to you via bank slips.
ask it from a trusted associate who doesn't run backup servers and who has enough noise in his transfers.
if you're really paranoid that is. of course, you should also have your eggs in multiple baskets. but if you don't want it to be searchable later, then you should somehow arrange that the chat isn't stored at all(so that whoever eavesdropping you would at least need to pretty much log all your traffic, because he couldn't just bust the door in).
or write in riddles. it all depends on what your secret is.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
China
For all of you shouting "encryption": Done properly, that will of course ensure that (evil) corporations and (evil) government won't be able to read your e-mails. However, that's often not what they are interested in, they're interested in who you're talking to. There's no support for encrypting the destination address in any standard.
In the U.S., if you are deemed to be hiding vital information and it's encrypted, you are required to give your decryption key or face jail time for contempt of court. There's an XKCD comic about beating the key out of someone as by far the most efficient way to decrypt.
Nepal! The best law is none at all, for anything. Freedom and self-governance without a tax-sucking government to get in your way. Do what you want, as long as it hurts no one but yourself. If you screw up, you will be punished - by your peers. Namaste.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
"that is not how it works in germany or any EU country I know about, like france, italy or UK or netherlands."
I would like to make two objections to your statement.
1. German legal system is quite different from those of other European countries in that it puts a very special emphasis on human rights and very strong limitations to the power of government. Most of these limitations were invented to secure the "never again" principle, referring to the specific role Germany was playing during the Second World War. To the best of my knowledge, no other country in the E.U. has any comparable set of regulations. By the way, this German particularity gave rise to many cases in which German regulations (more respective of human rights) were in conflict with European regulations (less respective) and were consequently invalidated by the CJEU for the sake of "uniform treatment" (see Eugen Schmidberger Internationale Transporte und Planzüge, C-112/00, for an example).
Anyway, my point is that you can not possibly compare limitations on government action existing in Germany with those existing in any other country of European Union (and, for that same reason, to countries signatories of ECHR).
2. I know no sound man who can pretend to *know* four legal systems (in your case, .de, .fr, .it & .nl).
3. Sticking to an example which is familiar to me (I am a practicing French attorney), I have to say that, whatever French regulations are in this matter (e-mail eavesdropping), I don't doubt any second that they are infringed on a regular basis by French authorities. This is a mere generalization of phone eavesdropping examples. Just google "écoutes téléphoniques france" and you will be surprised to find out how often phone eavesdropping scandals occur in this country and involving most prominent politicians. The last one I can remember of took place in october 2010 (you can use google translation services on this article http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2010/10/01/918282-Affaire-Woerth-Bettencourt-Les-ecoutes-telephoniques-du-Monde-etaient-illegales.html );
4. forgive me if I am mistaken, but your forum signature looks very much like an advertisement, and this seems a little bit inappropriate to me.
In Soviet Russia, e-mail reads you
At that point, you really don't need the law's help to keep your emails private.
http://xkcd.com/538/
Without good laws, there's nothing to discourage Big Brother from cracking your strong encryption with the $5 wrench, or its totalitarian equivalent. ("Give us the private key, or we lock you away in a shithole prison and never let you out.")
Canada has some pretty good Privacy Laws. Much stronger than the US. I don't know if they are the strongest, but they are probably up there. Canada has an independent Privacy Commissioner, as does every Province. I can also tell you that FIPPA or the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act is a BIG deal up here, and has been know to take down people who try and circumvent it. The only trouble I see with it really, is that it is VERY broad, which means it is open to interpretation, which means a lot of arguing, so sometimes the decisions are not quite quickly made.
There have been a number of attempts by the Media companies to compromise these laws (for suing ISP users presumably) by lobbying to the Conservative government, but thus far have been shot down. There has also been some attempts are the part of Police in the "safe-the-children" department in the name of child porn to try and get a cart blanche to force ISP's to reveal information without a warrant. This was also shot down. So I am hesitantly confident that the Canadian privacy laws will continue to be strong into the future.
If you don't have time to setup your own mailserver: :)!
In Sweden there is a nonprofit organization called fripost, https://fripost.org/index.en.html
Start your own local fripost organisation
If you live in Sweden then: https://fripost.org/index.en.html
If not, start your own Free Email Association
It is kinder in the long run not to feed the paranoid fantasies of the mentally ill.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ah well,
I was talking about the laws ... but you are likely right that they get bent/broken here and there.
I remember that incident where a foreign country was about to either buy a bunch of ICEs from Siemens or a bunch of TGWs. The bidding was done via email (perhaps not the internet email, I only know it was electronic, perhaps a kind of telegram).
Always a short time after Siemens made a bit, it got undercut and later it got reviled that the french where ears dropping on the german company.
I guess in germany it might be the same.
Regarding your point 4. you are the first one "pointing this out". I thought it was more a statement about "my lifestyle", after all I'm consultant in lots of stuff which is talked about on /. and secondly I practice aikido ;D
The sports you do can not really be advertisement, or?
best regards
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I think there is no absolutely free or privacy in this word except that we are a common person provide any value for others.
Actually, it's her inbox that has me worried...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
they don't control emails (yet).
It is kinder in the long run not to feed the paranoid fantasies of the mentally ill.
Kinder, but nowhere near as fun....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I think it's insecure. if you're relying on the law to keep your email private, you've already lost. Use digital signatures for authenticity and integrity network marketing in india
I have littlebit confusion that, which country have better online protection service.
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