Slashdot Mirror
Malaysian Government Offers Free E-mail To All Citizens
jfruhlinger writes "Attempts to move governments to electronic communications often hit a serious snag: Governments must serve all citizens, and not all citizens have email addresses. Malaysia's solution to the problem: offer free email to every Malaysian adult. Citizens will be able to get their @myemail.my address by inserting a smartcard into a reader or presenting it in person." Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
Since american corporations were so keen on providing spying/filtering equipment to even the regimes they were banned from trading (iran), all world governments have the ability to spy on all kinds of communications already.
it wouldnt matter zit, whether government is your email provider or not. either way, they will spy on you.
Read radical news here
If the Post Office had done this 10 years ago it might still have a chance of staying in business.
Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
Taco, you are a moron. Have you ever heard of the United States Postal Service? What the fuck do you think they do?
> Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
I don't trust my government to be my government!
Sure. Since email's not remotely secure anyway, this would eliminate any "I wonder if my government is reading my mail" concerns. If you need secure coms, PGP is very easy to set up, so much so that I wonder why it's not used more. I would think that if Google supported it in GMail it would probably be more popular. Of course PGP doesn't hide who you're communicating *with*, only what you're saying.
Would I trust the government to send my mail? It's been happening for hundreds of years. Oh, you mean e-mail.
providing the message actually reach the destination.
Yes, i use GPG, and do not care who delivers the payload ;)
Back in 2000 the Portuguese government announced the creation of up to 1 million email accounts. It was a flop I think, as most people that had internet access already had an email account, but still it looks good in the press releases...
As long as my email travels over AT&T equipment it doesn't really matter if my government manages my mailbox. I have to assume the government has access either way. (Same for most other telcos)
"Would you trust your government to be your mail provider"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I could use such a mail account for communications with the government. After all, they're gonna read it anyway, aren't they? Of course, for everything else, I would use one of the many gratis email providers found around the Internet.
The question "Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?" is pretty irrelevant: if they government can subpoena your mail account for any reason, without notification, you know, to prevent any sort of "terrorism" (against the state, content providers, the prevailing political ideology)... then they already are your de facto mail provider.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
The deliver my netflix DVDs back and forth. My rent payments. And so on.
Why not my email too?
Obviously things I want to hide from the government aren't going to go to or from such an email. Just like I probably wouldn't send my kidnap ransom demands via registered mail.
We already do....http://www.usps.com. Now the key thing is that USPS is a mail transport. At any time given appropriate legal action, they are authorized to read your mail. The question is, what do you choose to do to protected the contents of your mail knowing that you have an insecure transport? Oh I'm sorry, I forgot that most of the stuff that you send is irrelevant and nobody could give a rat's ass about it. Granted, electronic mail can be copied and archived for many years with minimal cost where as archiving copies of physical mail requires significant resource investment. So now you have to decide what to do to your mail knowing that you have an insecure transport where your information can be cheaply duplicated and stored for many years. Then the biggest question has to be asked, what will the Malaysian government do to people that make their mail difficult if not impossible to read by an unintended party?
I don't trust anyone with anything...hence, I don't share personal information online...any shopping orders that I make are with prepaid cards...I don't use e-mail except to get "blanket news updates" Call me paranoid, but these days you can only trust yourself.
it's always something that makes you go hmm...
Reading TFA, I noticed the fine print about the charge for using emails. A good site to get an opinion on what a great email provider the government will be there is http://www.malaysiakini.com/ It's a pay-to-view site, but the update on the article "Tricubes to charge 50 sen per email, confirms CEO" says it all: Users will be expected to pay if they want more 'secure' emails.
I'm just thinking it'd be like the Chinese government offering free classes on human rights or peaceful demonstrations :-)
The widespread availability of free email services really makes this unnecessary, but a free, verified by Uncle Sam email address would be very useful. Unfortunately, I fear that if the US Government offered email, it would just make life easier for process servers and law enforcement while doing little of real value for citizens.
-- $G
myemail.my... "MY EMAIL!!!! MINE!!! " governors!!!!!!!!! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
captcha: viewable. OH DAMN WELL INDEED IT IS VIEWABLE.
I would trust the government to be an email provider. They can send their stuff anywhere they want, including an email account they setup for me. In fact if it requires a smart card for access, it's likely more secure than postal mail.
That doesn't mean I trust them to be my only email provider...
If, in creating their system, they outlawed all other email providers, then I'd have some serious problems. I suspect that enough others would also have problems that PGP/GnuPG would become much more popular and widespread were that to happen. Of course, that would then be outlawed too...
*sigh*
Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
Not personally, but if they're only offering this as a backup for people who don't have their own address already, it seems like a great idea
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
For several reasons, in fact.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/20/1531228/CIA-Declassifies-Pages-From-Their-Cookbook
CIA don't seem to think so.
Four words: United States Postal Service.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
thanks very much
http://gwaker.blogspot.com/
There are plenty of free email services that anyone could get if they had internet. Getting free email with no way to access it would be useless.
"Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?"
No, but I'd trust the Malaysian government to be my mail provider!
Seriously though, I had a law professor who served as a law clerk to the chief justice of the Maylaysian supreme court. He said that at one point, government officials made it *very* clear that they were closely monitoring his communications, in terms of both who he contacted and what was said.
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
GOVERMENT EMAIL MACHT FREI :D
Would you trust your government to provide you with drinking water? Get over yourselves, you pathetic whining digital douches.
I have a few Email addresses. Each has its own purpose. One for people I just meet on the Net, one for business-type communication, etc. Why not one for use with the government? I'd use it -only- for comm with the government. The only problem with that (as with ANY Email) is that there's no way to be sure your recipient has indeed received your message. Sure, read receipts, but they don't tell you who received it, just that someone did...somewhere.
If I'm going to use Email, I want it to be properly authenticated somehow, so that I know a) it hasn't gone off into the abyss, like so many other messages I've sent to companies etc AND...and this is the most important part...b) that when I receive a reply, I know that it's my government replying. (Can you imagine the phishing that could occur?!)
In the end, I would do it only if they required public-key encryption...but I know they won't...because that would kick start something they wouldn't like very much.
"Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?"
Does it matter who provides it? Our government, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Stupidity, the NSA, not one provides email to the slaves. It does not seem to stop them from accessing them anyway.
Hope is the currency of fools
Send all your porn from your Gmail account
http://www.stopacop.so -- You have rights. How about standing up for them before they go away?
Offering email address to citizens is a great idea. I would appreciate this, really. In the long term times, this idea can prove to be a path to world peace.
Not trust a government corporation not to read my mail? What country in the world has a government run corporation where the government doesn't have access to private communication? Clearly, the US Post Office has nothing to do with the U.S. Government!
As has been mentioned above, email is inherently insecure. It's broadcast out in the open and can be read by anyone either with access to the server or simply by snooping traffic coming out of a given port. It's been known for centuries that even traditional, hardcopy mail can be intercepted and read. Look how often mail coming from soldiers in the theater of war during WWII had their mail blatantly opened and censored. Wax seals and signet rings came about as a way to try and show that a document was sealed and not intercepted and tampered with by some third party. If you want to communicate something that you would consider personally compromising, email or mail are definitely not the answer.
As also mentioned above, if you wish to keep your words absolutely secure, PGP (or the open alternative, GPG) is easily available to encrypt your potentially damning script. If I was going to be sending any email to an individual whom a given government might have suspicions or concerns, I would prefer that my text be out in the open so that anyone could read it without any misinterpretations. Sending an encrypted message—even if it was only a request for a secret family recipe for a marinade for a steak barbecue—would only serve to raise the suspicions of a paranoid government.
If the government in question is open and transparent in their policies towards privacy and legitimate security or crime enforcement issues, then I would have no problems using a government supplied email system. If the government had a history of or was trying to suppress or subjugate the population, then I might think twice about using such a system. Or, at least, I would be careful about what communication I passed through their system.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
I don't really think that is the correct question. Perhaps we should be asking the question "Do we want to continue to pay for governments sending us physical mail rather than using more efficient technology?"
There is nothing going on here that requires you to use this email address for your own personal communications.
I'd trust my mail provider to be my government, because I host my own mail.
Why would they assume I already have access to a computer and internet service?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Free as in beer or free as in speech?
The project has come under heavy criticism in Malaysia due to the lack of transparency in the project funding.
It was initially announced as a RM50 millions (USD 16 millions) government-backed project, then later declared as a private sector initiative that would not be financed by taxpayers. Only to be explained the following day that government agencies (therefore taxpayers) would be charged RM 0.50 per email. Considering Malaysia's adult population of 16 millions, it would cost the government RM 8 million (USD 2.6 millions) to send ONE email to every malaysian adult.
The private company (Tricubes) that has initiated the project was about to be delisted from the local stock exchange to due financial irregularities, until the government granted it this RM50 millions program.
Cronyism is long standing problem in Malaysia. Sadly, this is only one of the many such examples.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A few months ago a friend of mine was complaining about how difficult it was to get an appointment to see her doctor in Canada. She couldn't leave a voicemail as the box was full and the message said that someone would be only available in the office for 2 or 3 hours in the day. I do realize the potential for privacy concerns especially with medical, but an email system to create/confirm appointments would be ideal. I hate voicemail personally, and much prefer an email so I can quickly review it. So if this was incorporated into a government email plan I think it would be ideal.
why would there need to be more than one of anything? one excrement powered droid powered citizen drone per citizen etc...
disarm
The email service is probably subcontracted to some guy who don't know how to run an email service (and probably will end up sub-contracting it to others to do the real job, if it actually gets done).
... would you trust a big greedy corporation to be your email provider?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
handled by hotmail!
myemail.my. 3600 IN MX 40 1852513953.pamx1.hotmail.com.
"Do we want to continue to pay for governments sending us physical mail rather than using more efficient technology?"
There is nothing going on here that requires you to use this email address for your own personal communications.
Let it keep operating, but make it legal for UPS/Fedex/etc to use your physical mailbox. Lets see how that goes...
Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
For government correspondence? of course.
Just use something else for everything else like you do now. Maybe set up e-mail forwarding so you don't always have to check it.
I'm fine with the government giving me a e-mail address which is only and specifically used to communicate with the government. I wouldn't use it for anything else, though.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Estonia has had this for many years now. But it's not as impressive when you only have to deal with a maximum of 1m users.
http://www.eesti.ee/portaal/portaal.options?a=keelen&b=postisysteem.abi%3F
If you're going through AT&T they already have it. Not need for them to even fill out any paperwork.
This has cause a huge backlash from the public, for one the project was awarded to a company, Tricubes which is a GN3, meaning they have accounting issue with the Stock Exchange, without a tender and they we were already dying as their stock price was around 5cent before this announcement. They plan to charge the goverment 50 cents for every email to a citizen, imagine for 18m adults thats huge money, practically a gold mine. You guys can read more here: http://malaysiafinance.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-such-strong-reactions-to-email.html
I have a gmail account and my ISP provide me some email addresses, I also have a, now pretty much useless, forwarding adress provided by bigfoot.com since 1995. I trust google more then my ISP (despite that my ISP is situated in Sweden where protection of personal privacy is better then in USA), but I would trust my (Swedish) government even more. My government have a pretty clean record when it comes to personal privacy, there are few dark spots, but other then the IB affair, it has mostly(*) been corrupt individuals that have acted in their own interest and as Sweden have a very open and transparent government, corrupt government officials likely get caught, at least if they try their luck often.
It would be neat to have a more permanent email address, that don't disappear or change terms of use every other decade at the whim of a company or when a company go bankrupt or become bought out.
I would not trust my government, or any other entity, to be my only email provider.
(*) There are only five other exceptions that I'm aware of. Thomas Bodström (former Swedish Minister for Justice), have broken the laws against ministerstyre three times and ordered police to violate Swedish privacy laws (the most horrible thing is that he did not have to stand before the Committee on Justice for any of those cases, which is usually the case when things like that happen, my guess is that the US government (that was very involved in all cases) requested a blackout to not risk the national security of USA (foreign countries and some international organisations, like EU and UN, can request exception to the normal Swedish government transparency laws and procedures on the ground that national security is threatened in another country then Sweden, these rules make it possible for the Swedish government to cooperate with mores "shady" governments, like that in USA, these rules are a necessary evil, otherwise Sweden would become totally isolated from the rest of the world)). There is also a case when two police investigators tricked an administrator to hand over a DNA sample (taken from a kid in the 70's, as an adult suspected for a crime) from an academy hospital, the DNA was later accepted as evidence in a trial (which is a legal grey zone). Eventually, years after the incident, the police investigators got reprimanded and the administrator had to attend a course about Swedish personal privacy laws, but it felt like it was just for show and was to late and to little. Finally, there is a case when a former homosexual lover blackmailed the Swedish king in the 20's and 30's, in an underhanded deal the blackmailer was handed over to Nazi Germany, where he was put in one of their infamous mental institutions, he was later handed back to Sweden and was then put in a Swedish mental institution. Homosexual relations and adultery was illegal in the 1920's, but as the royal family had legal immunity until the 1960's, the blackout was only to avoid a scandal. There was a lot of people in high places involved in this sordid affair, maybe even the Minister of justice and the Prime minister.
I am from Malaysia. The problem for this project is more complicated actually. There are several concerns that we as citizens of Malaysia are worry about:
1. The project is run by a public company named Tricubes. The company is under financial difficulty and is listed under GN3 in the Malaysia stock exchange market (which means near bankruptcy). Because of this announcement, the share price of Tricubes raised from RM0.055 to RM0.325 within a week - a whopping 491% increase.
2. Tricubes claim that the RM50 million investment is a private investment. Citizens however believe that the government will eventually pay a huge amount of service fees to Tricubes.
3. A simple analysis on the domain shows that the domain myemail.my is merely using Microsoft Windows Live Mail as the back end provider. It is hard to believe that a service that directly use the domains.live.com API can cost that much, not less to say the entire potential vendor lock-in by Microsoft to this email infrastructure.
4. Tricubes will charge 50 cents (RM0.50) for every email sent. Do some calculation and you can tell how much it will cost the government to make an announcement by sending one email to each of the 27 million citizens in Malaysia.
From the facts that we have, it is obvious that there is a high possibility that this is yet another corruption of the government to let people with internal connection make free money.
While I understand that building an email system do cost money, it is absurd to spend RM50m in something that directly uses Windows Live services and provide nothing more than that. And it is even more absurd to charge that much for an email delivery that is essentially free. Even though we have the freedom to decline this project by not using this service, it is impossible for us to stop the corrupted government from sending costly emails to our inactive accounts, thus giving tax payers' money to Tricubes.
I don't think this is such a terrible idea. As long as they do not prevent you from using other email addresses for personal correspondence, it seems that having a government mailbox for your dealings with the government might actually be a good thing. I'd like to see the government actually prevent these mailboxes from sending or receiving mail from outside the government network as well. This could help prevent phishing attempts and other scams.
Dude, I think this is right as far as it goes - your average government department, and employees of those departments, do like to do things by the book. But I'm not worrying about my mail being read by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I'm worried about it being read by the NSA, CIA, or whoever. And THOSE guys don't need an economic incentive. And whatever gov't department that would end up providing the e-mail service would no doubt have written into the "book" that they cough up any citizen's email files to $3_LETTER_AGENCY at any time if said agency suspects him/her of being a terrorist (probable cause? riiiight).
Ultimately, I agree with the GP - pretty much all the ISPs are ALREADY coughing up whatever data the government wants, whenever they ask for it. Not to mention the fact that the NSA is vacuuming up more or less any voice or email conversations they can get their hands on - which is most of them. I'm not happy about the situation, but it is what it is.
Malaysia is a fascist country.
1. They destroyed a religious sects property (Sky Kingdom) because it was considered an apostate offshoot of Islam and imprisoned people involved with it for YEARS!
2. Fat kids are being given bad grades in school now as a matter of national policy - it is for "health". One kid could eat total junk and be a couch potato and have a fast metabolism and be left alone, another could eat well, exercise, be fat, and be given bad grades, because he "chose" to be "unhealthy". Ironically the fat kids will be less likely to get "fat" diseases.
3. Another "health" initiative: Gay kids are being rounded up and put into reeducation camps. Because just like fat, they consider being gay a choice. This and the fat initiative came out together - related "health" initiatives. (If it wasn't for the religious differences, the Republican Party could actually like Malaysia - at least as regarding the gay issue. They have a lot in common. Well, the Democrats want to regulate health behaviors - so they'd like the "fat" initiative.)
4. Censorship and lots of it. Officially sanctioned. Email will be censored and people will go to prison for years. Count on it.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
... is not that they can't operate like a business. It's that Congress won't LET them operate like a business. They're legally prohibited from offering all kinds of services (wouldn't want them competing w/ private industry, dontcha know). They can't close the hundreds of remote rural post offices that operate at a loss. They can't eliminate Saturday service. And really, that's fine - it's a government agency, why should they have to make a profit? But holy jeebus, Congress - make up your mind. You can't prevent the USPS from doing the things they would need to do to get profitable... and simultaneously bitch because they're not profitable. Pick one.
Even further OT, but Amtrak has the same issue. They have to compete with heavily, heavily subsidized federal highways, aren't allowed to discontinue money-losing routes... and get bitched at because they lose money. Well, no shit - of course they lose money under those conditions.
There is nothing going on here that requires you to use this email address for your own personal communications.
At least not yet.
"Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?"
I sure hope that was meant to be rhetorical. If not, I cry for the poster.
Privacy aside, what govt provided service *anywhere* is done so reliably and/or with any decent amount of support?
All Estonians get a free @eesti.ee ( "Eesti" is "Estonia" in estonian) mail account by default and although most people redirect it to their active mail account, those who do not have one, can do all their stuff with this one. Then again, while I see the point here, as we have a government provided web platform that may require quite a lot of communication with the user who use it's e-services, do most countries governments have anything to write to their citizens?
It's a lot easier to switch from one "big greedy corporation" to another than to switch from one government to another. Elections mean nothing when both candidates' platforms agree on a point with which a voter disagrees, such as the U.S. Republican and Democratic parties agreeing on expanding the scope of copyright.
If I don't want to see my government financing war in other country, can I deduct that from my taxes?
I think there are some useful things they could do for email that are similar to the services they provide for snail mail, and this could make email more useful for official tasks.
For example, the postal service provides proof of delivery. Needless to say, that's very useful if you need to prove that you sent someone an official document. I don't know if there's an equivalent for email. Since the postal service is a trusted 3rd party, they could run mail servers and verify that the message made it to the server of the recipient. Maybe they'd reply to the sender with a signed message listing the sender, recipient, and hash of the message.
Another thing they could do is provide an authentication service. You go to the post office, shown them your ID, and then they can somehow provide proof that you are who you say you are (maybe they sign your public key). If they could do something like this and make it simple enough, maybe encryption usage would finally expand, that would negate any privacy problems with the government handling your email (although I feel these problems are overblown; they already handle your mail and that's not a problem, and it's not like a corporation would be better.)
I'm sure there are other services they could provide, but those are the two that popped in to my head first.
I would not trust the government to be my only mail provider.
I do think it might be nice to have a walled garden government account. Every citizen gets an account, only government agencies can use it for official business. No spam. Secured. The government today won't do business for most things over e-mail because it goes over the big bad internet, and this could change it, and make a lot of things faster and more efficient. Since it's correspondence with the government in the first place I don't care if they can snoop on it.
In all of this, so far no one has mentioned the extra vulnerabilities that email from "the government" can cause.
Or what trouble one could get in by not reading "every" government email, or not blindly using every "click here" contained inside.
It seems like a great way for distributing malware to "everyone" or specific targets. The inclusion of attachments, executables, or embedded html & JS would all be a nice vector to use to drop any malware "they" wanted on to their users "everybody.
Since we, wisely, don't really trust the validity of much email anyway, why would we want "official" items to show up thru this easily spoofed system we call email. How about the day when you are sent an "official" notification to appear for jury duty with a "click here" to complete your juror information form. Do you trust it and click to give away your SSN etc? Or do you ignore it and risk jail/fines for not "properly" reporting for jury duty. And the examples can get even more serious easily.
Government paperwork is bad enough already, do we really an electronic way to let gov't staff generate more wasteful tomes? Though I do wish we could save more trees that die for the sake of gov't paperwork.
I know we're all hot and bothered by the thought of automated conspiracy theories about government spying... but warrants are stupid easy to get and they can force you to unlock your e-mail for review or put you in jail for refusing. That's in the US where there's a presumption of innocence (Hi UK) and procedural integrity (looking at you Italy, France and Spain).
The only funds they extract from the U.S. government goes to pay for franking expenses (your congressmen sending you letters) and other government uses. The business pays for itself otherwise.
It seems that I should have directed my ire against those bitching that postage keeps going up. Congress is still at fault, though - they do simultaneously threaten the USPS not to let postage go up, and prevent them from closing down unprofitable services. But thanks for the correction - that's an important point.
> Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
Likewise, would you trust your government to be your post office? Would you trust your government to be your fire-protection service? Would you trust your government to inspect the safety of your food and medicine?
Okay, you probably do have a few caveats to each of those rhetorical questions, fair enough, but the question the summary raised is in the same category as the rest of these.
Why not ask do you trust Google as your e-mail provider? MSN Live/Hotmail? Yahoo? AOL? AT&T?
If you'd distrust a government solution, why would you trust their solution so much more? Are humans not behind the operations of private and public institutions both? Governments, like all other human endeavors, are imperfect, but you are free to try to improve your government where you see room for improvement. As for a private business, you're free to do business elsewhere or start your own.
>Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
Sure. Why not? Encrypt it. Send it. No worries.
Wait, you're not encrypting your sensitive mail in the first place? When it can be picked up along the way by any Joe Schmoe MTA hop or Echelon type setup? Then you're an idiot. If you do this with a government that might kill you (Malaysia is not one of them) then you deserve to be a Darwin Award winner.
Unencrypted email is the same thing as a post card, and you are a fool if you think any differently.
--
BMO
In Estonia, the government is for quite many years providing an official e-mail address to citizens. The catch is that the e-mail is just forwarder; you can sign on with your id card and configure it to forward to your real account. The e-mail is in format firstname.lastname@eesti.ee (in case of duplicates, a number is added) and personal-id-code@eesti.ee (eesti = estonia in estonian)... This makes it easy for all official e-government services to send you an e-mail to a single address and you can forward it wherever you want to receive your official e-mail. No need for updating your e-mail in million separate systems when it happens to change.
Well not in Malaysia thats for sure. The population is locked down tight with ID cards. This is a pretty obvious ploy to encourage people to only use email accounts which are tied to their IC number.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not only that the email are not free, but you have to buy a device to activate it. I for one, will not use it. At first, they announce it as "Government Projects" and the government did a u-turn after a massive research regarding the project that cost the taxpayer for a whopping 50 million that has been awarded to cronies.
Yeah, nobody freaks out about the government being in charge of postal mail, and that's actively scanned by xray. And, there are always alternatives if you don't like it.
I don't really mind that Aust Post scans the mail I send through it, they have strict privacy policies they must adhere to and as the GGP pointed out, no incentive to actively snoop on me. Besides, X-Rays aren't really capable of telling what I wrote and all incoming mail is scanned by customs regardless of who is carrying it when it enters the country.
If I did have a problem with Aust Post I could easily use the more expensive options like couriers.
So if the Aussie government were to offer me a free ozemail.au account, I wouldn't be suspicious as this is exactly what a government is meant to do, provide infrastructure. Now whether I'd use its another question, such a service would have to provide significant advantages over Gmail considering both services would be free.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
They are same arn't they
If I was only using the e-mail service to send/receive government-related documents and queries, and I didn't ever use it for anything else, then sure I could trust the government as my e-mail provider.
Now they can reduce the employees in the postal service, automate the scanning of emails for terrorist or porn references, etc. Savings are going to be substantial. The postal service will soon be relagated to package sending, and not even for sending cheques in the mail.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
There is some background to this. The company in question is connected politically to the govt. Govt announces free email scheme. private initiative bla bla bla...crony company who is currently in dire financial straits (GN3 status by our SEC, about to be delisted) wins the bid to provide free email. And what does this 'free' email cost us taxpayers? We have 20M citizes of age, and this company is charging the tax payers USD0.16...that's USD3.2M for a single mail blast. Everytime the govt sends out a single email (IRS, DOT etc etc) this crony company gets richer at USD3.2m a pop. How's that for a business model...this should give the russian spam gangs some ideas.
They both have different reasons for spying on you.
Corporations do it for profit.
Governments do it for control-er, "National Security".
They all spy on you.
I like to paraphrase an old song... "My mind is not for rent / for corporations or Government".
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
i wouldnt
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?