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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?
> Would you trust your government to be your mail provider?
I don't trust my government to be my government!
it wouldnt matter zit, whether government is your email provider or not. either way, they will spy on you.
Actually, a government department is less likely to spy on you because they have no economic incentive. All you need is privacy provision in the email act, and the chances become very slim. I've worked in government, and they like to do things by the book.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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
Considering these e-mail addresses are meant for communication with the government, I see no problem with them being hosted by the government. Just do all your normal e-mailling with a regular provider and communicate with the government using either your own e-mail address or the government-hosted one.
They could spy all they want; all e-mail in these boxes is either from or to them anyway.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Over twenty years ago the USPS was working on a plan to install Group IV fax machines in post offices and offer a very fast document delivery service. Congress stopped them because they thought it would compete with private services. (Group IV fax produces copy about like a laser printer, and about as fast, but requires ISDN.) I suspect the same would have happened had they tried to offer email.
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.
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.
Actually, a government department is less likely to spy on you because they have no economic incentive. All you need is privacy provision in the email act, and the chances become very slim. I've worked in government, and they like to do things by the book.
I8-D
I believe the USPS DID have a plan to set up "official" USPS e-mail addresses for people back in the 1990's.
I think it was the brilliant plan of charging people $0.15 per e-mail that did them in.
If they had just done a free service and charged advertisers (who provide the bulk of their revenue anyway) they could have preempted gmail, yahoo, hotmail...
What, so they're happy to give the government lots of guns and money to invade other countries and protect themselves, but they're unhappy at the idea of the government actually providing any useful services? Talk about whipped.
which is totally what she said
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.
So your argument against government is that they're like corporations? So wait, who CAN we trust to provide us services? Nobody?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Additionally, they believe that corporations do everything better, because they do it for a profit. They also trust corporations (which, thanks to them, have no oversight) more than the government (which has a lot of oversight, and general accountability to the public). Boggles the mind, but it's true.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Yes, there are plenty of republicans who feel the government should only do two things, kill brown people, and keep them out of the country.
There are sane people, but for some reason many of them refuse to take a stand against the bat shit crazies. The crazies on the far right (including teabaggers) wont be happy until every single piece of the government is chopped up and sold off piece meal to a for profit corp that will require a profit margin to do the same job that the government did without the profit margin.
That what I never understood about "fiscal conservatives" how can we save money if we have a new cost, namely profit margin. Until I hear a reasonable answer anyone who wants to offload government duties to a corporation will be just plain stupid in my book.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.