5 ms·

Don't want to sound like I sound, but this might be the end of the Internet as we know it.

surferbayarea 10y ago
more like the internet will finally be fixed. There is no reason gmail cannot encrypt my email and remove pii data, except that it will eat into advertising revenues. Its easy for companies like Google to take a stand on an easy thing like the government making it a bit harder to get visas, but when it comes to saying no to government requests for your email - they happily comply.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  The number one benefit that Gmail touted when it launched was searchable email. That will break. You're perfectly free to use E2E encryption on Gmail, and they are even trying to make it easy for you, though that project is evidently not as well staffed as the advertising org.
  - surferbayarea 10y ago
    search-ability is not a constraint for encryption. Eq see https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      Performant search is. Gmail wouldn't work with O(n) search times.
      - surferbayarea 10y ago
        The inverted index could simply be built/live on client side. The cloud is then just a backup data storage. Encrypted email is downloaded, unencrypted and indexed on your laptop/phone etc.
        lern_too_spel 10y ago
        To be clear, you're proposing that users download their entire email storage to their phones and browsers before they can search or spam filter their email? And you think that this would be a compelling product for the average email user? I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're trolling.
        surferbayarea 10y ago
        Sure - might not be easy for email. It does work for imessages (no server storage, typical size 1-5GB, stored + indexed on client side). So once phones start having 50GB+ storage(wait my iphone already does :p), its not so far fetched to think of having a 20GB inbox stored+indexed on the phone - of course you don't need to store the attachments etc. Anyways, my point was not to suggest a full solution but to say that companies are not incentivized to solve this problem.
        askmike 10y ago
        > its not so far fetched to think of having a 20GB inbox stored+indexed on the phone Yes it is. Besides just syncing the data there are a huge number of other performance hits. > of course you don't need to store the attachments etc. Why not? Do you want to a) drop support for searching through attachments (like pdfs) or b) not encrypt those? > companies are not incentivized to solve this problem. There has been huge improvements in the last few years in this space (take Signal as an example). But major email providers are not incentivized because most users don't care, UX and performance suffer, email is inherently an unsafe (even if you put PGP on top [1]) and because they would not be able to make as much ad revenue (worse targeting). [1]: https://blog.filippo.io/giving-up-on-long-term-pgp/ https://blog.filippo.io/giving-up-on-long-term-pgp/
        burgerdev 10y ago
        Isn't this how pretty much any mail client does it? Thunderbird does a decent job at spam filtering my mail. You know, I can even search folders in Outlook! Saying that scanning your 1M mails with 1kb each requires the use of a cloud service seems a bit over the top.

more like the internet will finally be fixed. There is no reason gmail cannot encrypt my email and remove pii data, except that it will eat into advertising revenues. Its easy for companies like Google to take a stand on an easy thing like the government making it a bit harder to get visas, but when it comes to saying no to government requests for your email - they happily comply.

lern_too_spel 10y ago
The number one benefit that Gmail touted when it launched was searchable email. That will break. You're perfectly free to use E2E encryption on Gmail, and they are even trying to make it easy for you, though that project is evidently not as well staffed as the advertising org.
- surferbayarea 10y ago
  search-ability is not a constraint for encryption. Eq see https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    Performant search is. Gmail wouldn't work with O(n) search times.
    - surferbayarea 10y ago
      The inverted index could simply be built/live on client side. The cloud is then just a backup data storage. Encrypted email is downloaded, unencrypted and indexed on your laptop/phone etc.
      - lern_too_spel 10y ago
        To be clear, you're proposing that users download their entire email storage to their phones and browsers before they can search or spam filter their email? And you think that this would be a compelling product for the average email user? I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're trolling.
        surferbayarea 10y ago
        Sure - might not be easy for email. It does work for imessages (no server storage, typical size 1-5GB, stored + indexed on client side). So once phones start having 50GB+ storage(wait my iphone already does :p), its not so far fetched to think of having a 20GB inbox stored+indexed on the phone - of course you don't need to store the attachments etc. Anyways, my point was not to suggest a full solution but to say that companies are not incentivized to solve this problem.
        askmike 10y ago
        > its not so far fetched to think of having a 20GB inbox stored+indexed on the phone Yes it is. Besides just syncing the data there are a huge number of other performance hits. > of course you don't need to store the attachments etc. Why not? Do you want to a) drop support for searching through attachments (like pdfs) or b) not encrypt those? > companies are not incentivized to solve this problem. There has been huge improvements in the last few years in this space (take Signal as an example). But major email providers are not incentivized because most users don't care, UX and performance suffer, email is inherently an unsafe (even if you put PGP on top [1]) and because they would not be able to make as much ad revenue (worse targeting). [1]: https://blog.filippo.io/giving-up-on-long-term-pgp/ https://blog.filippo.io/giving-up-on-long-term-pgp/
        burgerdev 10y ago
        Isn't this how pretty much any mail client does it? Thunderbird does a decent job at spam filtering my mail. You know, I can even search folders in Outlook! Saying that scanning your 1M mails with 1kb each requires the use of a cloud service seems a bit over the top.