Good question. Right now I guess from a cryptographer's point of view all our emails are basically as public as Twitter messages, if anyone cares to read them.

Good question. Right now I guess from a cryptographer's point of view all our emails are basically as public as Twitter messages, if anyone cares to read them. Technically I think a purely passphrase-encrypted webmail would not be very secure, because if you used an asymmetric algorithm, the private keys would no longer be private, and if you used a symmetric algorithm you'd either have to change the pass-phrase each time or deal with a key-vulnerability. But I might be wrong. Finally the demand could probably be created if it were implemented in a user-friendly way. I think it has to, somehow, eventually. It will not be difficult to convince people to use it once it works in a simple, transparent way. After all, everyone got used to logging in everywhere, as well. In the long run, now matter how cool clients like GMail are, we should not leave our private communication to others and especially not to companies. Perhaps it requires a person similar to Mark Shuttleworth with a lot of resources and a philantropic drive to start thinking about a solution.