No company or organization can sustainably stop a determined government request that they continue to operate in financially or physically. It doesn't matter w

No company or organization can sustainably stop a determined government request that they continue to operate in financially or physically. It doesn't matter what the company says at some point they will be forced to either shutdown or give in eg lavabit(1). The government can trace and stop the flow of all or most of their money threating their primary motivation for the business. Or they can physically detain people or equipment required to function. the only way for an entity to never comply with government orders and continue to function is to remain anonymous and their servers accessible only via temporary addresses or tor since static ip's and domains can be taken away. Making it impossible for receiving email and more effort than the average person would want to access. It then becomes a catch 22 as you cant fully trust an anonymous, transient entity since their motivation can never be verified(they could be a honey trap), they can rarely be held accountable if they betray you, and they could be replaced or compelled to comply without anyone knowing(someone part of a visible physical social network could have friends put out a warning if something suspicious happened to them). What it comes down to is what we already know. they only way to be sure your email provider wont hand over your emails is to run your own email server anonymously. For anyone who cant do that protonmail is still likely the best choice even if its imperfect. plus adding whatever other layers of protection on top you are capable of. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit