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Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly exten

by bbor 3y ago

Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly extension.

tjpnz 3y ago
Irrelevant. If my privately owned utility screws up they're still obliged to follow the law.
kwanbix 3y ago
What nationalization has to do with what he said? They need to be regulated. It is outrageous that they can say "you violated our policies" and do not explain which policy and how.
piaste 3y ago
There's little need to nationalize, since emails don't have a last-mile or natural monopoly issue. I think, however, that modern countries should provide all citizens with an official, public, mail address. Restrict them to only send/receive emails to/from a whitelist of publicly registered service providers with very strict personal data governance requirements (government, banks, utilities, medical services, higher education). You can let private companies continue to offer email addresses for everything else, anonymously and under whatever terms. (Much like how you can still buy a mailbox if you want, but you're always guaranteed to receive the mail at your address.) Just ensure that people aren't cut off from essential services.
- utrack 3y ago
  Good idea which will work for most people, however it'll be an issue for dissidents or people moving countries. Those can use some other provider, while everyone else (99%?) can be covered by this solution. I guess there should be a provision against gov services making it mandatory for people to use the gov provided email.
  - piaste 3y ago
    A government that would punish dissidents by locking them out of bank accounts etc. can already do so by extrajudicially freezing their bank accounts in the first place (looking at you, Canada). In my view those email address should be strictly national and reserved for national-level services, so whenever you move to another country you should get a new email address at the same time as you get a tax ID number.
- argulane 3y ago
  Estonia tried this with national first.last@eesti.ee email for everyone. Turns out nobody cared and they will shut it down on 1. November. https://news.err.ee/1608966110/ria-ends-support-for-eesti-ee-email-addresses https://news.err.ee/1608966110/ria-ends-support-for-eesti-ee...
  - latexr 3y ago
    Doesn’t seem to be the same thing: > The addresses that appear as firstname.lastname@eesti.ee (for example, mariann.mustikamets@eesti.ee) or companyname@eesti.ee (worldsbestransport@eesti.ee) can be used for private correspondence, while it is not part of the public mailbox service. Emails sent to these addresses are not saved in the person's public mailbox but are forwarded to the personal email address they've specified in the Eesti.ee portal (Gmail, Hotmail etc. accounts). And: > The decision does not concern people's official personalcode@eesti.ee addresses that can only be used by state agencies. The latter, which was not discontinued, seems to be closer to what your parent comment was suggesting.
- danaris 3y ago
  ...Why default to restricting to a whitelist? If the government is giving you an email address, you should be able to use that as your only email address, that you use for talking with friends and family, etc. If someone's abusing the privilege, then there can be restrictions added.
  - piaste 3y ago
    Inbox restrictions: because otherwise every single service ever will start accepting only official government emails to sign up, killing anonymity on the internet (and clogging your official mailbox with not-quite-spam). Outbox restrictions: because otherwise every citizen who gets a bit of malware on one of their devices will start sending spam and get (temporarily) restricted, and the whole point is to have a reliable address that you know the citizen cannot lose access to. Also because it would be real weird if you could send messages to addresses that cannot reply to you because of the inbox whitelist.
c-linkage 3y ago
Given: 1) How critical email is; and 2) Existing mandate of government postal services to guarantee delivery of physical mail to all citizens; that Government postal services should run a national email service free to all citizens. In the USA, email would be minimally covered by the same protective laws as physical mail (I don't know if the same protections are available in other countries). IMAP and POP or a more appropriate mailbox protocol should be supported to allow retrieval of email, and online email size would be relatively small (say 100MB) but you could pay for larger storage like you would a post office box.
- l72 3y ago
  100MB for storage or per email? For storage, that is way too small. You can easily hit that limit in a few months of light usage. All my utilities send me PDFs each month, and that adds up quickly. Last year, while doing renovations, the contractor and I were sending PDF drawings back and forth. I would have gone over the limit on a single day. We need something that lasts a lifetime with full archival and backup.
  - c-linkage 3y ago
    With respect, I think it's cost prohibitive for the government to provide a free and unlimited service. Your physical mailbox -- from which you get your paper spam -- has a fixed size, and every day (maybe once a week) you have to empty the box. If we extend that into the digital realm, it makes sense for the post office to provide a similarly limited post box in the free tier, from which you can use POP to download your messages to your private mailbox for permanent storage. For truly poor people who can't afford a personal server, they can use a web interface to access email, but they should delete emails (throw out the spam) to keep space in their mailbox. If you want more storage, you pay for more storage. Right now storage on gmail feels free because Google are scanning your mailbox and building your advertising profile. The government has no ability to get advertising revenue, so you'd pay for it instead. Finally, there is no requirement for citizens to use the government provided mailbox. Set up a mail forward to your favorite provider and you're done.

by bbor 3y ago

Would you be open to the nationalization of email services? Curious if your very HN-friendly sentiment also implies agreement with this very HN-unfriendly extension.

tjpnz 3y ago

Irrelevant. If my privately owned utility screws up they're still obliged to follow the law.

kwanbix 3y ago

What nationalization has to do with what he said? They need to be regulated. It is outrageous that they can say "you violated our policies" and do not explain which policy and how.

piaste 3y ago

There's little need to nationalize, since emails don't have a last-mile or natural monopoly issue. I think, however, that modern countries should provide all citizens with an official, public, mail address. Restrict them to only send/receive emails to/from a whitelist of publicly registered service providers with very strict personal data governance requirements (government, banks, utilities, medical services, higher education). You can let private companies continue to offer email addresses for everything else, anonymously and under whatever terms. (Much like how you can still buy a mailbox if you want, but you're always guaranteed to receive the mail at your address.) Just ensure that people aren't cut off from essential services.

utrack 3y ago
Good idea which will work for most people, however it'll be an issue for dissidents or people moving countries. Those can use some other provider, while everyone else (99%?) can be covered by this solution. I guess there should be a provision against gov services making it mandatory for people to use the gov provided email.
- piaste 3y ago
  A government that would punish dissidents by locking them out of bank accounts etc. can already do so by extrajudicially freezing their bank accounts in the first place (looking at you, Canada). In my view those email address should be strictly national and reserved for national-level services, so whenever you move to another country you should get a new email address at the same time as you get a tax ID number.
argulane 3y ago
Estonia tried this with national first.last@eesti.ee email for everyone. Turns out nobody cared and they will shut it down on 1. November. https://news.err.ee/1608966110/ria-ends-support-for-eesti-ee-email-addresses https://news.err.ee/1608966110/ria-ends-support-for-eesti-ee...
- latexr 3y ago
  Doesn’t seem to be the same thing: > The addresses that appear as firstname.lastname@eesti.ee (for example, mariann.mustikamets@eesti.ee) or companyname@eesti.ee (worldsbestransport@eesti.ee) can be used for private correspondence, while it is not part of the public mailbox service. Emails sent to these addresses are not saved in the person's public mailbox but are forwarded to the personal email address they've specified in the Eesti.ee portal (Gmail, Hotmail etc. accounts). And: > The decision does not concern people's official personalcode@eesti.ee addresses that can only be used by state agencies. The latter, which was not discontinued, seems to be closer to what your parent comment was suggesting.
danaris 3y ago
...Why default to restricting to a whitelist? If the government is giving you an email address, you should be able to use that as your only email address, that you use for talking with friends and family, etc. If someone's abusing the privilege, then there can be restrictions added.
- piaste 3y ago
  Inbox restrictions: because otherwise every single service ever will start accepting only official government emails to sign up, killing anonymity on the internet (and clogging your official mailbox with not-quite-spam). Outbox restrictions: because otherwise every citizen who gets a bit of malware on one of their devices will start sending spam and get (temporarily) restricted, and the whole point is to have a reliable address that you know the citizen cannot lose access to. Also because it would be real weird if you could send messages to addresses that cannot reply to you because of the inbox whitelist.

c-linkage 3y ago

Given: 1) How critical email is; and 2) Existing mandate of government postal services to guarantee delivery of physical mail to all citizens; that Government postal services should run a national email service free to all citizens. In the USA, email would be minimally covered by the same protective laws as physical mail (I don't know if the same protections are available in other countries). IMAP and POP or a more appropriate mailbox protocol should be supported to allow retrieval of email, and online email size would be relatively small (say 100MB) but you could pay for larger storage like you would a post office box.

l72 3y ago
100MB for storage or per email? For storage, that is way too small. You can easily hit that limit in a few months of light usage. All my utilities send me PDFs each month, and that adds up quickly. Last year, while doing renovations, the contractor and I were sending PDF drawings back and forth. I would have gone over the limit on a single day. We need something that lasts a lifetime with full archival and backup.
- c-linkage 3y ago
  With respect, I think it's cost prohibitive for the government to provide a free and unlimited service. Your physical mailbox -- from which you get your paper spam -- has a fixed size, and every day (maybe once a week) you have to empty the box. If we extend that into the digital realm, it makes sense for the post office to provide a similarly limited post box in the free tier, from which you can use POP to download your messages to your private mailbox for permanent storage. For truly poor people who can't afford a personal server, they can use a web interface to access email, but they should delete emails (throw out the spam) to keep space in their mailbox. If you want more storage, you pay for more storage. Right now storage on gmail feels free because Google are scanning your mailbox and building your advertising profile. The government has no ability to get advertising revenue, so you'd pay for it instead. Finally, there is no requirement for citizens to use the government provided mailbox. Set up a mail forward to your favorite provider and you're done.