7 ms·

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

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.
  - l72 3y ago
    Sure, but 100M is prohibitively low. No one will actually use this if it is capped at that. I do volunteer technical work with some of our homeless shelters. Having access to email is critical. Without it, they have no access to a whole host of government services they need. They don't have their own computer, so they are relying on email as their document storage. Gmail and other 3rd party email providers constantly cause issues for them. Their login is often tied to a cell phone which gets broken, stolen, and replaced often. Or they cycle through numbers since their service is constantly interrupted due to payment issues. They rarely have any way to gain access back to their email, and their access to many important services is lost. At least with the post office, there is a physical place you can go to, and have multiple ways to prove your identity and continue to get access to your email, which like I said, is a requirement and lifeline for this population.
soraminazuki 3y ago
I don't trust governments to handle our emails, precisely because it's critical. So critical in fact that government agencies were secretly hoarding them en masse in violation of the law. Digital technology has given those in power a level of insight and control over people's lives that was previously unheard of in human history. That kind of capability is too tempting and dangerous. We desperately need a way to separate key digital infrastructure away from corporate or government interests. Putting email in the hands of the government would further diminish what little digital rights we have left.

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.
- l72 3y ago
  Sure, but 100M is prohibitively low. No one will actually use this if it is capped at that. I do volunteer technical work with some of our homeless shelters. Having access to email is critical. Without it, they have no access to a whole host of government services they need. They don't have their own computer, so they are relying on email as their document storage. Gmail and other 3rd party email providers constantly cause issues for them. Their login is often tied to a cell phone which gets broken, stolen, and replaced often. Or they cycle through numbers since their service is constantly interrupted due to payment issues. They rarely have any way to gain access back to their email, and their access to many important services is lost. At least with the post office, there is a physical place you can go to, and have multiple ways to prove your identity and continue to get access to your email, which like I said, is a requirement and lifeline for this population.

soraminazuki 3y ago

I don't trust governments to handle our emails, precisely because it's critical. So critical in fact that government agencies were secretly hoarding them en masse in violation of the law. Digital technology has given those in power a level of insight and control over people's lives that was previously unheard of in human history. That kind of capability is too tempting and dangerous. We desperately need a way to separate key digital infrastructure away from corporate or government interests. Putting email in the hands of the government would further diminish what little digital rights we have left.