> It's only a matter of time before the "big dogs" in email abuse the position and decide who is and isn't allowed to send/receive email outside of their little

> It's only a matter of time before the "big dogs" in email abuse the position and decide who is and isn't allowed to send/receive email outside of their little oligarchy, either on their own or at the behest of governments. Uh, what? We have the tools today. TLS to your mail server, PGP for your email content. SMTP is already a highly distributed system that is controlled by no single entity. If the big email providers decide to block all the little players, making your own message passing system (with blackjack and hookers) and convincing everyone to come use it is many steps more work beyond just staying on SMTP and convincing everyone to stop using the big email providers. Then at least you don't have to develop new protocols, you don't have to develop new clients, and you don't have to convince people to use them (but still, good luck with that first step). How about instead we just make email encryption a whole lot easier to use and promote email providers that aren't beholden to court orders (aka probable cause must be demonstrated at a minimum)? Meanwhile we can work on reforming the security apparatus in the US because 'reasonable expectation of privacy" most definitely includes all the geographical locations I access my email account from, amongst many other things, so should require a warrant.