Nope. this is not NSA proof. This is PRISM proof. i.e. it is not trivial for the NSA to request records from your $emailhost. However it does not prevent your

Nope. this is not NSA proof. This is PRISM proof. i.e. it is not trivial for the NSA to request records from your $emailhost. However it does not prevent your emails from being read by the NSA. Firstly, your emails still have destination outside your linode bubble. so you email your friends who are on Gmail? well that in the NSA database now. Secondly your linode machine is entirely virtual, so there is no way to see if your data has been tapped at the datastore level. How do you know that linode is not in bed with the NSA. Are there any backdoors in the provisioning system? What about the random number generator? Thirdly and most importantly, most network connections are tapped by either the British, Germans, French, Austrailans or the US. so any network traffic is considered to be entering hostile territory as soon as it leaves your LAN. So your options are: Encrypt[1] or not use the internet. Tor is largely pointless, as who do you think puts all that money and time into operating large exit points? also having the ability to interrogate packets at carrier level make it much easier to do timing attacks. [1] assuming your machine isn't compromised, or the encryption is "NSA proof"