> you know that encryption is happening, because you are doing it on your computer before sending bits to the server If your server receives email for you over

> you know that encryption is happening, because you are doing it on your computer before sending bits to the server If your server receives email for you over SMTP, you are trusting the server not to log a copy before encrypting, trusting that there is no intruder on the server, trusting that someone (like the NSA) is not logging traffic between servers, and trusting the sender's machines to the same. Similarly when you send email in a way that can be read by your recipient's provider. You have to encrypt for an individual, as with PGP, for there to be meaningful security, at which point your provider's "secure" practices are only covering a bit of metadata, some of which will be leaked when communicating the message. The problem with PGP is that it has a complicated trust model, poor client integration, and does not provide forward secrecy. The first two may be fixable via better user interfaces (which includes breaking from traditional webmail) but forward secrecy would need protocol support is in conflict with the asynchrony email currently enjoys.