Google Gives the US Government Access To Gmail
itnews.com.au
itnews.com.au
Of course, Google gives law enforcement access to e-mail when proper information requests are made. Failing to comply would be obstruction of justice. Facebook does the same thing(1). Microsoft does the same thing(2). But it's not like Google is arbitrarily giving the federal government access to everyone's e-mail willy nilly. Requests have to be made via the proper channels. I'm sure Google's legal team reviews everything thoroughly before providing access.
When situations like this arise, Google has two choices really: comply with the requests or shut down operations and move them off-shore. Which option do you really think is feasible?
Thanks for the link though. I had gotten a whiff, probably from statements like yours, that hushmail wasn't trustworthy, but hadn't known the source of this.
Your link, actually, is very enlightening. For those not willing to read it, it turns out that hushmail provides two services, their original one, and one that is geared for people not willing to install a java applet. The 2nd one can be exploited by hushmail to decrypt your messages, and hushmail can be compelled by law enforcement to do that exploitation.
However, if you use the java applet, you're golden.
The extra security given by the Java applet is not particularly relevant, in the practical sense, if an individual account is targeted."
I think Hushmail is trustworthy -- in the sense that they're not going to deliberately deliver broken code except when forced to by law enforcement.
#1, If your moral standards on privacy is above Google's, you can view Google as evil for giving US government its users' emails.
#2, If your moral standards on censorship is below Google's, you can view Google as bluff for calling other governments evil for trying to censor the Internet.
And if you satisfy both #1 and #2, you can call Google whatever you want!