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Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

How can I, as a somewhat proficient non-techie, accomplish that without having to dedicate a 24/7 *nix box from home?

Please, if anyone knows a simple, yet elegant solution, I'm all ears.

you can use encrypted mail, however that requires you to convince all people that you exchange mails with to use encrypted mail as well.

You could use a hosted email service in another country where the american authorities don't have easy access. Europe might be an option. However, as with hosting your own email server, that's only a partial solution: If you communicate with other people, your mail is not only stored in your inbox but also in their outbox. So they'd have to use a mail provider outside the US as well - see the first paragraph.

The best is probably a hybrid solution: Try to educate as many people to use encrypted mail as you can and use a mail server that's located outside the US. It doesn't provide 100% protection, but at least you're not part of the dragnet search.

Errr... the NSA is specifically charged with monitoring communications that cross US national borders.

Using a mailserver in a foreign jurisdiction makes it more open to legal interception by the US government; not less.

Valid point. It's a different branch and a different issue though. Mails that are already on your server and stored there would be relatively safe. Make sure communication is encrypted.

An alternative to postfix:

To receive mail, you could setup Haraka (a very simple NodeJS smtp server)[1] on any unix instance (such as AWS micro). You'll need to set proper MX records for your domain and a few simple configurations. If Heroku would let you specify a port (specifically, 25), you would be able to host on Heroku's free plan. This may put you back at odds by hosting your data on AWS (third-party). Also, you would likely need to setup a POP server to download your messages from the server.

[1] https://github.com/baudehlo/Haraka

I don't think that addresses the issue of needing a dedicated box to store your email; i.e. you still need that POP server.

Wouldn't they be able to access cloud systems such as AWS, Linode or Heroku as long as it hosts e-mail systems?

That's going to be an interesting question. If you host on linode or google apps or pair.com, is that a server under your control, or a third party.

I would call it a server under your control, the same as a store in a strip mall is under your control, not the mall owner.

But which way does anyone think that's going to go? Not the right way is my assumption.

However, if all your data is encrypted once it rests on the box, you'll at least know you're being probed when they subpoena your keys.

I've been researching doing this for a while, but there's one big caveat that I can't get past- there's no decent server solutions for push mail. For desktop computers there's IMAP IDLE, but all the push solutions Apple's software uses are based on Microsoft Exchange (expensive).

I'm all ears too.

Zarafa works wonderfully and is a snap to setup.

Edit:

Here are the docs for the latest 7.1 branch: http://doc.zarafa.com/7.1/

And here is the link to the community (open source) section of their site: http://community.zarafa.com/

I keep hearing the name. I'm going to chuck it onto a VM and try it out.

I'm running it on two small sites (< 50 users each) and it works as advertised. The nice thing is, it isn't monolithic - you choose the MTA and web software (in my case postfix and apache) and it uses mysql as the backend.

The webmail interface is the best opensource one I've come across (easily beats redcube) and active sync works fine with iphone 4/5 and android.

lol freudian slip! Redcube should have read Roundcube :D

You could use a local email program and set it to download then purge your mail from the server. That way it's not in their possession for more than 180 days. But you are then responsible for your own backups etc.

... assuming that when you delete it, they delete it -- which I wouldn't assume.

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