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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

You know what's beautiful about the mail example?

Who delivers those letters? In the U.S., and many other countries, it's the government.

You're literally handing your letters to the government and asking them to deliver them to the intended recipient without peeking. In short, you are trusting them to do the right thing, because they certainly could look inside the envelope if the really wanted to.

Legal safeguards are your only defense against the government here, but we the people generally consider it a solid safeguard.

But if it were to even be suggested to send email using government-provided networks (even encrypted email) you'd be laughed right out of any hacker con you attend.

It's a pretty surreal difference IMHO.

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One difference is the degree of effort and expensive required to record mailed letters in bulk.

If I was a person of intense interest to the government I definitely would not trust the mail system. But as a nobody, I imagine its pretty unlikely anyone is looking at my mail.

With email, the resources required to record all email is comparatively trivial and this makes it much more feasible that even us nobodies are having our privacy invaded.

Maybe if it were possible to be notified when the contents of files are opened/read, and some how change the appearance (or state of them) to some extent that people know that something has been tampered with, like with enveloped mail and custom seals people used to send mail during the colonial america/pre-revolutionary times because mail was being opened and read…

You could take those countermeasures even now if that's something in your threat model.

But for the vast, vast majority of people it's apparently not something they worry about. They indeed simply trust the government to obey the law.

I know one can take those countermeasures now ;)

Luckily, the vast majority of people aren't really needed to bring about change because most people do nothing because their blind trust doesn't require them to… Only just a relatively few methodically dedicated people who have the ability to see beyond and work through their current circumstances and help forge the future they want to see, are all that are needed.

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