Some suggestions:
- Locke Mail [from John Locke]
- Mill Mail [from John Stuart Mill]
- Hobbes Mail
- Liberty Mail
Well, Bruce Schneier has argued that that's what security is becoming today: feudal (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...). If you wanted to, you could instead call most if not all currently existing email services "Hobbes mail".
[1] Liberalism in it's classic and original sense (not the skewed meaning that it somehow has gotten here in the US).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United...
The social contract of Hobbes is not something one can opt out of, or refuse, but an explanation and justification for individual rights within an absolute monarchy. At the same time Hobbes argued that to preserve the peace was so central that the sovereign had the power, and was indeed duty bound under the social contract, to take whatever measures necessary to ensure peace - even authoritarian measures.
His ideas on social contract theory are historically important as a pre-cursor to more expansive ideas about personal freedoms, but they are extremely authoritarian by most modern standards.
I'd argue that the name should work on the assumption that it is the defacto standard, and so there is no need to distinguish between "normal mail" and "new mail". It should also contain a possessive pronoun. (Something like "YourMail", if not already taken?).
With such a name, when someone attacks the mail service it will be difficult to avoid attacking the person, as an attacker will have to attack "YourMail". Attack the person and the person will react.
Not distinguishing between normal and new will have two effects:
1) It will seem a normal thing for the uninitiated to use it.
2) In the case of an attack, it will be easier for people to say the attack is directed at themselves, since the generic name will draw people in, rather than letting them dismiss it as an exclusive club.
-SecMail (Secure Email)
-PrivMail (private/privacy email)
-FMail (freedom email)
-NetMail (New Internet standard email)
And thank you for taking this on, it is seriously needed. And please, no reliance on CA certs, chances are the NSA has compromised at least some of those.
I would go with something like 'sealed mail' and imply the imagery of how in the olden days mail was sealed with a wax stamp. A strong visual analogy can be very powerful.
What I am implying is that it seems like a localized term and people elsewhere might have no connotation(?) to it. In German the word means a curl of hair.
He was a British philosopher from the 1600s, an important Enlightenment thinker.
He was very progressive for his time, and so he's one of the "icons" of classical liberalism, but he died in 1704, and we've moved on a tad from then.
Consider that for example Mill thought despotism could be acceptable under utilitarian principles if the end result was a better society afterwards; I don't know what you think of Marx [Marx Mail? Maybe not], but even an authoritarian reading of Marx ideological works fits within utilitarian principles to those who agree with it, while those who read Marx from a libertarian viewpoint, e.g. left communists, would generally find Mills distastefully authoritarian.
Locke was a major investor in the slave trade, and a central participant in trying to institute a feudal aristocracy in Carolina - writing about freedoms while trying to deprive others of them. Locke Mail in that respect would be fitting brand for a NSA run mail service for its hypocrisy alone.
Hobbes, while talking about individual rights, was a supporter of a strong central government an a supporter of absolute monarchy. He too would be a suitable beacon for the NSA.
That is not to say that these people were not important for the development of philosophical ideas related to freedom, but only in relation to the politics of the time. Today all three of them are archaic and authoritarian compared to a lot of more recent philosophers.
As for Liberty Mail, outside of the US at least it would be likely to leave a bad taste with a lot of people. It reads like Far-Right-Wing-US-Nationalistic-Nutjob-Mail or Lets-Pretend-It-Is-Liberty-While-We-Screw-You-Over-Mail to me, and I know a lot of people likely to have similar reactions.
My point from the above is that names do matter.
But anyway, I'm starting to get the feeling this issue is taking too much attention from the protocol itself, which is the big news here. If they want to change it, great, if not that's fine, too. They just need to make sure the protocol is great, and can get other big e-mail providers to support it, or at least a ton of smaller ones.
There was a talk show on the radio yesterday about Tor, the illegal trade of drugs and other bad things on the Internet. They referred to it as "The dark web".
Otherwise they were just wrong.
That being said, caring that the name might 'sound negative' seems ridiculous. Anyone who wants to rely on a form of secure communication wouldn't base their judgement solely on a name and ignore the context like who founded it. People who are willing to make those snap judgements aren't interested in the service.
The future of security depends on having everyone use it, including those who don't currently (realize they should) care.
1. I'd give the alliance a generic name that won't come off as threatening or malevolent when used out of context in news articles. Make it boring to talk about the alliance so it can operate larger and and with less scrutiny.
2. If you really really want to politicize the products, launch several regionally branded services, that can use the same architectural design, but leverage the cultural mores of individual freedom for those areas. What catches on in Germany may not be what sells in Spain/Italy/Greece today, for example.
However,
The "FMail" suggestion, or something similarly benign, is a strong choice, in that it diminishes the effect of partisan rhetoric and allows the tool to be sold on its actual merits.
3. Then you can gin up radical "Free the email!" action groups to run around and be obnoxious for you, take the heat and phoenix themselves into new groups every so often.
This name also appeals to ego. Ego matters. Talking about freedom and ideals will appeal to a minority, but you need a name that appeals to people's ego if you want to succeed.
This is not the same but is related to the ideas that Seth Godin expoused in his TED talk about being remarkable. Nobody likes receiving email, but they like receiving MeMail. Me. Me. Me. Me. I want my email to be about me. If it is not, it is noise and tedium. Never underestimate an appeal to ego.