How to escape the surveillance state: Email

Editor's note: We're facing an unprecedented moment in American history. Our government and multinational tech monopolies are making it clear that we, the people, are the target of the monstrous surveillance state they've constructed. The deep state is attempting to jail people who share memes, Blaze journalists, and even the leading presidential candidate. It's time we take back control over our privacy and digital communications, and this guide will provide you with the tools to do that. This is an excerpt from a larger guide.

Pay for your email

Don't use Gmail or any free email services

Avoid free services whenever possible. I know this sounds strange. But you pay your plumber and electrician. You should pay for your email. We have become accustomed to getting free digital services. But they are not really free. The price is time (see George Gilder, "Life After Google"), security, privacy, and intrusive data collection. As the digital-age adage goes: Free services mean you are the product, not the customer.

Why pay? When you pay for a service, you make a type of contract. You are in a business relationship. It is exchanging one value (money) for another (service). And when you pay for a service, your provider doesn't need to sell your data on the back end to make money. To be clear, while paying for services is essential, this is not a guarantee of privacy or eliminating data mining, so it is essential to find an email service that is explicit about privacy. And in case you don't already know this: Never use your work email for non-work, personal emails. The email belongs to your company, not to you. The company has access to it, so it is not private, and the company can discontinue it when you no longer work there.

It only takes a short time to set up a new email, but I realize there are difficulties: letting contacts know your new address and archiving hundreds or thousands of emails you want to save. Don't let that be an obstacle. Take your time with that, and keep your old email address until you finish the transfer. But get a paid email right away and start using that as your primary email going forward. Several email services focus on privacy. One I recommend is Proton Mail.

Proton is based in Switzerland. It is easy to set up, and I have paid versions for myself, my wife, and my older children. Proton also offers back-end email service for your business or personal domain, which I also use.

Proton Mail uses PGP encryption between Proton users and provides PGP keys for sending outside Proton Mail. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. Here is a good article explaining how it works and a little bit of its history. In brief, PGP uses a combination of a private key and a public key to encrypt and decrypt messages so you can ensure that only the recipient can see the contents of your email. You can use PGP without Proton Mail, but it can be quite technical.

In addition to encrypting messages between users, the text of your emails is encrypted on Proton Mail's servers, meaning that even individuals with physical control of the servers can't read your inbox's content. Subject lines, however, are not encrypted.

Proton Mail features another layer of security by housing its servers in Switzerland, which has some of the world's strongest privacy laws. This makes the company less susceptible to data requests by the state. You can try Proton Mail for free to see if you like it — but get the paid version.

One caveat: Google does have a paid service called G Suite for business that I and many people have used. It can be used as the back end for business mail or websites. You may need to keep Google for some reason. Maybe your school or business uses the Google platform, so there is no way to avoid it. In that case, I suggest using it for work purposes only and, when possible, using another service. I have a paid Google account that I sometimes need to use to access a Google doc someone sends or participate in a Google meeting. But I don't send emails on it. If you need to use Google, get a paid Google account and use it as little as possible. There's value to Google – world-class engineers. But it comes at a price: They take your data, ostensibly cooperate with the Chinese communist government, and increasingly shut down people who hold non-fashionable opinions.

Takeaway:

• Pay for your email.
• Quit Gmail.
• Find an email provider you like that respects privacy.