[Spivak]

Self-hosted would absolutely fare better in this situation. It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated. This whole mess is predicated on the fact the government is allowed to request your data from Google without much fanfare because they are technically in possession of it. The DOJ was able to successfully argue that user emails are actually business documents owned by the email provider.

This breaks down when the person they are investigating is also the email provider.

[sfifs]

> It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated.

And this basically is the reason multi national companies self host email servers

[Navarr]

You'd have to own the server too, at that point.

If you were a VPS or even a dedicated lease, or shared - I think the fed would be able to pull the same thing.

[megous]

Not necessarily. You can use POP3. If you pickup often they would find precisely nothing.

[donald123]

Doesn't matter if you encrypt your emails, since you have control of your server. Let the fed have the encrypted data.

[fixermark]

... at which point you might get to rot in jail for contempt until you fork over the decryption key.

I don't have a convenient link to the xkcd comic right now that talks about the difference between theoretical and practical security. ;)

[Roujo]

To quote Spivak higher up in the comment chain:

> It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated.

[donald123]

Am I gonna be jailed for refusing to decrypt my files?

[fixermark]

IANAL, but my understanding of current American law is that if the material is deemed by a judge to be evidence, and you can decrypt it, and you won't decrypt it, you can be held in contempt of court.

[donald123]

So they have to prove the evidence is in my emails first, and then prove my emails are on my "self-hosted" server. And I will have full control of my own data.