Is it time for Grex to stop offering e-mail?

Sep 22 00:46 UTC 2004

It occurs to me that the current post-Patriot Act terrorist war 
paranoia, where increasingly law enforcement agencies act as if 
private citizens have no right to privacy, might require Grex to 
change the way it conducts business.

All the post-Patriot Act, War against Terrorism paranoia has gotten 
out of control, and as a result, places like Grex are more vulnerable 
than ever to being pressured by law enforcement agencies.  In theory, 
Grex's staff should never, ever, invade the privacy of one of its 
users by accessing their email.  Not to read themselves, as if it was 
part of being the cops of this system, or to give to outsiders to 
read.  If the board is handed by a subpoena from a law firm, or any 
sort of pressure short of a court order, it should not allow anyone to 
read a user's email.  

But the problem seems to be that Grex lacks the monetary resources to 
adequately legally defend itself in these situations.  Therefore Grex 
is particularly vulnerable to ANY legal pressure.  Any subpoena has to 
be taken like a dire threat because Grex can't afford legal 
proceedings.

Even if Grex was encrypting all of its email files, such that the only 
person who could read the email is the user, it wouldn't resolve the 
situation because staff can always be asked to re-set the user's 
password to access the files through the front door so to speak.  
Maybe the answer is to change the software so that when staff re-sets 
a password, it automatically bulk erases all that user's files.  That 
would inconvenience any user who forgets his password, but how else 
could staff honestly tell law enforcement that it cannot in any way, 
shape or form access un-encrypted emails of its users?
In this enviroment, and knowing that the post-Patriot Act paranoia is 
only get worse not better, knowing that the government is only going 
to get stricter and stricter in going after phishing that it sees as 
potentially terrorist related, you have to ask if its worth it?  Is it 
worth it for Grex to continue to offer e-mail?

This isn't like it was ten or twelve years ago, when there weren't a 
whole lot of places offering email, let alone FREE email.  I can't 
believe that any user in this day and age actually needs Grex to have 
email. So is it necessary now?  Is offering email worth putting the 
Board in the middle of legal/moral dilmenas, where they have to decide 
whether or whether or not to turn over some user's email to interested 
outside parties who have named it in court documents?  

Maybe its just time for Grex to stop offering email.  Grex is/was 
supposed to be about the public conferencing anyway, not free email.  
I hate to think of a nice little site like Grex being on some FBI 
blacklist of sites where terrorists can get anonymous email accounts 
and funnel information.  But you know that it is.  I'm concerned that 
the current situation the board is dealing with is the foreshadowing 
of a lot of such situations Grex will be faced with in the future as 
the government gets more and more vigilant in its prosecution of 
anyone remotely connected with terrorism.  I'm wondering how others 
feel?  Is the time coming when Grex should just get out of the email 
business altogether?

response 2 of 71:

Sep 22 02:09 UTC 2004

Aren't there a fair number of larger, more anonymous, places where
a competent terrorist might get free e-mail?  Places outside of the
U.S. even, where the Feds might find it a touch less convenient to
monitor or interfere?

response 4 of 71:

Sep 22 02:29 UTC 2004

why don't you let those of us who want to use Grex for email use Grex for
email.  Don't decide for me that I need to be protected against evil law
enforcement types.  That paternalistic approach is -not- what Grex is about.

response 6 of 71:

Sep 22 11:45 UTC 2004

We don't have to offer any services.  Conferencing is a risk in terms
of liability and the potential to need legal services.

We do the best we can for as long as we can and try not to overreact.

response 8 of 71:

Sep 22 14:17 UTC 2004

Richard - there is no "current situation".  Grex responded to a subpoena,
and we're done with it.

I think you are correct that Grex email is probably attractive to people who
want to do illegal things.  It's attractive to a lot of other people too, of
course.

response 10 of 71:

Sep 23 04:11 UTC 2004

3MB in one day?  My procmail filter gets 95% of my spam now.  I sic it on
viagra, v1agra, cial!s, in subject line and message body, to get rid of about
half.  Window.XP gets a lot of the rest, along with weightloss, hgh...
Nobody ever offered me bigger breasts yet unless it was in the message body.
Do you get the $300 computer with last year's components, special one-time
limited-time offer?  No monitor.

response 12 of 71:

Sep 23 13:38 UTC 2004

Maybe I get very specialized spam. My .procmailrc is very small compared to
many here and it catches all my junk ( well not 100% but pretty close)

response 14 of 71:

Sep 23 19:51 UTC 2004

I filter on 'confidential' which catches most of the Nigeria spam.

response 16 of 71:

Sep 25 21:55 UTC 2004

I'm hoping that Next Grex will expand e-mail services with POP or IMAP.

Doing away with it would be a terrible mess.  There would be too many
change of address notices to send.

response 18 of 71:

Sep 28 02:28 UTC 2004

Basically, the same folks doing the work now:

        http://www.cyberspace.org/staffnote/

Jan has been doing the grunt-work of getting the new machine up. 

response 20 of 71:

Sep 29 21:21 UTC 2004

I'm open to suggestions, Tod.

response 22 of 71:

Oct 22 18:34 UTC 2004

re #16, *expand* email services?  Email isn't grex's core mission.  
There are too many places now that do email a lot better than grex 
does or can.  Who even wants email these days at a place that has no 
bandwidth for graphics?  If Grex expanded its email services, like say 
offering POP or other web based email, it could risk being overwhelmed 
by people who come here just for email.  But I see both sides of the 
argument, the other being why should grex offer email at all if it 
isn't going to offer the best email service it possibly can.

One option would be to have email, but limit OFFSITE email to 
members.  All users could send email to other grex email addresses, 
which would keep the functionality of email as a tool to enhance the 
bbs experience.  And if you become a member, then you would get to use 
your grex email to send email offsite.

response 24 of 71:

Oct 23 01:46 UTC 2004

Several of our friends use grex for email and that is about the first thing
they ever did with computers, and it got them interested.  Same for me.  Then
I attempted the conferences, and so did some of our friends.  It is no fun
to learn email on a system where you can only talk to other users.