The privacy news has been full of fuss and bluster lately about Google's proposed Gmail service. The latest complaint comes at http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm with an open letter from dozens of privacy groups to the Google founders asking them to revamp the service. Cypherpunks have two somewhat contradictory positions on the issue. First, as lovers of privacy, they will share the concerns in the letter and they would be reluctant to use Gmail as configured, at least with any pseudonym which hoped to retain privacy. But second, as lovers of freedom, they would encourage Google and every other company to experiment with new services and new technologies, allowing individuals to freely decide whether to use them or not. One of the oldest Cypherpunk philosophical thought experiments was BlackNet, a hypothetical offshore data haven whose main job, paradoxically, was to defeat privacy. BlackNet would serve as a market and a storage facility for information that might be of value, one example being credit rating information. BlackNet demonstrated that even when third parties sought to prevent the flow of information, for example by mandating that credit report data be deleted after so many years, Cypherpunk technologies could keep the information available and alive. Oddly, few Cypherpunks appeared to notice the inconsistency with a supposedly privacy-oriented group promoting a technology which would harm privacy. The actual resolution is that Cypherpunks see privacy as a means to an end. That end is freedom. Privacy will lead to freedom by allowing people to communicate and contract without interference and meddling by interlopers. BlackNet is an example of the kind of system which would appear if people were truly free. That it harms privacy is merely an incidental side effect. The lesson is that Cypherpunks value freedom over privacy. They will therefore welcome Gmail as an institutional experiment that demonstrates the value of freedom, even if they personally would rather not partake of its services. Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being deeply in accord with their values. And of course the real lesson of Gmail is that we have no way of knowing whether Hotmail and other web based email providers are doing the same thing, but more quietly. These companies may be retaining and archiving email to a far greater degree than most people imagine. Cypherpunks know that trusting third parties to protect their information is the height of foolishness.
From the Cypherpunk perspective, the criticism of Gmail misses the mark; rather, all web mail systems should be understood as fundamentally inconsistent with privacy. If you want privacy, you have to do it yourself. Writing an angry letter is at best going to make the privacy violations more covert. It accomplishes nothing in the end.