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A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

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Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#141

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

cycomanic wrote: post #49
feldrim wrote: post #40

Well, in Estonia, they have a different approach. 1. If you are a citizen or a resident, you get an ID card to use for every public service. It's just a smart card with a government PKI. 2. The public services provide an email account that can only be used within the e-government services. The card is used for accessing those services. 3. The email service accepts either identity number or registry number of the reci…

I always discover how Estonia is really amazing for lots of technology things. AFAIK they are by quite a margin the most advanced country in Europe when in comes to egovernment services. Moreover my (admittedly outside) impression is that they often go for technologically sound solutions not the ones which some large lobby organisation pushed for. This is particularly remarkable considering how small the country is,…

Estonia is the founding member of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence... they've been at the forefront for a long time. https://ccdcoe.org/

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#142

Post by zaphar »

nunez wrote: post #132

I don’t think email is as decentralized and federated as it used to be. In theory, email is a service that is simple enough for anyone to run themselves. Most Linux distros come with sendmail, so theoretically it should be as easy as reading the manual and exposing some ports. Spam is performed server side both at the origin and at the destination to mitigate bad actors, and because email is simple, there should be n…

Email's federation is an escape hatch. It's presence means that I can go to any provider I want to if I'm dissatisfied with my current provider. I can even run my own as a last resort. (Or first resort if that's your preferred mode of operation). Until that escape hatch disappears, which is unlikely, I will always have choice of providers.

I don't have whatsapp, or discord for that matter. I have slack for work but I don't use it externally. I will probably never have those systems for my personal communication which means that if a company wants to communicate to me they are going to have to use email, full stop. I think there is a large barrier to email ever going away. Removing it from the market would require coordination that most companies and providers will probably never want to engage in. It's a lowest common denominator that all of them will want to support to avoid their users getting silo'd into a system that is not theirs.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#143

Post by danlugo92 »

pibechorro wrote: post #104
toyg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the right answer. If I'm Fujitsu or Accenture and I lose $BigCountryContract, it's a Big Deal and somebody is not going to get his fat bonus. If I lose Estonia, "Whatever, it was pennies anyway". Smaller orgs also don't have the sort of complex bespoke requirements that allow consulting firms to really entrench themselves.

Decentralization is the way forward

Yep, we already have the most resilient, decentralized and safe public key infrastructure in place working in the real world for more than a decade now ;)

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#144

Post by hestefisk »

thejosh wrote: post #75
feldrim wrote: post #40

Well, in Estonia, they have a different approach. 1. If you are a citizen or a resident, you get an ID card to use for every public service. It's just a smart card with a government PKI. 2. The public services provide an email account that can only be used within the e-government services. The card is used for accessing those services. 3. The email service accepts either identity number or registry number of the reci…

In Australia we have mygov, which is a bit of a mess.

Adding to that, even worse, each state are also implementing their own identity solutions. Take Service NSW which is an expensive front-end built on Salesforce, with its digital drivers license. Each platform has its own digital identity system, which is just waste of taxpayer money.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#145

Post by adolph »

causi wrote: post #24
jiggunjer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define internet services, or do you mean email service? There are many decisions that impact the usability and cost of the service. Some people need high volume sending or large mailbox storage. Do you punish people for sending spam? Do you filter spam, if so, how. Do people need public terminals to access the service? Etc.

I'm not saying it should be free. Quite the opposite. It should charge the user per-e-mail on an at-cost basis. It's a utility, not a hand-out. Think post office. Do you punish people for sending spam? Only by making them pay for every mail they send. Do you filter spam, if so, how. On the receiving end. A plugin system would let people choose to subscribe to updated blocklists and filtering rules, just like modern a…

> Quite the opposite. It should charge the user per-e-mail on an at-cost basis.

When you write “charge” do you mean money? When you say “at cost” do you mean at the cost of the sender, receiver, both?

If charge means money, isn’t money just a transaction cost inefficient method of proving stake? Maybe a new SMTP would ask the sending server to perform some work on behalf of the reciever in order for the recover to accept it.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#146

Post by iofiiiiiiiii »

feldrim wrote: post #40

Well, in Estonia, they have a different approach. 1. If you are a citizen or a resident, you get an ID card to use for every public service. It's just a smart card with a government PKI. 2. The public services provide an email account that can only be used within the e-government services. The card is used for accessing those services. 3. The email service accepts either identity number or registry number of the reci…

> that can only be used within the e-government services

> You can't use it for other purposes. No RFC defined email address is shared with you

This is not entirely true. You get both:

* idcode@eesti.ee can only be used by government senders.

* you also get first.last.uniqueid@eesti.ee which works as a regular email address.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#147

Post by lolsal »

causi wrote: post #2

Email is our only reliable communication method between different organizations. I'm still of the opinion there should be public-option internet services. Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order.

> Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order.

Why?

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#148

Post by lolsal »

qybaz wrote: post #67
causi wrote: post #2

Email is our only reliable communication method between different organizations. I'm still of the opinion there should be public-option internet services. Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order.

In this day and age of censorship, I feel the same about web hosting. The American government should provide their citizens with a small space of hosting to share their thoughts.

> The American government should provide their citizens with a small space of hosting to share their thoughts.

... why? What are you basing this on legally/morally other than your own want?

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#149

Post by qybaz »

lolsal wrote: post #148
qybaz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this day and age of censorship, I feel the same about web hosting. The American government should provide their citizens with a small space of hosting to share their thoughts.

> The American government should provide their citizens with a small space of hosting to share their thoughts. ... why? What are you basing this on legally/morally other than your own want?

You could ask yourself the same question about all the public infrastructure that exists. I mean why even have roads, legally or morally??

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#150

Post by Bud »

Sebb767 wrote: post #136
toyg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we know it's not money in a brown paper bag/briefcase One of the problems is that some of these checks can only be performed much later. The most common currency of choice, for modern bribes, is the promise of a fat gig in the private sector when the political career ends. As the public demands younger and younger political classes, with lower and lower salaries, while maintaining an appetite for career-endi…

> As the public demands younger and younger political classes, with lower and lower salaries Looking into the US senate, I fail to see that trend. In the last presidential election, both candidates were older than my grandparents. Even in my country, seeing a really young person in a political position is very rare. They exist (if you define "young" as under 40), but they are rare. I don't think age worries are a fac…

You're not paying attention to the salaries part, though.

Look at the pay for members of the House and Senate, in real dollars, over the last 50 years. Also pay attention to how much stupid noise there is about how members of Congress are supposedly overpaid. The pay for all US Senators combined (under $18M) is less than half of what LeBron James makes (over $41M) in salary alone in a year.

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