The better question, why doesn't Mozilla offer e-mail that is private?
With no one to trust considering the revelations recently all e-mail providers are voluntarily giving the government access to ALL e-mail, would Mozilla offer to stand up for the Constitution of the U.S.? There wasn't an option for this question.
locking as off-topic for Firefox support
Modified by the-edmeister
All Replies (8)
That is actually a very good idea. But, we are mostly volunteers, you can though leave your feedback and suggestions to input.mozilla.org/feedback
Modified by kobe
Unfortunately, if the company is based or headquartered in the U.S. (Mozilla is headquartered in Mountain View, California across the street from Google HQ) then they can not disobey a direct request by the government for access to their data if it is concerning national security. Disobeying will be seen as a act of treason or aiding and abetting a enemy of the United States.
Now I'm no lawyer or expert on the laws of the United States when it comes to issues of national security. But I'm sure they could gather enough tools & leverage to get what they wanted. They could freeze Mozilla's assets, making it impossible for them to conduct business in the U.S. They could go to the D.O.J and ask for a subpoena that requires Mozilla to release & provide any data they request. And I'm sure a lot more things you didn't even think were possible. Nothing is uncrackable & nothing is truly "private" anymore.
Especially considering that email sent & received still travels thru the internet where it can be intercepted & decrypted even if it is sent by HTTPS. I'm sure the NSA can crack/decrypt HTTPS w/o even breaking a sweat.
Anyway, if this post scared you. Sorry. :P But if you weren't paranoid about the internet before, you should be now. :)
Only email stored on servers outside the U.S. is free from U.S. control. And even then the company would still have to be headquartered outside of the U.S.
i think an email service will be out of the scope of what mozilla would provide. there's a better chance that there will be some sort of web rtc powered peer-to-peer chat/voice&video talk service: http://www.ghacks.net/2013/06/10/mozilla-talkilla-real-time-communication-in-the-browser/
Firefox is a web browser and can't effect how email is send and passes other servers on their way from the sender to your email service and from the email service to you.
Only email that is encrypted (PGP) can be really private.
Email can be send and received via a secure https connection to prevent others from having access to its content on their way to you.
Sadly you are wrong in your observations. Google gave ALL of the traffic to the U.S. government not just the e-mails in question. They have also now been found to take several 100's of millions of dollar for their efforts to assist in spying on the world not just the American people. These FACTS were just revealed and not disputed by Google.
Again sadly that wasn't my question. My question was, why doesn't Mozilla offer an e-mail service? There isn't a direct form for this question if that is your implication?
this is a primarily community-run support forum - we're users just like you and cannot answer question on behalf of mozilla authoritatively. all that's possible to say for us is that email is not a priority for mozilla at the moment (the resources for the mail-client thunderbird have been reduced for example).
if you don't have a specific support request but just want to provide general feature requests please use https://input.mozilla.org/feedback instead of the support forum.
Sorry to ruffle the INSIDER feathers. You won't hear from me again.