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Ask HN: Should the government provide email to its citizen?

15 points by nathan_phoenix ↗ HN
In this day and age email is basically a necessity. To use any online service (and increasingly common for offline ones) an email address is required at the minimum.

Currently those are provided by private corporations. But will, or even should, governments step in and offer this service to their citizens just like with regular mail?

Came to this idea thinking about the development of the postal service and immediately thought of it as a natural continuation/evolution, but the more I think the more gotchas I see with it. Like what to use as the email identifier (people change names and places, random number are hard to remember, etc), how to stop bad actors from spamming everyone, what if someone uses it to send objectionable content, etc.

16 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] thread
Bostonian
No, because if people rely on government-run email, it will become easier for the government to silence people by freezing their accounts.
nathan_phoenix
Would wouldn't it be harder for the government to shut down your government provided email than for some corporation? Analogously to turning off someone's water or electricity, the gov would need a really good reason which can stand in court. Unlike Google which can shut down your account at any point because their automated system detected "suspicious activity".
pschuegr
It's a tricky one. The government is less sensitive in some ways to negative reviews - what are you going to do? move to a different countries? while bad PR can still affect companies like Google. On the other hand, with a government you might have legal recourse (if you live in a functioning democracy) and if you can't get any attention on your problem (which is hard enough to do) then Google is going to ignore your complaint.
RyanAdamas
Yes, along with social media platforms. At least in the USA, to protect free speech, press, assembly, association, and the host of rights no enumerated, but retained.

The US government, in my mind and in practice, appears to need 3rd party providers so they can subvert the 4th Amendment under the auspices of "free market activity" in such they just buy peoples activity data where they would have once needed a warrant, or would need one on a government provided platform. Plus, if you aren't a US citizen/greencard holder, you shouldn't be labelled as such as a means of reducing propaganda and conflating worldviews with American views.

nathan_phoenix
Never thought of it that way, that by having the service being provided by the gov more restrictions apply to it being monetized and therefore being in a way better privacy wise. Like what you said, not being able to sell activity data. Interesting angle.
hayst4ck
In theory I agree, but how do you reconcile this with the patriot act, prism, and secret courts?

Before we can have a government that can run and create new services we have a culture problem to confront. You can't build civic e-mail when half the people want it to suck/fail so that sweet government money can be outsourced to their cronies or so that their patrons (thanks citizens united) don't get upset.

Who would get blamed if it sucks? The people who want it to fail and predicted its failure (a willing self fulfilling prophecy), or the people who tried to do it and put their names on it? Clearly the former should be blamed, but in practice it's the latter.

RyanAdamas
The same could have been said for any program (and was) from the NLRA to ACA. Accountability and open source functionality would be the key to providing civil overview beyond the necessary committees and boards within the government.

We provided a highway system at a time when many were left to private development and state funded construction. We really shouldn't wait for the next national socialist movement to give us good ideas to help promote and sustain our own lives and economies.

You can never reconcile secret unconstitutional programs; except by reducing the size of the institutions and agencies that perpetrate them, which thus far has been more difficult than passing laws to just work around them.

gjvnq
I think that the gov absolutely should do it but I also believe that it should allow people to configure their @something.gov email addresses as redirects so as to minimize the amount of information stored on gov servers.
mattbgates
SNOWDEN ALERT: It'd be yet another great excuse for the government to spy on their citizens. It's not all bad... for those that don't really care and aren't breaking any laws, and "don't care about privacy", they might be fine with it, as most of us are when we hop on to any social media account we use.
alexander2002
i like this idea where the government is allowed to oversee your email and that email is only allowed for government stuff(taxes etc) and communication with your gov representatives etc.
cookiengineer
If a government wants citizen to fill out forms online in a mandatory fashion, I think they have to provide free access to internet and email.

The current state where they tell you "to use the internet connection of a friend" when you don't have internet is kind of ridiculous, especially for migrating people from foreign countries that are overwhelmed by European bureaucracies.

You should try getting an internet contract when you don't already own a smartphone. It's impossible, because all ISPs require some form of web identification with shitty apps and your passport that's being recorded.

In Germany we had the "de-mail" for a while with exactly that purpose. But in a government fashion they ridiculously fucked it up, using a proprietary encryption and signing mechanism that never worked up until the point that de-mails were blocked everywhere and all "licensed" providers of that stopped servicing it.

d--b
France does that through the postal service (it’s an address, duh). They’ve been doing it for a while and I think they have a fair amount of users.
mdrzn
Internet providers usually offer a free email associated with the internet plan (at least in Italy) which is the closest thing to a government provided email.
kzurell
Yes, and/or social media, as an evolution towards a citizen dashboard. I used to think federated media (Diaspora was my choice at the time) is a natural e-community centre: joining a local interest-based hub for day-to-day use that can nevertheless serve as a node for broader discussions. Just like voting down at the rec centre.

Government "spying" is a hard but not unsolvable problem, rooted in our own values. We're so culturally punch-drunk we've no hope on making progress right now. Maybe when the wind changes again...

I don't mind private corp. email, as long as it doesn't capture anything. Basic communication seems such a no-brainer that speculating to make it available to the market seems superfluous.

PhilippGille
Not a government-run regular e-mail system, but in Germany there's "De-Mail": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Mail

It's not interoperable with the regular email system (can't communicate with GMail addresses etc), and it's not fully run by the government but by accredited partners. It's meant for sending legal documents across De-Mail users like government agencies and businesses.

But it's barely used.

achempion
> Came to this idea thinking about the development of the postal service and immediately thought of it as a natural continuation/evolution

In Denmark there is a system called Digital Post for communication with public authorities, mostly used for receiving relevant notifications/updates/documents.