Australia-based email service FastMail claims to be safe from NSA

fastmail

Since all the madness with the NSA spying on Americans and other folks around the world, we’re confident some of you have been seeking out more secure ways to traverse the Internet. Well, until John McAfee grace us with $100 NSA blocking device, you have the option to give FastMail a test drive for your secure email communication needs.

FastMail is an Australia-based paid email service that was once acquired by Opera back in 2010. However, the staff bought the company free of Opera last month for an undisclosed sum of money. Now that FastMail is back as an independent company, it has begun to make wild claims in order to attract new users.

Apparently, FastMail founders believe Australian law prohibits any type of data request from Washington and the NSA:

We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.

One should be very skeptical of these claims, for two reasons.

First of all, history has proven over and over that the US government will apply pressure on other governments to get its way. It isn’t hard to imagine the US government twisting some Australian arms to force FastMail to do their bidding. Secondly, and more importantly, the US government could gain access to the FastMail servers stored in the United States without the need of any consent from FastMail. Would it be legal? Most people would say no, but everything is fair when it comes to love, war, and national security.

Nevertheless, we like the idea of a secure email system and we may even pay for it if it was truly secure. How about you? Let us know in the comments below!

[via FastMail]

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