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For better security, maybe it's time to abandon e-mail?

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SeraphimLabs:
Text messaging is just as insecure though, and ultimately no communications of that type is ever going to be secure because you can always compromise the device or compromise the server processing that information in order to see it anyway.

Probably the only thing I've seen out there remotely close to being secure and of similar functionality to email is in fact bitcoin, which allows you to attach a text message to a transaction that is encrypted as it is carried by the blockchain and is only viewable by the intended recipient.

But people are already worried about blockchain bloat, if you attached email's traffic volume to the blockchain the storage requirements would increase exponentially.

40hz:
Thinking in terms of a decentralized non-logging P2P approach is a good start. It won't be totally secure since nothing really can be. But it can be made secure and difficult enough to capture that the cost-benefit ratio tilts in favor of letting something go unless dealing with a demonstrably "high value" target. At the very least it makes broad-sweep data gathering less attractive and far more costly in terms of storage and analysis. You can only raise taxes so much to fund a hopeless project. Even the U.S. military, who wrote the book on money pits, knows that. Merged with known strong encryption (if that means anything now - or will continue to mean much in the near future) makes it even more of a challenge to would be interceptors.

As far as "if people would just ______" I can only say: not gonna happen. And I'm enough an old-school computer guy that I was taught (and believe) that if it always needs to be done, a person shouldn't need to do it at all.

No-exceptions, boring, "always" is what we created machines for. Computers don't always handle exceptions well. But they're champs at mandatory and routine tasks. So lets let our software take care of the heavy lifting. Drudge work is what we originally built the little ogres for in the first place. (Who in their right mind wants to spend years of their limited lifetime calculating ballistics tables for field artillery no matter how good they are at math - or how much they enjoy it?) Let all those expensive chips we built keep busy instead of running endless NOPs when they don't have anything better to do than waste electricity and sit around waiting to be hacked.

Just my :two: for now. ("It's a 'three pipe' problem, Watson.")
 8)

Stoic Joker:
A secret is safe with three, if two are dead. This is the only thing that struck me regarding the Sony/Email fiasco.

The message format/fact that it was an Email is IMO irrelevant. Because... If there exists a document, that contains damning/damaging information - that you have within your power the option of destroying with impunity - what the hell did you save it for?!?

This to me is a people problem.

Renegade:
Probably the only thing I've seen out there remotely close to being secure and of similar functionality to email is in fact bitcoin, which allows you to attach a text message to a transaction that is encrypted as it is carried by the blockchain and is only viewable by the intended recipient.

But people are already worried about blockchain bloat, if you attached email's traffic volume to the blockchain the storage requirements would increase exponentially.
-SeraphimLabs (December 22, 2014, 07:59 AM)
--- End quote ---

e.g. Bitmessage. :)

It's a start. Y'know... eating an elephant and all? NOM~! NOM~! :P

wraith808:
As someone who *hates* chat and *hates* real-time communication (even text message/phone), as broken as e-mail is, the alternative solutions that are being proposed don't solve the same problem, IMO.

We use chat clients at work... and I ignore most communication over them unless it is appropriate for a real-time communication mechanism.  People tend to abuse the medium and just reach out with no consideration for what the person on the other end might be in the middle of with chat/phone anything real-time, I've found.  The thing I love about e-mail is the same thing I formerly loved about letter writing (and the reason I play PbEM instead of the more immediate roll20 and such), the act of formulating the response is a mental exercise.

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