Re: [Endymail] where's the end, was spam versus cleartext

["John Levine" <[e-mail]>]

>True - which likely means you are going to want your desktop client to 
>always be on and actively filtering your email so the mobile device is not 
>forced to download something that will eventually get removed. That 
>basically implies you are running a server (though you could call it an 
>"agent") on your desktop and would want guarantees of uptime, etc. That is 
>basically only a small step away from running your own mail server...

This sounds very unlike a design that has any chance of being
implemented for millions of civilians.

My daughter has a laptop that she carries between her apartment where
she uses it on the building's shared broadband, and her school where
she uses it on the school's network.  She uses a Gmail account, which
she also checks from her phone, particularly when she's in transit and
the laptop is turned off.  At a company where I consult, there's a
similar setup, they give everyone a laptop which they use on their
desk, typically with an external screen, mouse, and keyboard, and can
and do take home or on trips.  So there isn't anything on which to
usefully run a mail server.

It seems to me that for any sort of E2E encryption, each user is going
to have some computer somewhere that they have to trust to hold the
keys and do the decryption.  Different people will make different
decisions about which computer that is, and it's not always going to
one they can physically touch.  A lot of people are likely to decide
that their mail provider is reliable enough to use as their end.