Email security for the end user

Fist off I would like to apologize for the delay in my posting, things have been manic in my world, however shifting back onto track.  I would like to talk today about offering security to users.  I'm not talking about strong passwords or viruses, I'm talking about encryption.

Is it possible for hosting companies (especially those based in the US) to offer real encryption to the end user?  With all of the issues circulating in the news these days about the current administration and the US government agencies, this has to have an affect on the hosting community.  I know personally it has an affect on what I do and the way I do it.

If you were to offer encryption to your end users and clients, how far would you be willing to go for them should their information become of interest to certain agencies?  Is it worth your business to stand for this?  Is it a larger issue than business?  Is it easier to just not offer it so it doesn't have to be dealt with?  Do  you think it should be offered so the data can be obtained?  All of these are simple questions that have not so simple answers.  I feel each of us has to reach pretty far down to reach a decision about this, most certainly not material that is to be taken lightly.

Is it OK to allow your clients and end users to use encryption at all?  What if you offer an email service that has POP or IMAP access.  Will you allow your users that use Outlook, Apples Mail utility or Thunderbird to use one of the plugins available to encrypt and send their messages?  Would you encourage this?  What are the implecations of this kind of offering?  Are you really passing the responsibility of this on to your end users if you choose this route?  There are more than the actual messages that are useable when it comes to retreiving data.

So this was more of a precurser to what I want to talk about in the next couple of weeks.  Loads of questions just kind of thrown out there to put some ideas into some heads so we can maybe create a dialog about what's going on.  I'll continue next week with a more complete look into just what is available for use by people that want to extract information and what may be a good idear and what may not be if you want to play this game.  If there is anything specific around this topic you may want to discuss or see looked into, please let me know.  This is something that is of great interest to me and something I think all of us should be aware of.

Thanks for listening....

JB