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I find it utterly astounding that not a single government has started an email service yet for its citizens, with all the legal protections of actual mail and such.

They wouldn't even need to run it, just create a legal category like "This account is officially registered to X and serves as a legal email account" that companies can apply for if they meet some standards.

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First, why would they when they don't need to because private companies already provide it for free?

Second, the government is now on the hook for not just failures and outages but all security and privacy breaches.

So it's basically all risk and no reward. It makes sense governments wouldn't want to touch that.

Private companies provide it for free because they earn money from violating their users' privacy. They have proven incapable of providing a decent email service for free.

Which makes sense; "spend a lot of money providing a service for nothing in return" isn't a great business model.

Sweden has "Min myndighetspost".

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