Originally Posted By: Arney
Originally Posted By: Am_Fear_Liath_Mor
I already have PGP installed on Thunderbird.

One recent revelation is that a PGP-encrypted email red flags an email message, even if the NSA can't/doesn't bother trying to decrypt it. So, even if they do actually follow some procedure to ignore/delete certain info that it collects, a PGP encrypted message and its accompanying metadata will be retained "forever."


And this points to the real problem with Encryption in general. Once someone has the encrypted document, it's just a matter of time before the technology becomes available to decipher it. The damage is likely still done if the document is deciphered today, a year from now, or even 10 years from now. Encryption, honestly, just makes it harder for someone to get the information. It doesn't make it impossible. One of the reasons I like Kerberos encryption, there's a (theoretical) life-span on it. And although it's useful for on-the-fly data transmissions, it's not useful for long term document storage.