A friend forwarded this link to me. My take on the privacy issue is this:
Having made the decision to enter the electronic world, life is too short for me to expend excessive energy and angst on who knows what about me or worrying the FBI or some other spook will come aknocking at my door. I really don't care that my email is stored forever or that people may mine it. I don't have any expectation that what I put in email is private. Any recipient of my email can choose to forward it to anyone they wish. So we really shouldn't have any privacy expectation using email whether GMail or any other email service.
Having said that, I take reasonable precautions not to expose my electronic information to the world. Just as we may not use a cell phone (not so much an issue with digital cell service as it was in ye old analog world) for certain discussions, email should be treated the same way. Some things are best handled face-to-face, on the telephone (but that may be an issue as we move to IP telephony, or telephony via the Internet) or in snail mail (assuming we trust the postal services of the world).
I want my government to have the means to snoop on the bad guys with adequate protections to prevent abuse. If I were a 'bad guy' I'd worry about snoopers and Google and Hotmail and any other email service that retains my email. The government can get my phone records (no content, unless they wiretap) for just cause. I think that's OK.
I believe the most vexing risk is identity theft and I try to take precautions to avoid that.
In the words of my friend: "...so I pays my dues and takes my chances as they say."
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