No Longer Tin Foil Hat Anymore -

[JohnyMac]

It looks like the NSA is going off of email providers who will not play ball with them. First it is Lavabit.com
Levison wrote:

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what?s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What?s going to happen now? We?ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

http://boingboing.net/2013/08/08/lavabit-email-service-snowden.html

And then there is Silent Circle...

?We knew USG would come after us?. That?s why Silent Circle CEO Michael Janke tells TechCrunch his company shut down its Silent Mail encrypted email service. It hadn?t been told to provide data to the government, but after Lavabit shut down today rather than be ?complicit? with NSA spying, Silent Circle told customers it has killed off Silent Mail rather than risk their privacy.

The Silent Circle blog posts explains ?We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.? It?s especially damning considering Silent Circle?s co-founder and president is Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of widely-used email encryption program Pretty Good Privacy.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/08/silent-circle-preemptively-shuts-down-encrypted-email-service-to-prevent-nsa-spying/

Many of the folks on this forum know a WHOLE BUNCH more about this subject than I do. What company would YOU recommend one go with that would have the balls to not become complicit with NSA?

[thatGuy]

You notice that the news has a new article about 'terror' everyday?

The .gov is going for the hard sell here JMac, it's just a matter of time.

They will all sell out eventually.

[special-k]

I'm keeping my eye on "startmail."  They are still in beta.  It's created by the same folks who brought us the "startpage" & "ixquick" search engines.  The last I heard it's going to cost around $50/year for an account.

https://beta.startmail.com/

EDIT:
I registered to be a beta tester... but lost the lottery, I guess.

[JohnyMac]

LOL TG, no more than 15 minutes ago I said to MrsMac almost that exact same comment! Do you have a camera in our house 

It is so obvious that the government is working very hard on scaring the sheeple that I am shocked that more people are not bringing it up.

 :tinfoil:I bet you a dozen donuts that there is going to be a Black Flag event in coming weeks which will cut off any more criticism of the Patriot Act, NDAA, etc. I also think that a renewed effort on gun control is coming our way. Stay tuned. 

[Alex1992]

Good for them the NSA need a kick in the nuts every now and again 

[crudos]

Is there any recommendations for a out-of-country, free, email service that will not bow to .gov and has pretty stiff anti-hacking systems?

JM: There doesn't need to be a black flag event, because .gov can just keep grinding everyone down over time and pressure.