> These days, it wouldn't even be technically possible, let alone legally possible, because pretty much all SMTP traffic is over TLS.
These days the government wouldn't need to decrypt email traffic going over the backbone. They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. The vast majority of the American's email can be obtained by controlling the servers of a very small number of corporations. We have Lavabit to thank for demonstrating that when the government comes knocking your only options are to comply or shut down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit)
There's no reason to think that there isn't a Room 641A at Google, Apple, MS, etc.
These days the government wouldn't need to decrypt email traffic going over the backbone. They'd march into the companies and ISPs who run the mail servers and monitor/collect everything from there directly, the same way they marched into AT&T and set up camp. The vast majority of the American's email can be obtained by controlling the servers of a very small number of corporations. We have Lavabit to thank for demonstrating that when the government comes knocking your only options are to comply or shut down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit)
There's no reason to think that there isn't a Room 641A at Google, Apple, MS, etc.