Use Encryption

No need to ask why. just use encryption. Of any kind, it doesn't matter. Just start using it. For your regular files and even disk or partitions I am recommending truecrypt, its free (donationware), its unbeatable, its open source, cannot be cracked no matter what some people /companies with alternative motives might say.
For your emails
solution a) if you can afford it, buy a certificate from a major company. lots of low cost companies are out there
solution b) get a free certificate from cacert, only problem is that you need a re-issue every 6 months, but you can get as many email certs as you can handle
solution c) - for techies - setup your own CA at home pc, and issue certificates for all your friends to communicate with, for free, for ever. Issue a 10 year cert, that you can revoke any time anyway. OpenSSL did dump on me when requested a 100 year certificate, but that was too much anyway.


Every email you sent, is kept - by law- for a period of 2 - 5 years stored at your local isp. Maybe (illegally) can be stored at more places. And that's totally transparent to you.
Any virus, or -legal- monitoring s/w at home or work, can sniff around your system and index your personal files.

We do not need to exchange home brew recipes for plastic explosives or any type of illegal or unethical files and data to use encryption. We use it to keep our stuff safe from other, even if its our own kids and relatives. Other wise, why do we have passwords at the email account, xDSL access, the system itself etc etc.

If you are old enough, you probably remember the fuss with 3des, that was not allowed at home, but everybody was using it overseas. The nsa wants the decrypting algorithm before an encryption s/w is legal. Fine. No Problem. If THEY want my comms, they can see it. But why have anyone, even google, or yahoo, or bing 'brother' index my stuff and have my profile. The coupons that I get nowdays are worth pennies and if I want to sell my profile, it should get a fair price on todays exchange. I want at least 15c or even 20c on the dollar. they are making over 500% on each transaction.
Also, even if nsa is eager to read my emails, at this time, they can spend the money to do it. its very few of us that use encryption, less than 2% I think. But if we all do it, then they have to have a probable cause, to justify the money, in order to casually read my email or files. Its a legal step forward for our privacy, just by enforcing the law and our rights as humans. non humans are using 100% encryption and have not disclosed the algorithm to nsa.