What were our Members of Parliament thinking?

Some weeks ago, while I was looking up MP Chen Show-Mao’s email on the Parliament of Singapore website (I wanted to ask him about the SMU Handa Centre which he had not replied my email till today) and I noticed that some MPs were using Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts as their corresponding email.

I was telling myself that this cannot be right. We all know that when we sign on to such services, we are giving up some of our privacy, and allowing these companies to track our activities, location and even allowing them to read our emails. While others are suing Google forbreach of such privacy, our Members of Parliament are using it as if it is a secure service provided by our government. Google was even charged by US FederalTrade Commission for illicit monitoring of Apple owners. I wonder what were these MPs thinking when they signed up for foreign controlled emails accounts, and using it to correspond with each other on national issues, concerns of their residents, and possibly national policies that are in the pipeline. This had been happening probably for years and I wonder if the Ministry in-charge of cyber security had even raised such concerns to them. Or does no one dare to advise MPs?

In any case, such email services are not that secure as it seems. In 2009, an article in globalpolitican touched on the security lapses of Gmail.

It would be common sense that each MP should be given a secure email account where its servers are located within the country. The current practice is akin to a company allowing the contract cleaners access to all levels and rooms within its building, while applying restriction on the access to its own employees. It just does not make any sense trusting outsiders more than someone you are employing. Anyone with common sense would know that it is much easier to investigate into a security breach only if evidences are within your reach. So if there is a security breach on one of the MPs’ email, how can the authorities investigate? Write to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, asking for information? The same people who were probably also checking your emails for you even before you had read it?

For those interested, these are the list of MPs who are using foreign controlled email accounts.