Gmail message retention bypasses Mailvelope encryption

"Email is 20 years old and has all of the same restrictions and quirks that it had when it was first used in 1993."

E-mail is much older than that. SMTP, the mail transfer protocol that's standard today, became widely used in the 1980s.[1] E-mail between machines on the ARPANET (the precursor of today's internet) dates back to 1971, and already used the "user@host" form at that time.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email#Rise_of_ARPANET_mail

tl'dr; A couple of months back I posted an article about Gmail retention (see here) in which I showed that Google not only saves copies of your unsent messages, but virtually every iteration of any message you type is potentially saved by Google. This means that it is available by subpoena to Google from whichever entity sees fit.. [With Meilvelope] Yes, your email message is encrypted. Yes, anyone attempting to intercept the message won’t be able to read it while either in transit or looking in your sent folder. Yes, this makes you feel warm and fuzzy because you’re using encryption until you understand that, yes, Google still has the pre-encrypted message sitting on their servers. Not only this, but they saved multiple copies while you were typing your message.