Reading a Globe and Mail business story about how the U.S. Patriot Act “haunts” Google’s business services outside the U.S., I wondered how many journalists use gmail (or any other U.S. Internet service including domain hosting companies, or email services like hotmail or yahoo), as a backup email service. I suspect that using any American service, under the Patriot Act, would legally make electronic records or emails containing journalists’ confidential sources, contact information and story notes accessible to U.S. authorities.

That concern was one reason why I stopped using a mac.com email address, registered my own domain and transfered it to a Canadian host a few years ago.