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I wholeheartedly agree. All email should be encrypted by default. This has been possible since the development of PGP many years ago. I believe the only reason it is not because of government pressure to keep good, easy to use public key crypto out of people’s hands.

The main obstacle is that existing e-mail encryption programs are too awkward for the average non-technical user. Fortunately, the NSA scandals have sparked interest in developing user-friendly solutions (such as MiniLock, currently in limited beta release with full release planned for August -- technoneepery details).

What I'd like to see is an email client that would take a look at the recipient list. If anyone on the list doesn't appear in your public keyring, offer to send it separately from any who do, and include your public key as an attachment with a description of where to get public key crypto software.

For any recipient that you have a public key, you encrypt the message to them. Granted, having one of the messages go out plaintext defeats the crypto, as time goes on less and less would be sent that way. You could also have an option where instead of sending the recipient the message you could just send an email to them requesting their public key and providing yours. Anyone not interested in sending your their key would just not get any email from you.

I've almost gotten to the point that I'm more interested in secure communications than I am with talking to casual acquaintances, or even family members for that matter.