Encryption should be standard, why would we want anybody to be able to read our mail? With governments not very interested in privacy, encryption is a safegaurd for people interested in digital freedom. For more informative talks (and rants), visit some of the following sites:
- How encryption works on a basic level,
- Bits Of Freedom, a Dutch group trying to protect privacy,
- Privacy.org.
By no means an extensive list, it should be growing in the future.
Of course, the issue is using encryption yourself. An open source program well suited for this purpose is GnuPG. Generic HOWTOs are also available there. There is a specific tutorial for setting up GnuPG on Windows. Another project is set up for the Mac.
This is my public GPG key.