Gmail drafts and Pastebin: could they evade the email snoops?

The revelation that US intelligence agencies and GCHQ have been spying on email communications has prompted plenty of discussion within the information security community, as you might expect. One of the more interesting debates took place between our very own Real World Computing editor Dick Pountain and an old friend of his, who happens to be a professor of criminology and is currently involved in a cybercrime study. Over a pint, the prof wondered whether internet snooping of the type highlighted by Edward Snowden might be thwarted by employing throwaway webmail accounts, in particular by using the "save as draft" facility these offer.