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Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

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Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#381

Post by drivebycomment »

bigiain wrote: post #270
falcolas wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Yes! I’ve never understood how people argue that they are somehow better than an ISP by default.

My ISP is subject to my local laws. Which are not good, in terms of my privacy. My VPN provider is not - but is obviously subject to their local laws. Which are almost certainly also not good for my privacy either. Spreading the threat across two different jurisdictions is without doubt "somehow better" than just using my ISP, at least in the case of protection against snooping by non serious crime law enforcement. (…

What threat model are you trying to protect from by using VPN, and why is HTTPS + DoH (DNS over HTTPS) not sufficient for that threat model ?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#382

Post by drivebycomment »

Ansil849 wrote: post #378

I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of "there's nothing ProtonMail could have done in this case." This is patently false. The first thing they could have done is not hosted their service in a jurisdiction susceptible to these kinds of logging requests, at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services. Instead, ProtonMail is attempting to have their cake and eat it…

> This is patently false. The first thing they could have done is not hosted their service in a jurisdiction susceptible to these kinds of logging requests, at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services.

Where is that ? Which country doesn't have a law that allows authorities to request such information ? I'm not aware of any, at least not among any sufficiently developed countries with useful infrastructures.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#383

Post by drivebycomment »

France_is_bacon wrote: post #251

For me, I NEVER expect protection from any governmemnt authorities. They have unlimited resources (compared to a regular person), and you can't fight city hall, as the saying goes. The reason I use tutamota (similar to protonmail) is to stop the Googles and Yahoos and hotmails from scanning all of my emails, using them to advertise to me, selling the information to advertisers. Could you imagine if the US post office…

> to stop the Googles and Yahoos and hotmails from scanning all of my emails, using them to advertise to me, selling the information to advertisers.

They don't sell your information to advertisers. So your threat model here is factually false.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#385

Post by Ansil849 »

drivebycomment wrote: post #382
Ansil849 wrote: post #378

I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of "there's nothing ProtonMail could have done in this case." This is patently false. The first thing they could have done is not hosted their service in a jurisdiction susceptible to these kinds of logging requests, at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services. Instead, ProtonMail is attempting to have their cake and eat it…

> This is patently false. The first thing they could have done is not hosted their service in a jurisdiction susceptible to these kinds of logging requests, at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services. Where is that ? Which country doesn't have a law that allows authorities to request such information ? I'm not aware of any, at least not among any sufficiently develop…

You appear to have missed a significant portion of my post:

> at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services.

> Instead, ProtonMail is attempting to have their cake and eat it too: on the one hand, they repeatedly publicize the fact that they have 'Swiss privacy laws' as a selling point, but yet on the other hand when a privacy violation such as this occurs, they claim that their hands are tied because of....Swiss laws.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#386

Post by istingray »

shp0ngle wrote: post #334
istingray wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad, figure out a way to solve for it. I'm paying for private email service, not a pretty picture of the Swiss Alps on their website. If they don't provide it, someone else will, and I'll pay them instead. This isn't the Hotmail age where everyone expects free email.

They did figure out a way, they ask for phone number.

Nope. Figure out a way to make it anonymous or I'm out.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#387

Post by sodality2 »

sellyme wrote: post #369
sodality2 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The scanning of email contents that Gmail does is, from a privacy standpoint, indistinguishable from them simply sending you the email The privacy violation of creating a profile on me based on my mail to tailor ads is not the same thing as simply delivering mail.

In both cases exactly the same entities read your email: you, the sender, and Gmail. I don't see how you could go "yeah, this is a privacy improvement" if your information is still visible to exactly the same entities, but one of them isn't really mentioning it.

The difference is that protonmail, again, doesn't scan any data in my emails. Google does, then stores and tailors and sells ads. My privacy is violated when google scans my mail, and not when protonmail doesn't.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#388

Post by itsmeacupoftea »

russianbandit wrote: post #380
estaseuropano wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Don't know about France but in some places its near impossible to evict squatters, meaning if your property stands empty a month (e.g. waiting for new tenant or repairs) and some squatters move in you are basically screwed for years to come - they won't pay rent, you'll lose thousands and much lifetime evicting them, and for a few years they'll run down your property as they have no legal or other interest in maint…

But if someone just moves into your property why can’t police just kick them out? That’s an illegal action. If someone came into your house and started stealing your things and you call the cops on them you don’t go to court to prove those things are really yours.

Because in many locations around the world, it's not as simple as a criminal offence, it's a civil dispute, as once you have commenced "squatting", you are now an occupant, rather than a clear trespasser. Many squatters find squatting manuals online detailing the local laws and how best to approach it to maximum time available in the property.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#390

Post by lavabiopsy »

blululu wrote: post #376
lavabiopsy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? I don't know much about this company but their main selling point seems to be end to end encryption for mail messages. That's not a "privacy" feature by itself. Now it is a tool that you can use it to gain more privacy, but you could also have people who use it to cc all their emails to their entire facebook list. So it seems it all depends on how you use it and what type of privacy you try to achieve.

End to end encryption is a privacy feature by itself. The example of using an email service to send a mass email to a dislist is irrelevant to the possibility that it would also be able to preserve privacy in other communications. You could send an email directly to the local police chief if you wanted but that does not preclude wanting privacy elsewhere.

I think you are confusing privacy with security, which is a common mistake, not your fault -- end-to-end encryption is what secures the messages, by itself it does not ensure that the messages get to the right place or that the encryption keys are belonging to the right people. It needs to be used in combination with other methods and techniques. Explicit features that are in the domain of "privacy" would be ensuring messages are deleted on a regular basis, or some kind of key cycling, or an anonymizing service like tor, etc.

To use your example of emailing the police chief: let's say your threat profile is that you're being stalked by a criminal, and you want to email the police to give them information on this crime, but you don't want the criminal to know. If the criminal breaks into your email, or if your house is broken into and a hidden camera is placed behind your computer, it makes little difference whether you have end-to-end encryption or not, your privacy is still violated. Does that explain it better? Maybe Proton could have some better messaging around this, if their customers are getting privacy and security confused?

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