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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

#391

Post by drivebycomment »

Ansil849 wrote: post #385
drivebycomment wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

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

You can't provide a paid commercial service while hiding your business entity. And, on top of that, DNS and SMTP make this basically impossible technically as well. So what you're looking for is, at least when it comes to email, something that doesn't and can't exist.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#392

Post by thaumasiotes »

zwayhowder wrote: post #267
istingray wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do tell, how do you plan your clandestine operations?

By using the classics of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histiaeus#Ionian_revolt_(499-4... Sure the bitrate is a bit slow and it's UDP only but our governments have proved over and over again that they can't learn from history.

> In 499 BC, he shaved the head of his most trusted slave, tattooed a message on his head, and then waited for his hair to grow back. The slave was then sent to Aristagoras, who was instructed to shave the slave's head again and read the message, which told him to revolt against the Persians.

Since this was a trusted slave, the tattoo seems unnecessary. The slave could just tell Aristagoras "Histiaeus says to revolt against the Persians".

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#393

Post by Ansil849 »

drivebycomment wrote: post #391
Ansil849 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> at least not openly. In other words, they could have concealed the location of their services. You can't provide a paid commercial service while hiding your business entity. And, on top of that, DNS and SMTP make this basically impossible technically as well. So what you're looking for is, at least when it comes to email, something that doesn't and can't exist.

> You can't provide a paid commercial service while hiding your business entity.

You absolutely can. This is how many entities on the dark web function. And in fact, so do many entities on the clear web (see the RBN and its successors as an example).

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#394

Post by devwastaken »

Pretty sure it says right on their site that protonmail/vpn cooperate with law enforcement when "something obviously illigal" is claimed. They have thousands of cases they give data on every year. The whole "swedish court system" is marketing. If they were legitimate they'd be talking about data center black boxes, why they were funded by NSA interests, how things actually works.

My bet is this, proton can't actually afford to defend against thousands of court cases, so they comply. They can't afford for their service to look insecure, so theyre selective in divulging how much surveillance they have to comply with.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#395

Post by vages »

grappler wrote: post #361
testvox wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do https://protonmail.com/tor

Sad to say, Proton's onion service is for their old version. Proton has recently rolled out a new updated version of their service, and as far as I'm aware they don't offer a Tor onion service for that newer version. So Proton users who like to connect via Tor onion services have been faced with a choice of either staying on the old version of ProtonMail, or giving up on connecting via a Tor onion service. It definit…

I tested this, and you're right: Their Tor service runs the (in my opinion nearly as usable) older version.

It's plausible that Proton does not care about their Tor service, but there may be another reason: The new version relies more on Javascript code than their old version, and a Tor user is more likely to browse with scripts disabled than a regular user. Proton may be holding back the rollout of the newer version until they have tested it more without Javascript. This is only a hypothesis, and I came up with it just now; take it for what it is.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#396

Post by smsm42 »

COGlory wrote: post #37

Disclaimer: I have a ProtonMail account that I pay for. I have seen a ton of disturbing pieces about ProtonMail. Every time I've looked into them, they seem to be maliciously motivated and usually not true, or otherwise twisting of the truth. This has been a confusing thing for me because why is there a small subset of people so vehemently against them? In this case, I'm not surprised. They say quite clearly they can…

If they can be compelled to collect IP addresses - why can't they be compelled to collect your password and revel the contents of any mails the police wants to see? I mean, it's their site and AFAIK there's no way for you to prevent them from accessing the content of your emails, unless they are fully encrypted on the client side - in which case any random mail provider would work the same.

From where I stand, the only difference here is that ProtonMail has to receive the warrant before they give up all the info they have on you, and others may do it voluntarily even without that, just to keep on the good side of the police, but since it's not exactly hard to achieve such warrants (and in the US, as we learned, it's ok for the police to lie on such warrants and they know no punishment will come to them even if the lie is discovered later) the difference is minimal. If you have something the police really wants to see, and they can reveal it, they will.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#397

Post by France_is_bacon »

capeterson wrote: post #367
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…

Double FYI, the USPS does sell personal data when you do a change-of-address: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

Right. But I'm talking about opening your letters, scanning them into a computer, and selling that information.

I personally don't fill out the change of address forms.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#398

Post by smsm42 »

kazen44 wrote: post #154

for those who are curious, this seems to be the reply from protonmail on reddit[0] >Hi everyone, Proton team here. We are also deeply concerned about this case. In the interest of transparency, here's some more context. In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice which we are obligated to comply with. Details about how we handle Swiss law enforcement requests can…

In other words, your information is safe from the police if the police doesn't want it, but the second they want it, they're getting it and Proton can't do anything about it. The "default" is only useful for hiding your past actions before the police took interest in you, but not for any action since it happened.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#399

Post by France_is_bacon »

drivebycomment wrote: post #383
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.

Do you work for a PR company that works for the industry? Are you an industry flak?

Peddle your wares elsewhere. Go tell it to the Marines.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#400

Post by smsm42 »

ficklepickle wrote: post #39
mikl wrote: post #30

I guess there isn’t much Protonmail can do if the prosecutor shows up with an ~Interpol~ Europol warrant. I wonder what this “activist” did to earn himself Europol attention. At least before the world went insane, that would only happen for serious crimes.

The terrible crime of squatting, according to some comments in that thread

What's weird is why they'd need all these hoops to jump through if it's squatting? It's pretty easy to find the squatter - they usually are at the same place they're squatting, and the real owners of the place would be eager for the police to come and find them there. Once you found them, you could seize their devices and get all the IP information (at least) from them and from the carriers. it's weird why would you need to look for a squatter in such a convoluted way?
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