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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

#551

Post by Zak »

ArnoVW wrote: post #549
TomSwirly wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply closed my (free) account. Their page is full of what are now obviously lies. They admit that in the cases of "extreme crimes" they might be forced to give up information. _By no stretch of the imagination are these peaceful political protests "extreme crimes"._ I specifically advocate for the sorts of people that Protonmail ratted out and had arrested - climate change activists.

From what I gathered from a (French) blog posting by a squatting collective, posted elsewhere in this thread, the arrests are in relation to an eviction. The eviction was legally sanctioned, and violence was used on the officers. Several officers had to stop work for a few days, one officer for two weeks. I myself am a middle-aged "have" , but I do worry about climate and I do empathize with those that "have not". Ho…

When I read "extreme crimes", I don't think of a scuffle with the cops over what started as a misdemeanor arrest or non-criminal enforcement action. Protonmail should change their wording to be clear that governments can and do compel them to collect such information for ordinary crimes.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#552

Post by bitL »

istingray wrote: post #244
istingray wrote: post #77

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…

All the Protonmail customers out there, what did you do about this? For starters, I emailed Protonmail support. Here's mine: Hi, Your homepage reads "By default, we do not keep any IP logs..." This language is soft and misleading. Maybe in 2018 when I first began using ProtonMail it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. I expect better from ProtonMail. Replace immediately with something clearer. "By default we don't…

That's fine in my "paying ProtonMail customer" view. Use VPN + Tor if you don't want your IP address be known. I use ProtonMail to reduce my exposure to Google tracking/possibility of business execution leaks they might use in their favor and keep alternatives alive.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#553

Post by rank0 »

pphysch wrote: post #296
sneak wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now you're asserting that the binaries are backdoored, or built from something other than the published source. Again, provide evidence or stop spreading FUD.

That's sadly not how (cyber)security works. The USG persecutes and imprisons journalists for exposing its war crimes, anyways I'm going to download this Tor binary from them because it says 'totally legit' on the packaging and there's no "hard evidence" to the contrary...

Don’t those binaries come with signatures you can verify? People in the community would notice if building from source produced different signatures than the binaries provided directly by torproject

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#554

Post by simiones »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #128
istingray wrote: post #77

Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customer Their homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs" In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself. Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be req…

TBH in 2021 people engaging in potentially dangerous activities should be literate enough to understand, that no business will guarantee them full security and decline all requests from authorities to disclose their identity. The wording you suggest is equivalent of „do not dry your cat in microwave“ instruction - a legal protection from dumb customers, that does not contribute meaningfully to safety. For the non-Swi…

> If this is not enough barriers to protect from politically motivated prosecutions and corruption, then we have much bigger problem in Europe.

Well, in this case isn't it clear that these barriers were in fact not enough? Or do you think anti-squatting is a major enough problem that it warranted this level of international cooperation, without any politically motivated thinking?

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#555

Post by darkwater »

ArnoVW wrote: post #549
TomSwirly wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply closed my (free) account. Their page is full of what are now obviously lies. They admit that in the cases of "extreme crimes" they might be forced to give up information. _By no stretch of the imagination are these peaceful political protests "extreme crimes"._ I specifically advocate for the sorts of people that Protonmail ratted out and had arrested - climate change activists.

From what I gathered from a (French) blog posting by a squatting collective, posted elsewhere in this thread, the arrests are in relation to an eviction. The eviction was legally sanctioned, and violence was used on the officers. Several officers had to stop work for a few days, one officer for two weeks. I myself am a middle-aged "have" , but I do worry about climate and I do empathize with those that "have not". Ho…

(prepare the downvotes)

> The eviction was legally sanctioned, and violence was used on the officers. Several officers had to stop work for a few days, one officer for two weeks.

Usually they need to stop work for a few days because their hands/wrists are aching due to hitting too hard on protestors. Anti-riot are perfectly equipped and physically trained to be in fights, it's literally their job. And while there are generally at least a few "semi-pro" violent protestors on the other side, they are not so well equipped like the police.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#556

Post by ArnoVW »

Zak wrote: post #551
ArnoVW wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gathered from a (French) blog posting by a squatting collective, posted elsewhere in this thread, the arrests are in relation to an eviction. The eviction was legally sanctioned, and violence was used on the officers. Several officers had to stop work for a few days, one officer for two weeks. I myself am a middle-aged "have" , but I do worry about climate and I do empathize with those that "have not". Ho…

When I read "extreme crimes", I don't think of a scuffle with the cops over what started as a misdemeanor arrest or non-criminal enforcement action. Protonmail should change their wording to be clear that governments can and do compel them to collect such information for ordinary crimes.

Yup, fully agree: Protonmail should just say "we comply with the law". Though at this point the security reputation of the Swiss should have given anyone pause to think (Crypto AG, Omnisec AG, etc)

My point was just that 1) the arrest was related to squatting, not the climate 2) these people, idealist and well-intentioned as they were, were not "peaceful" (at least, not when faced with a brigade of police officers)

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#558

Post by ArnoVW »

samhw wrote: post #510
TomSwirly wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply closed my (free) account. Their page is full of what are now obviously lies. They admit that in the cases of "extreme crimes" they might be forced to give up information. _By no stretch of the imagination are these peaceful political protests "extreme crimes"._ I specifically advocate for the sorts of people that Protonmail ratted out and had arrested - climate change activists.

FWIW, what they were accused of was squatting, not protesting climate change. I still think that's a ludicrous abuse of police powers, but it's worth being accurate.

And in the spirit of accuracy : the reason for the arrest was the violence during an eviction (several injured police officers), not the squatting itself.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#559

Post by lavabiopsy »

dvdkon wrote: post #417
lavabiopsy wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you're using a definition of end-to-end encryption that's too narrow, same with privacy. E2E schemes try to ensure that your messages can only be read by their intended recipient. That's undeniably a privacy feature, since having private messages read by a third party (without consent) would be a privacy violation. Security and privacy are intertwined, imagine your server getting hacked (security problem) lea…

I understand they are billed that way but in practice I don't believe they fulfill that goal, as the job of making the messages unreadable is mostly already done by transport security (SMTP TLS). Sure it can protect against some things if the mail server is the target, but as we see here, there is still a large amount of identifying metadata that they (unavoidably) have on you. The goal with "privacy" is to ensure that your communications are undetectable and unidentifiable, and I would hardly call it that if it's still regularly going through a well-known mail server attached to a highly identifiable account. And of course it depends on how much you actually use the E2E encryption which is technically optional, for example if you send/receive a lot of mail from gmail users that aren't using S/MIME, which still seems to be the case for a lot, then it won't be enabled and your messages are still vulnerable in a server hack.

Re: Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address

#560

Post by aero-glide2 »

zaarn wrote: post #550
globular-toast wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you use end-to-end encryption (like PGP) then that's not true.

PM mails are encrypted with PGP at rest, as is metadata. The police can request to log incoming and outgoing mail metadata if available but not retroactively.

Wait what's stopping them from logging the body of email too then?
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