Can we get a list going of non-US alternatives of popular apps most of us use?
Let's start with Dropbox. What's the alternative?
Lavabit abruptly shuts down
61–70 of 671 posts
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#62How long until PayPal suspends their legal defense fund? On a serious note, if you want to donate to their defense fund, consider doing so anonymously. Pay cash for an Amex or Visa gift card, and use that to make your donation.
...from a public terminal.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#63I really would want to donate to them. But you know I kind of feel weary now connecting my PayPal Account with them. I hope some kind of organisation is standing up for them. Like EFF or something. Not because I don't trust them. But because I don't trust the NSA. They might flag me as a terrorist or something. Then again I'm probably already on this list for having some technical involvment with something the US gov doesn't like.
I guess it purely a coincedence that Snowden used a lavabit address the last few weeks. I guess there is no relation at all.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#64I'm in the process of moving any Saas offerings I use off USA-affiliated companies, but it's actually more difficult than I first thought. I believe there might even be a very profitable market in simply duplicating the functionality of Saas offerings at a higher price with security/privacy guarantees in Germany/HK/etc. Might be the next hot business to be in? You'd be surprised as to the number of people seeking alt…
I'd love to believe that the authorities in Germany are not also tapping lines like France or the UK. Do we have any proof that is the case? I agree this has made me think twice about hosting in the us, but also about crossing national boundaries full stop without encrypting traffic.
Encrypting is a given - obviously you'd want to only be using Saas services in Germany etc that are fully encrypted. The problem in using USA services is that even if everything is fully encrypted, the USA can and will send goons around to take your data. Encryption is simply useless when dealing with a company in the USA who is forced to hand over the keys and whose data-centers can be legally entered and modified by thugs. Once someone has physical access to the server, the game is over.
Germany is a better bet. While they are no doubt tapping lines, Germany and the EU have made no moves to actually perform hostile interventions into data-centers or private servers. This means that encryption is still a very viable security measure for protecting your data in the EU. The EU simply has a far better track record with privacy related issues.
It's not about perfect security, it's about getting the best security you can hope for - and that means moving away from anything USA hosted.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't be resilient to interception of mail going to and coming from lavabit however, since email is essentially a plaintext public protocol.
...which is why you encrypt the contents before you send it, yes?
Considering that most other people don't use email encryption, no.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#66I'm in the process of moving any Saas offerings I use off USA-affiliated companies, but it's actually more difficult than I first thought. I believe there might even be a very profitable market in simply duplicating the functionality of Saas offerings at a higher price with security/privacy guarantees in Germany/HK/etc. Might be the next hot business to be in? You'd be surprised as to the number of people seeking alt…
I'd love to believe that the authorities in Germany are not also tapping lines like France or the UK. Do we have any proof that is the case? I agree this has made me think twice about hosting in the us, but also about crossing national boundaries full stop without encrypting traffic.
Line tapping is pretty much a given. Looks like the BND has the possibility to do so. But this is still not officially confirmed. However a german blogger (fefe) had some examples for overly detailled dementi from german companies. E.g. no foreign intelligence service can read your traffic...
But in regards to cryptography and chances for legally fighting against such orders it could be better. At least on paper. The most likely outcome if lavabit would be hosted in germany would be a police raid that would take all servers for investigation with them. This happenend e.g. for poeple running Tor exit nodes.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#67How long until PayPal suspends their legal defense fund? On a serious note, if you want to donate to their defense fund, consider doing so anonymously. Pay cash for an Amex or Visa gift card, and use that to make your donation.
This is a really great way to get their PayPal account frozen for sure. Abnormally high rates of Visa gift cards will absolutely trip all the fraud alarms.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#68Crap, I had just recently migrated all of my accounts to my new Lavabit address, paid for a year of service, etc. Although I've seen some mentioned, what recommendations does HN have for a new e-mail service? Preferably something stable and also respecting of a user's privacy. Or perhaps you can only have 1 of the aforementioned attributes.
This is why I contributed to Mailpile(http://www.mailpile.is/)'s fundraiser and hang out in their IRC channel. We need more, better, easy-to-use distributed, crypto-friendly mail software, and we need them yesterday. :/
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#69Seems like it would make sense for users to demand that any US based service includes a warrant canary, just like rsync.net's implementation. A global canary + separate canaries for individual accounts would also make sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary http://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
I don't think canaries are effective. You can't get around a court order just by mental gymnastics, they'll hold you in contempt. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect that they'd simply order you to keep updating the canary.
This would imply that the court can order you to lie to your customers. I think this is not the case.
If there is any precedence for any US court requiring public citizen to lie I definitely want to know about it.
If the courts are acting like they have this power then it will greatly change my perception of how the courts, NSA, and congress are currently acting.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#70Time to donate to the EFF. They haven't been branded as a terrorist charity yet, AFAIK...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130626/00193023622/suppo... is pretty chilling (but at least it has an entertaining picture) if you haven't seen it.