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FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

blog.fastmail.fm

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Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#21

Post by brongondwana »

Hello inflammatory headline.

That's a very small part of a lot of what we have to say, most of which is:

* we can't be compelled (under current laws) to install blanket monitoring on our users

* we can't be compelled to keep quiet about penetration that we notice

* there are always risks, including the risk that any random group knows unpublished security flaws in the systems that we use

We have written some things about techniques we use to reduce those risks (physically separate internal network rather than VLANS on a single router for example) - these help protect against both government AND non-government threats. But we can't make those risks go away entirely.

What we're saying is - the physical presence in the USA only changes one low-probability/high-visibility threat, which is direct tampering with our servers.

Regardless of the physical location of servers, we would still comply with legally valid requests made through the Australian Government.

It is our belief and hope that this process is difficult enough to mean that US agencies only ask for data when they have good cause rather than "fishing" - but still easier than taking our servers and shutting us down, with all the fallout that would cause.

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#22

Post by robn_fastmail »

Hi, FastMail employee and author of (most of) that blog post here.

Just so we're clear, the point of this post was not that we don't think the rules don't apply to us. Instead we're trying to make it clear where position on these things are. The topic of this thread is a sensationalist sound-bite, nothing more.

I'm not going to go over the points again here because I'm pretty sure we said it all in the post (but ask questions if you like, I'll be here all week!).

The most important point to take away from this post is that your privacy is your responsibility. We're trying to provide you with as much information as we can to help you determine your own exposure, and to let you know what we will work to protect and where we can't help. Its up to you to determine if our service is right for you. No tricks, and no hard feelings if you'd rather take your business somewhere else!

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#24

Post by robn_fastmail »

frank_boyd wrote: post #20

> our primary servers are located in the US Why would you do that, especially when you're not even a US company?

Because most of our customers are in the US. If your goal is to provide the fastest service around, it helps to put your servers near your users.

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#26

Post by brongondwana »

robn_fastmail wrote: post #24
frank_boyd wrote: post #20

> our primary servers are located in the US Why would you do that, especially when you're not even a US company?

Because most of our customers are in the US. If your goal is to provide the fastest service around, it helps to put your servers near your users.

Also because Australian bandwidth is hella-expensive, power isn't great either.

Why New York rather than West Coast - that's a trickier one. I'd certainly appreciate the slightly faster pingtimes, but it would be slower for Europe.

I think a major consideration is that we found a really good datacentre with NYI, and we're sticking with them because they're incredibly reliable. Reliability matters in this business.

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#27

Post by toast0 »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #9
MichaelGG wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they mount webcams and other sensors inside the cabinet, they could detect unexplained access to their servers. Not sure what it'd really accomplish. The colo provider would either say "tech mistakenly opened that cabinet" or "no comment". The only real defense is to assume any such access is a breach and have servers immediately overwrite FDE keys in RAM and power off - and if they were that committed, they would…

Full disk encryption would be another option, with the key being obtained over a secure channel from servers hosted remotely before booting to the real system. Then, as long as they can detect whether the server asking for the key has been compromised, I think it should be pretty safe. (Not a security researcher though, I wouldn't bet money on it.)

Remotely detecting if the server is not compromised when you don't trust the physical surroundings is probably unsolvable. If your attackers are very motivated and have lots of resources, what's to prevent them from installing a ram bus signal analyzer during a scheduled/unscheduled downtime. This would be pretty hard to detect (absent an elaborate video monitoring setup), as a good analyzer should not impact the system being monitored.

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#28

Post by lessnonymous »

robn_fastmail wrote: post #22

Hi, FastMail employee and author of (most of) that blog post here. Just so we're clear, the point of this post was not that we don't think the rules don't apply to us. Instead we're trying to make it clear where position on these things are. The topic of this thread is a sensationalist sound-bite, nothing more. I'm not going to go over the points again here because I'm pretty sure we said it all in the post (but ask…

Hi Rob,

Has the headline on HN been updated? Because both you and brongondwana talk about it being sensationalist, where I see it as just being a summary of the most salient part of what you have to say.

Do you have Australian legal advice to back up your conclusions? (I agree with them, but would like to make sure we're talking more than the "gist" of the law)

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#29

Post by danenania »

nullc wrote: post #6

> There are of course other avenues available to obtain your data. Our colocation providers could be compelled to give physical access to our servers. Network capturing devices could be installed. And in the worst case an attacker could simply force their way into the datacentre and physically remove our servers. > These are not things we can protect against directly but again, we can make it extremely difficult for…

"This kind of frank disclosure should be highly rewarded."

Yep, definitely. I think even more important than the information itself is the spirit of honesty and integrity that it demonstrates. This stands in stark contrast to the ambiguous slimeball statements issued by the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc.

When Big Brother comes knocking, which companies are going to take a risk to stand up for you? It's as much a question of character as policy.

Re: FastMail’s servers are in the US – what this means for you

#30

Post by frank_boyd »

robn_fastmail wrote: post #24
frank_boyd wrote: post #20

> our primary servers are located in the US Why would you do that, especially when you're not even a US company?

Because most of our customers are in the US. If your goal is to provide the fastest service around, it helps to put your servers near your users.

You're implying that you would make less money by trading in your US location for more security. That means that you believe not enough users care enough about their privacy to accept that (really light) trade-off.
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