Proton is taking its privacy-first apps to a nonprofit foundation model

Post by hi-v-rocknroll » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 5:44 PM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #3

Reminder that Proton is not "private". They have all the keys, and willingly operate in a jurisdiction where they bend over backwards for ridiculous court orders. From their own transparency page: Number of legal orders: 6,378 Contested orders: 407 Orders complied with: 5,971 They did this to expose protestors and people who upset the powers that be, rarely real criminals. They could choose to operate in a country th…

Post by notaustinpowers » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

theultdev wrote: post #11

notaustinpowers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the same transparency report page, they refuse any requests from countries that are not Switzerland, and only provide information to Swiss authorities when necessary (I.E. valid international legal assistance, violations of Swiss law, etc). As well, emails and files are encrypted. And their VPN is a no-log VPN. Lastly, they can comply with an order and just give them nothing, because they don't have anything the…

Generally it goes like this: 1. Government entity (usually the US or EU country) pressures the host country's government 2. Host country's government makes a legal request to the company for info on this user. 3. Company adds logging for that specific user. 4. Logging is provided to all those interested. 5. Host country prosecutes (potentially extradites). There's a public accounting of this happening for Proton and…

Post by theultdev » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

notaustinpowers wrote: post #14

theultdev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally it goes like this: 1. Government entity (usually the US or EU country) pressures the host country's government 2. Host country's government makes a legal request to the company for info on this user. 3. Company adds logging for that specific user. 4. Logging is provided to all those interested. 5. Host country prosecutes (potentially extradites). There's a public accounting of this happening for Proton and…

You're making multiple conjectures to get to that conclusion, of which the only evidence presented is another company based in a different country than Proton. It may be true, it may not be, but there needs to be more information or facts before we get to the original comments statement that Proton gives data to expose protestors to protect "the powers that be".

Post by WhackyIdeas » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

gobip wrote: post #6

drpossum wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should back up your claim of "they have all the keys", because for things like email and file contents they claim they cannot decrypt them because they do not have those keys (which you have said they do). I believe it was stated on the page you copied those stats from https://proton.me/legal/transparency > As stated in our Privacy Policy, all emails, files and invites are encrypted and we have no means to decryp…

They're all encrypted by themselves and if you use your own gpg key they will replace it. They're all encrypted except when you pay more for dedicated smtp. They're all encrypted except when they give up logs they promised they didn't have. And so on.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #12

devwastaken wrote: post #3

Reminder that Proton is not "private". They have all the keys, and willingly operate in a jurisdiction where they bend over backwards for ridiculous court orders. From their own transparency page: Number of legal orders: 6,378 Contested orders: 407 Orders complied with: 5,971 They did this to expose protestors and people who upset the powers that be, rarely real criminals. They could choose to operate in a country th…

Yep. They fail Lavabit-style, but somewhat worse. They're selling security theater.