If an AI can work on encrypted data, it’s not encrypted.
Comment on Proton’s Lumo AI chatbot: not end-to-end encrypted, not open source
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks agoBoth your take, and the author, seem to not understand how LLMs work. At all.
At some point, yes, an LLM model has to process clear text tokens. There’s no getting around that. Anyone who creates an LLM that can process 30 billion parameters while encrypted will become an overnight billionaire from military contracts alone. If you want absolute privacy, process locally. Lumo has limitations, but goes farther than duck.ai at respecting privacy. Your threat model and equipment mean YOU make a decision for YOUR needs. This is an option. This is not trying to be one size fits all. You don’t HAVE to use it. It’s not being forced down your throat like Gemini or CoPilot.
And their LLM. - it’s Mistral, OpenHands and OLMO, all open source. It’s in their documentation. So this article is straight up lies about that. Like… Did Google write this article? It’s simply propaganda.
Also, Proton does have some circumstances where it lets you decrypt your own email locally. Otherwise it’s basically impossible to search your email for text in the email body. They already had that as an option, and if users want AI assistants, that’s obviously their bridge. But it’s not a default setup. It’s an option you have to set up. It’s not for everyone. Some users want that. It’s not forced on everyone. Chill TF out.
wewbull@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
SMH
No one is saying it’s encrypted when processed, because that’s not a thing that exists.
wewbull@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
End to end encryption of a interaction with a chat-bot would mean the company doesn’t decrypt your messages to it, operates on the encrypted text, gets an encrypted response which only you can decrypt and sends it to you. You then decrypt the response.
So yes. It would require operating on encrypted data.
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
The documentation says it’s TLS encrypted to the LLM context window. LLM processes, and the context window output goes back via TLS to you.
As long as the context window is only connected to Proton servers decrypting the TLS tunnel, and the LLM runs on their servers, and much like a VPN, they don’t keep logs, then I don’t see what the problem actually is here.
BB84@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
homomorphic encryption?
not there yet, of course, but it is conceptually possible
@wewbull@feddit.uk
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Their AI is not local, so adding it to your email means breaking e2ee. That’s to some extent fine. You can make an informed decision about it.
But proton is not putting warning labels on this. They are trying to confuse people into thinking it is the same security as their e2ee mails. Just look at the “zero trust” bullshit on protons own page.
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It does not say “zero-trust” anywhere, it says “zero-access”. The data is encrypted at rest, so it is not e2ee. They never mention end-to-end encryption for Lumo.
Which means that they are not advertising anything they are not doing or cannot do.
By posting this disinformation all you’re achieving is getting people to pedal back to all the shit services out there for “free” because many will start believing that privacy is way harder than it actually is so ‘what’s the point’ or, even worse, no alternative will help me be more private so I might as well just stop trying.
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
My friend, I think the confusion stems from you thinking you have deep technical understanding on this, when everything you say demonstrates that you don’t.
First off, you don’t even know the terminology. A local LLM is one YOU run on YOUR machine.
Lumo apparently runs on Proton servers - where their email and docs all are as well. So I’m not sure what “Their AI is not local!” even means other than you don’t know what LLMs do or what they actually are. Do you expect a 32B LLM that would use about a 32GB video card to all get downloaded and ran in a browser? Buddy…just…no.
Look, Proton can at any time MITM attack your email, or if you use them as a VPN, MITM VPN traffic if it feels like. Any VPN or secure email provider can actually do that. Mullvad can, Nord, take your pick. That’s just a fact. Google’s business model is to MITM attack your life, so we have the counterfactual already. So your threat model needs to include how much do you trust the entity handling your data not to do that, intentionally or letting others through negligence.
There is no such thing as e2ee LLMs. That’s not how any of this works. Doing e2ee for the chats to get what you type into the LLM context window, letting the LLM process tokens the only way they can, getting you back your response, and getting it to not keep logs or data, is about as good as it gets for not having a local LLM - which, remember, means on YOUR machine. If that’s unacceptable for you, then don’t use it. But don’t brandish your ignorance like you’re some expert, and that everyone on earth needs to adhere to whatever “standards” you think up that seem ill-informed.
Also, clearly you aren’t using Proton anyway because if you need to search the text of your emails, you have to process that locally, and you have to click through 2 separate warnings that tell you in all bold text “This breaks the e2ee! Are you REALLY sure you want to do this?” So your complaint about warnings is just a flag saying you don’t actually know and are just guessing.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. You seem to be confused by basic English.
They are not supposed to be able to and well designed e2ee services can’t be.
I know, yet proton is happily advertising one. Just read their page.
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
So then you object to the premise any LLM setup that isn’t local can ever be “secure” and can’t seem to articulate that.
What exactly is dishonest here? The language on their site is factually accurate, I’ve had to read it 7 times today because of you all. You just object to the premise of non-local LLMs and are, IMO, disingenuously making that a “brand issue” because…why? It sounds like a very emotional argument as it’s not backed by any technical discussion beyond “local only secure, nothing else.”
Beyond the fact that
So then you trust that their system is well-designed already? What is this cognitive dissonance that they can secure the relatively insecure format of email, but can’t figure out TLS and flushing logs for an LLM on their own servers? If anything, it’s not even a complicated setup. TLS to the context window, don’t keep logs, flush the data. How do you think no-log VPNs work? This isn’t exactly all that far off from that.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
You’re using their client. You get a fresh copy every time it changes.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Scribe can be local, if that’s what you are referring to.
They also have a specific section on it at proton.me/…/proton-scribe-writing-assistant#local…
Also emails for the most part are not e2ee, they can’t be because the other party is not using encryption. They use “zero-access” which is different. It means proton gets the email in clear text, encrypts it with your public PGP key, deletes the original, and sends it to you.
See proton.me/…/proton-mail-encryption-explained