Comment on ProtonMail Logged IP Address of French Activist; Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy?

• Dojan@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  1. Authoritarian regime decides that being critical of the regime is illegal and makes laws to support this.
  2. Activists use Proton for privacy.
  3. Regime demands that they give up data on activists.
  4. Proton complies with the laws.

  That’s the issue.

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  • ook@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    What data? Here it is the IP address and only under order by authorities.

    I feel ever since the social media shitstorm people love to pile on Proton for anything. They never said they won’t comply with law enforcment, did they?

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    • Dojan@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      What data? Here it is the IP address and only under order by authorities.

      Whatever they gather. It says as much in the article; they started recording IPs once a request by the Swiss government came through.

      ProtonMail can’t directly share data with foreign governments. In fact, doing so is illegal under Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal code. The police gained access to the IP address because Swiss authorities chose to cooperate with the French government. ProtonMail also points out how Swiss authorities will only approve requests that meet Swiss legal standards.

      Under Swiss law, ProtonMail should notify the user if a third party makes a request for their private data and if the data is for a criminal proceeding. However, there’s a big catch/ loophole here. On its law enforcement page, ProtonMail highlights that the notification can be delayed in the following cases:

      That’s based on the currently available laws. So if a law gets drafted that says “if we suspect someone to be complicit in criminal activity we want you to gather more data” we should just be fine with that because the authorities say so? Because the authorities are always infallible and incorruptible, right?

      The details of this individual case isn’t the problem, it’s the precedent it sets that is. When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don’t store anything. Proton stores things based on if the authorities ask them to, and when they find out that it wasn’t a terrorist or child-trafficker they go “woops we had no idea the account belonged to a climate activist.”

      The authorities aren’t infallible. Some years back here in Sweden we had police raid, physically abuse, and kidnap a guy they suspected was a pedophile because he’d sent images of him and his 30 year old boyfriend having sex via Yahoo Mail. There’s no reality where this man should’ve been fucking beaten up and traumatised the way he was, but it happened, and there was no recourse for him. Nowhere down the chain of responsibility did anyone get reprimanded or investigated for misconduct.

      Complying with the law is such a bullshit fucking excuse.

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      • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        ProtonMail does not log things by default, but they can still be court ordered to do so by swiss authorities - if you want to run any business at all, you have to submit to a jurisdiction, you can only choose which one to run under. And even if your chosen authority is alright by itself, it can still be misled by other jurisdictions like the French did, using the terror-cudgel against climate activists.

        I can also recall that in this case Proton said that had their user actually bothered to use any VPN, even Proton’s, there wouldn’t have been anything to give to authorities except for an exit node IP.

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      • _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Complying with the law is such a bullshit fucking excuse.

        Yeah, they should just go to prison for someone they don’t know and had nothing to do with, that’s the only answer we should be ok with!

        Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

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      • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don’t store anything.

        Mullvad is not a mail provider…?

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    So Proton should refuse to comply with the law and have to close their entire business?

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    • mjr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I don’t know about ‘should’ but wasn’t that the impression their marketing tried to give? Or at least that they would fight to defend user privacy for noble activists? But when challenged, its owners seem to have folded quicker than a strapotin.

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      • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        No. Nothing in their marketing says they’ll refuse to comply with lawful orders.

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      • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        No. The impression their marketing gave was that they followed Swiss law.

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  • lauha@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Legal entity that doesn’t comply with the law is simply not possible. If you think otherwise, you’re being really naive

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    • mjr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      And yet, legal entities are often found guilty of not complying with the law. I think people were expecting Proton to at least try to fight a morally-questionable court order.

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• mjr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  They said things that led the unwary to trust they wouldn’t. Remember, this isn’t some terrorist mass-murderer they handed over, but apparently an anti-gentrification youth activist linked to Greta Thunberg’s campaign groups.

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  • _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Proton never says they won’t comply with orders from the Swiss government. You won’t find that claim anywhere on their website, any more than you’ll find it on Tuta’s website.

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