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?
Comment on ProtonMail Logged IP Address of French Activist; Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy?
Dojan@pawb.social 1 day agoWhat 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.
_cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 23 hours ago
Dojan@pawb.social 23 hours ago
Right, because corporations are widely known for going to prison when they break the law. Where exactly did they imprison Facebook for interfering in elections? Running illegal experiments on people? Pirating books and pornography? Surveilling children and selling their data?
Look at Mullvad. They’ve denied access to their data multiple times, they got raided, and nothing of use was recoverable. That’s what respect for privacy looks like. Proton could set their infrastructure up in this fashion, but instead they’ve chosen to just hand out user data freely.
_cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 23 hours ago
Now you’re comparing apples to oranges? Is that what you do when your position is untenable?
Dojan@pawb.social 23 hours ago
So Proton’s no-log policy is an apple and Mullvad’s no-log policy is an orange, is what you’re saying?
Ulrich@feddit.org 23 hours ago
When Mullvad got raided for their logs there was nothing recovered because they don’t store anything.
Mullvad is not a mail provider…?
Dojan@pawb.social 23 hours ago
They both have no-log policies. One is “we never log” and the other is “we log sometimes” do you see the difference?
Ulrich@feddit.org 23 hours ago
The difference is that they’re different products with different technical requirement.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 1 day 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.
Dojan@pawb.social 23 hours ago
“She shouldn’t have dressed that way.”
Proton could do better.
Arcka@midwest.social 19 hours ago
You’ll agree that Proton doing better would require them to move to a different country, right?
Also Mullvad doesn’t offer email accounts, does it? Seems that they couldn’t have a ‘no user data’ policy if they did since the emails would be exactly that.
Dojan@pawb.social 18 hours ago
I’m okay with this. Sweden isn’t exactly known as a bastion of freedom. Our current minister of equality (Liberals) is pushing for a porn ban. The EU proposal colloquially called “Chat Control” was originally put forth by the Swedish EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson who belongs to the Social Democrats.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like it’s productive to repeat myself, but if you genuinely care for a response you can view it here: https://pawb.social/comment/18804733