4 ms·

I just wish Fastmail didn't have servers in the US. Not really quite sure what the benefit is there; email isn't latency sensitive. If a Swiss company were to

I just wish Fastmail didn't have servers in the US. Not really quite sure what the benefit is there; email isn't latency sensitive. If a Swiss company were to pop up with a competitive mail offering, I imagine they'd sweep up a lot of business easily eh? Not that it's much more secure, just harder to imagine Switzerland easily handing over records, whereas with folks like MS, they've shown they'll do it on even non-legal requests.

stock_toaster 11y ago
> Not really quite sure what the benefit is there; email isn't latency sensitive. My guess is the webmail interface.
alfiedotwtf 11y ago
> I just wish Fastmail didn't have servers in the US tl;dr - We are Australian, so PATRIOT Act doesn't apply. http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-us-what-this-means-for-you/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-in... "It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so." "Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it."
- hydrogen18 11y ago
  I don't really follow your logic here. If your servers are physically in the US, a judge will just issue a warrant to seize the servers.
  - alfiedotwtf 11y ago
    All drives are encrypted. They may take our servers, but they'll never take our customer's data.
    - throwaway123534 11y ago
      Those servers -- do they have Firewire Ports? USB3? Other externally accessible DMA ports? Drive encryption prevents offline data at rest, they keys will be in memory for a running server. If LEA is going to grab your servers, your keys are going to go with them.
      - brongondwana 11y ago
        Yeah, it's true - same for anyone. The main benefit of encrypting the drives (indeed, the only reason I was willing to do the tradeoff for something which is mostly theatre) is that we can RMA failed drives and discard old drives with no risk to customer data. That alone is worth paying the slight overhead on modern CPUs for full disk encryption of all user-data partitions (the OS isn't encrypted - it's Debian with some open source packages on it, and we throw it away anytime - http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/07/automated-installation/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/07/automated-installation/)
  - robn_fastmail 11y ago
    Maybe. They'd have to issue that warrant to our datacentre operators though, not us, because there's nowhere to send the documentation. And then they can compel our datacentre not to talk about it, if they like, but they can't stop us talking about. Really though, the point of all this isn't to say they can't take our servers - of course they can, via legal and illegal means. The point is more to say that they can't do it _quietly_, which greatly raises the bar, because now you've got a PR shitstorm to deal with. But really, it's not going to happen, because we have good legal processes in place. There are proper channels from most countries in the world to the appropriate Australian authorities, and from there to us, and once that request comes in we service it and that's that. If you want reasonably secure and private email, and you're not doing really dodgy shit, we're probably a safer choice that many. But we're not selling a privacy service, just an email service. If privacy is 100% non-negotiable for you, then you'll need to look elsewhere.
- pjc50 11y ago
  That's hilariously brilliant. Your infrastructure is in the US, so Australian law doesn't apply to it; but your staff are in Australia, so US law doesn't apply to them. I'm glad jurisdictional conflict is being used for good.
  - cows_i_have 11y ago
    Best thing I've read all day! This data retention nonsense has been really disappointing as an Australian.
anon1mous 11y ago
Just being in Switzerland won't make a company safe. I know of a case where a European sys admin, at a medium size ISP, was blackmailed into installing monitoring/fiddling devices by an US agency.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Of course. And email's unencrypted and the FBI's been sucking it all up since the 90s at least. But it is a bit nicer to know that there's a harder legal standard in order for a party to snag a whole copy of your mailbox.
brongondwana 11y ago
you'd probably be looking for protonmail if your only criteria is jurisdiction. They seem competent enough from the outside - I have no insight into how they operate. We (FastMail) have a far superior product in just about every other way though, so it comes down to what you consider important, and what tradeoffs you're willing to make. In my opinion there is a very tiny gap between things for which a security agency is willing to take the PR hit of taking our servers out of the datacentre in New York (and dealing with the fact that the disks are encrypted and there are replicas in Amsterdam of all the data anyway) - and where they're willing to bribe/coerce a staff member or datacentre tech in Switzerland (or just quietly do a backroom deal with the government there). You would have to, as robn said - be doing some pretty shady stuff - stuff that's probably against our terms of service anyway - stuff that's probably going to get a lawful intercept done in any country. Speaking of which, Switzerland does lawful intercept too, and don't think that any service there will magically be immune from legal process. https://www.li.admin.ch/en/themes/procedure https://www.li.admin.ch/en/themes/procedure tl;dr - we don't place ourselves above the law. We obey the laws of Australia, which has strong privacy protections still - despite this silly metadata retention business (which is totally knee jerk and poorly written and, our legal advice suggests, not relevant to us anyway). It's mostly so a handful agencies (actually fewer than before, it tightened that up) can get their hands on mobile phone tower records faster and with guaranteed timeframes of retention - local ISP email just got caught in the crossfire.
- dombili 11y ago
  >you'd probably be looking for protonmail if your only criteria is jurisdiction. They seem competent enough from the outside - I have no insight into how they operate. http://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still-isnt-fully-secure/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still-...
  - brongondwana 11y ago
    Yep, that's pretty much in agreement with what I said - the technical dance that they go through adds extra protections against one specific type of attack (a legal "hand over data" that doesn't come with a "change your system so you can obtain said data" rider), but it's still worthless in face of other attack vectors.
brongondwana 11y ago
Oh, I should answer your other question. Go read: http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/15/security-confidentiality/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/15/security-confidentiality... And then read: http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/10/security-availability/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/10/security-availability/ In short - the datacentres in the USA are insanely cheaper than Australia, they speak English (well enough, and you can learn the accent from TV), they have clueful staff, you can buy equipment cheaply in country and have it shipped to your datacentre quickly... lots of little things. It's why we've moved the European datacentre to Amsterdam as well - it was that or London for price, language, availability of equipment.
tracker1 11y ago
Not sure I completely agree with that.. hasn't the swiss government and banking pretty much fallen in line with regards to those outlined in the USA PATRIOT act? My understanding is that they've been pretty cooperative here. Amsterdam may be the safer bet, not safe, but safer.
baus 11y ago
Reading email is certainly latency sensitive. It IS called FASTmail.

stock_toaster 11y ago

> Not really quite sure what the benefit is there; email isn't latency sensitive. My guess is the webmail interface.

alfiedotwtf 11y ago

> I just wish Fastmail didn't have servers in the US tl;dr - We are Australian, so PATRIOT Act doesn't apply. http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-us-what-this-means-for-you/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-in... "It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so." "Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it."

hydrogen18 11y ago
I don't really follow your logic here. If your servers are physically in the US, a judge will just issue a warrant to seize the servers.
- alfiedotwtf 11y ago
  All drives are encrypted. They may take our servers, but they'll never take our customer's data.
  - throwaway123534 11y ago
    Those servers -- do they have Firewire Ports? USB3? Other externally accessible DMA ports? Drive encryption prevents offline data at rest, they keys will be in memory for a running server. If LEA is going to grab your servers, your keys are going to go with them.
    - brongondwana 11y ago
      Yeah, it's true - same for anyone. The main benefit of encrypting the drives (indeed, the only reason I was willing to do the tradeoff for something which is mostly theatre) is that we can RMA failed drives and discard old drives with no risk to customer data. That alone is worth paying the slight overhead on modern CPUs for full disk encryption of all user-data partitions (the OS isn't encrypted - it's Debian with some open source packages on it, and we throw it away anytime - http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/07/automated-installation/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/07/automated-installation/)
- robn_fastmail 11y ago
  Maybe. They'd have to issue that warrant to our datacentre operators though, not us, because there's nowhere to send the documentation. And then they can compel our datacentre not to talk about it, if they like, but they can't stop us talking about. Really though, the point of all this isn't to say they can't take our servers - of course they can, via legal and illegal means. The point is more to say that they can't do it _quietly_, which greatly raises the bar, because now you've got a PR shitstorm to deal with. But really, it's not going to happen, because we have good legal processes in place. There are proper channels from most countries in the world to the appropriate Australian authorities, and from there to us, and once that request comes in we service it and that's that. If you want reasonably secure and private email, and you're not doing really dodgy shit, we're probably a safer choice that many. But we're not selling a privacy service, just an email service. If privacy is 100% non-negotiable for you, then you'll need to look elsewhere.
pjc50 11y ago
That's hilariously brilliant. Your infrastructure is in the US, so Australian law doesn't apply to it; but your staff are in Australia, so US law doesn't apply to them. I'm glad jurisdictional conflict is being used for good.
- cows_i_have 11y ago
  Best thing I've read all day! This data retention nonsense has been really disappointing as an Australian.

anon1mous 11y ago

Just being in Switzerland won't make a company safe. I know of a case where a European sys admin, at a medium size ISP, was blackmailed into installing monitoring/fiddling devices by an US agency.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Of course. And email's unencrypted and the FBI's been sucking it all up since the 90s at least. But it is a bit nicer to know that there's a harder legal standard in order for a party to snag a whole copy of your mailbox.

brongondwana 11y ago

you'd probably be looking for protonmail if your only criteria is jurisdiction. They seem competent enough from the outside - I have no insight into how they operate. We (FastMail) have a far superior product in just about every other way though, so it comes down to what you consider important, and what tradeoffs you're willing to make. In my opinion there is a very tiny gap between things for which a security agency is willing to take the PR hit of taking our servers out of the datacentre in New York (and dealing with the fact that the disks are encrypted and there are replicas in Amsterdam of all the data anyway) - and where they're willing to bribe/coerce a staff member or datacentre tech in Switzerland (or just quietly do a backroom deal with the government there). You would have to, as robn said - be doing some pretty shady stuff - stuff that's probably against our terms of service anyway - stuff that's probably going to get a lawful intercept done in any country. Speaking of which, Switzerland does lawful intercept too, and don't think that any service there will magically be immune from legal process. https://www.li.admin.ch/en/themes/procedure https://www.li.admin.ch/en/themes/procedure tl;dr - we don't place ourselves above the law. We obey the laws of Australia, which has strong privacy protections still - despite this silly metadata retention business (which is totally knee jerk and poorly written and, our legal advice suggests, not relevant to us anyway). It's mostly so a handful agencies (actually fewer than before, it tightened that up) can get their hands on mobile phone tower records faster and with guaranteed timeframes of retention - local ISP email just got caught in the crossfire.

dombili 11y ago
>you'd probably be looking for protonmail if your only criteria is jurisdiction. They seem competent enough from the outside - I have no insight into how they operate. http://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still-isnt-fully-secure/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/mr-robot-uses-protonmail-still-...
- brongondwana 11y ago
  Yep, that's pretty much in agreement with what I said - the technical dance that they go through adds extra protections against one specific type of attack (a legal "hand over data" that doesn't come with a "change your system so you can obtain said data" rider), but it's still worthless in face of other attack vectors.

brongondwana 11y ago

Oh, I should answer your other question. Go read: http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/15/security-confidentiality/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/15/security-confidentiality... And then read: http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/10/security-availability/ http://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/10/security-availability/ In short - the datacentres in the USA are insanely cheaper than Australia, they speak English (well enough, and you can learn the accent from TV), they have clueful staff, you can buy equipment cheaply in country and have it shipped to your datacentre quickly... lots of little things. It's why we've moved the European datacentre to Amsterdam as well - it was that or London for price, language, availability of equipment.

tracker1 11y ago

Not sure I completely agree with that.. hasn't the swiss government and banking pretty much fallen in line with regards to those outlined in the USA PATRIOT act? My understanding is that they've been pretty cooperative here. Amsterdam may be the safer bet, not safe, but safer.

baus 11y ago

Reading email is certainly latency sensitive. It IS called FASTmail.