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It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australi

It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
regecks 8y ago
Why victimize Fastmail? Law enforcement access to your email inbox remains exactly the same as before this bill was passed. If you're just punishing any Australian company, FeelsBadMan (as an Australian developer).
- kuzko_topia 8y ago
  Well, maybe because this person is doing just that, at it's scale. In the end australians are responsible for the laws they get voted so... that's probably, from an outsider's perspective the only guarantee of taking a "probably not crappy decision" imo...
- peatmoss 8y ago
  Services are complicated, and I expect that encryption is used for a variety of purposes throughout. If a company is based in a jurisdiction that weakens the ability of service providers to use encryption for a wide variety of purposes, I’d rather avoid services based in that jurisdiction than develop a nuanced understanding of a service’s architecture and the interaction with the local laws that govern it. In the end, I think I’ll probably look to some EU-based provider, largely because they seem to have the most reasonable set of laws with respect to human rights and privacy. Sorry you feel like this is me victimizing Australian software devs. Honestly, I love Fastmail. But your country now has laws that preclude the service from moving toward a better encryption posture. If I ever want better, or don’t want to suss out how things got worse, I gotta abandon Australia. No hard feelings. As others have pointed out, there’s at least two parties with unencrypted access to any given email I send or receive. And unless I’m PGP or SMIME encrypting everything, te security posture of email isn’t great to start. But I like to support services that make surveillance marginally more costly and marginally more resilient to volume back-door compromises. Australia’s taken a step back here and legally weakens Fastmail’s ability to improve here. So long and thanks for all the fish.
- hedora 8y ago
  I thought Fastmail offered (as much as is possible) “secure” email, but it says in their blog post that they routinely hand entire mailboxes over to law enforcement. On the top hit they say they host everything in New Jersey, USA (with backups in seattle) but later say they are only governed by Australian law and don’t respond to US court orders: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html Caveat emptor, I guess.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    FastMail was never a "secure email service provider" - just an email provider that offer a good (UX-wise) alternative to Gmail, without mining your private conversations for advertising purposes. I think they made it pretty clear a while back in a blog post on HN that security was not their #1 concern, like it is say for ProtonMail or other end-to-end encrypted email services.
PenguinCoder 8y ago
Unless you and everyone you associate with were encrypting every single email passing through FastMail servers; this change doesn't mean a thing. I know for a fact of a few companies (non gov orgs) that scrape netflow and other data straight from peering points at ISP locations. I use Fastmail, and I'm not happy about this recent bill. But I don't believe it matters at all from what is current done/enabled.
praneshp 8y ago
I reached out to Fastmail support, who referred me to this post they wrote: https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/ https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/
MrEldritch 8y ago
Don't worry - the rest of the Five Eyes will be getting their own version of this law soon, so Australian tech won't be at a security disadvantage for too long.
- z_ 8y ago
  Why would they need those laws? One of the benefits of the Five Eyes establishment is that you can share intelligence. Having an allied partner able to do collection and analysis neatly side steps protections design to stop your own country from doing this type of activity on their own citizens.

It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

regecks 8y ago

Why victimize Fastmail? Law enforcement access to your email inbox remains exactly the same as before this bill was passed. If you're just punishing any Australian company, FeelsBadMan (as an Australian developer).

kuzko_topia 8y ago
Well, maybe because this person is doing just that, at it's scale. In the end australians are responsible for the laws they get voted so... that's probably, from an outsider's perspective the only guarantee of taking a "probably not crappy decision" imo...
peatmoss 8y ago
Services are complicated, and I expect that encryption is used for a variety of purposes throughout. If a company is based in a jurisdiction that weakens the ability of service providers to use encryption for a wide variety of purposes, I’d rather avoid services based in that jurisdiction than develop a nuanced understanding of a service’s architecture and the interaction with the local laws that govern it. In the end, I think I’ll probably look to some EU-based provider, largely because they seem to have the most reasonable set of laws with respect to human rights and privacy. Sorry you feel like this is me victimizing Australian software devs. Honestly, I love Fastmail. But your country now has laws that preclude the service from moving toward a better encryption posture. If I ever want better, or don’t want to suss out how things got worse, I gotta abandon Australia. No hard feelings. As others have pointed out, there’s at least two parties with unencrypted access to any given email I send or receive. And unless I’m PGP or SMIME encrypting everything, te security posture of email isn’t great to start. But I like to support services that make surveillance marginally more costly and marginally more resilient to volume back-door compromises. Australia’s taken a step back here and legally weakens Fastmail’s ability to improve here. So long and thanks for all the fish.
hedora 8y ago
I thought Fastmail offered (as much as is possible) “secure” email, but it says in their blog post that they routinely hand entire mailboxes over to law enforcement. On the top hit they say they host everything in New Jersey, USA (with backups in seattle) but later say they are only governed by Australian law and don’t respond to US court orders: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html Caveat emptor, I guess.
- mtgx 8y ago
  FastMail was never a "secure email service provider" - just an email provider that offer a good (UX-wise) alternative to Gmail, without mining your private conversations for advertising purposes. I think they made it pretty clear a while back in a blog post on HN that security was not their #1 concern, like it is say for ProtonMail or other end-to-end encrypted email services.

PenguinCoder 8y ago

Unless you and everyone you associate with were encrypting every single email passing through FastMail servers; this change doesn't mean a thing. I know for a fact of a few companies (non gov orgs) that scrape netflow and other data straight from peering points at ISP locations. I use Fastmail, and I'm not happy about this recent bill. But I don't believe it matters at all from what is current done/enabled.

praneshp 8y ago

I reached out to Fastmail support, who referred me to this post they wrote: https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/ https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/

MrEldritch 8y ago

Don't worry - the rest of the Five Eyes will be getting their own version of this law soon, so Australian tech won't be at a security disadvantage for too long.

z_ 8y ago
Why would they need those laws? One of the benefits of the Five Eyes establishment is that you can share intelligence. Having an allied partner able to do collection and analysis neatly side steps protections design to stop your own country from doing this type of activity on their own citizens.