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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 Austra

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.

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.