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ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance?
- sschueller 7y agoYep, Similar issues with Threema. They are currently under the number of requests [1] but will eventually reach it and then what? [1] https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport
- java-man 7y agoThe question is: is ProtonMail run by a bunch of naive physicists or a carefully created honeytrap?
- microcolonel 7y ago¿Por qué no los dos?
- java-man 7y agotranslation: why not both? indeed. however, a naive physicist facing a reality (in the form of evidence that contradict their public stance) will adjust the stance, issue an apology, correct the message, etc. so the answer is clear.
- cblades 7y agoNo it's not. The privacy debate is not black and white, especially concerning the obligation of service-providers to go to bat for every customer that a lawfully designated entity has the legal authority to investigate. In the black and white world you're living in, there is no privacy, as no one can live up to your standards.
- 781 7y agoThere is precedent for that, a Swiss crypto company which sold NSA backdoored crypto systems to the Iranians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
- ravenstine 7y agoThere's precedent because they are Swiss?
- 781 7y agoAdvertisement [1]: > Unlike competing services, we do not save any tracking information. By default, we do not record metadata such as the IP addresses used to log into accounts. Notice the sneaky "by default" :) Reality [2]: > In April 2019, at the request of the Swiss judiciary in a case of clear criminal conduct, we enabled IP logging against a specific user account which is engaged in illegal activities which contravene Swiss law. Can the Swiss judiciary ask ProtonMail to serve a different version of the website to a specific user account, which sends the cleartext to a remote server? [1] https://protonmail.com/security-details https://protonmail.com/security-details [2] https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/ https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/
- SubiculumCode 7y agoYour latter example seems legitimate. I think there is a clear difference between complying with a judicial request/order about a specific user and enabling logging by default. If one wants more than that, then one better own the bare metal of a mail server. In any case, I expect legitimate companies to comply with the law.
- ckastner 7y agoWhat exactly should ProtonMail have done in this case? Refuse to comply with the court order? Not defending ProtonMail's actions mentioned in the topic, only puzzled why you seem so surprised in your comment.
- wolfgke 7y agoOne problem with ProtonMail that is also relevant here is that ProtonMail does not allow to pay anonymously for the service (so that investigators are able to follow the money trail). On the other hand (this is not supposed to be an advertisement or testimonial; I just state the fact), the German email provider Posteo that has some popularity among people who are concerned about privacy also allows anonymous payments via banknotes (cash) that is sent via mail (just put the letter into a postbox in a completely different city).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mikece 7y agoAnd would it be breaking any laws for a third party to pay for your ProtonMail account? Might be worth it to some people to pay 2x or even 10x the annual fee in cash to a third party to not have their financial fingerprints on the account.
- 781 7y agoYou paying the cost for the "jihadi-john" account for a 1x/9x profit sounds like a good way of getting yourself into trouble.
- mikece 7y agoNot everyone wanting privacy is a terrorist. Sometimes they are just very private people.
- throwaway743 7y agoAnd perhaps everyone shouldn't have to live under the watch of a panopticon
- smolder 7y agoPardon my cynicism here, but: panopticon proponents seem to have all the power. There's little you can do to protest it. There's no anti-panopticon party to vote for, and organizing any kind of counter-action will just get you labeled a terrorist if at any point you become effective, I'd guess. I love to support products that respect my privacy, but it sort of feels like wasting money for lip service.
- mikece 7y agoWhile the messages themselves might not be able to be read due to end-to-end encryption, the metadata -- IP addresses, time of access, to/from whom messages are being routed, possibly more from a mobile app -- would provide a LOT of information. And unless I'm mistaken, Swiss banks are a members of the SWIFT agreement... possible connection?
- chmars 7y agoSwitzerland is a member of SWIFT. There is also a data center in Switzerland according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...
- LinuxBender 7y agoI think it is worth reiterating that regardless of (insert application) provider used, one should assume lawful intercept and low friction compliance, not to mention eventual data leakage from hacks, bugs and competence issues. If PGP is difficult, people can use a simpler route of 7-zip encrypting text files with a pre-shared passphrase. Share your passphrase out-of-band when feasible. i.e. physical notes, sftp, voice chat, private chat server (mumble / murmur super easy to set up), etc... Use different passphrases for different circles of friends. Example: [1] [1] - https://tinyvpn.org/e/c/6/ec6ef8690422c94f17da3b2caa60a5c1.7z https://tinyvpn.org/e/c/6/ec6ef8690422c94f17da3b2caa60a5c1.7... Created using: 7za a -mhe=on -p ./SECRET.7z ./SECRET.txt pw akduygajygrvads____________lgidufh^-_adliuanj^^^42^^^^^^^onijhoijg__1__
- spraak 7y agoHmm I was just the other day contemplating moving my domain and email off of Google/Gsuite nd ProtonMail was one alternative I was considering. Now I'm hesitant - what other options are there?
- slenk 7y agoHosting it for $5/month on a Linode VPS using mailinabox.email
- dbmueller 7y agoI'm tempted to do that, but how much effort does it take to have something rock solid with no downtime? Or in general, what are the `uptime` over `time investment` and `security` over `time investment` curves like?
- gervu 7y agoNo downtime is "unicorn feathers" territory. Extremely low downtime requires redundant systems and a dedicated support team actively trying to head off potential problems. And Gmail still has downtime. But you're asking the wrong questions. Email itself has retries built in, it doesn't need perfect uptime. What you should be asking is how badly Gmail deciding you might be a spammer and not caring about fixing that for one person is going to torpedo your deliverability rate.
- optmzr 7y agoI haven't tried mailinabox.email, but I've run a mailcow-dockerized instance for about 4 months. It took about 1 day to set it all up, where most of the time was spent waiting for DNS changes and for Microsoft to de-list my IP from their blacklist (I probably got a bad IP from DigitalOcean). After that I have logged in to the instance every two weeks to update the machine, haven't had any problems as of yet. The uptime shouldn't be any problem, as the other mail providers should retry sending their mail, it's even mentioned in the RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4 Hopefully I haven't missed any mail when updating mailcow-dockerized, I'll never know, hehe. Really easy and a great experience, compared to doing it from scratch.
- maverickmax90 7y agoYou guys should try migadu.com
- spraak 7y agoCan you share why?
- C14L 7y ago> at the request of the Swiss judiciary The reason I use Protonmail is that Swizerland can't be easily bullied by the US or similar countries into abusing their court system to illegally spy on people (unlike my own country). If a Swiss judge decides that a specific individual should be surveilled, I am more inclined to trust that it is for good and legal reasons.
- sapilla 7y agoDo you know this from experience or is it a personal belief?
- idlewords 7y agoThe NSA can spy on ProtonMail without any need for bullying or diplomacy. Hosting email abroad makes it is a wide open target for US intelligence services proscribed from operating domestically.
- chmars 7y agoI have bad news for you: Switzerland is a close US ally. It is even a second-tier partner to the NSA as we know from the Snowden leaks: https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2013/10/30/5270985d63fd3d7d778b4576.html https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2013/10/30/5270985d63fd3d7d778... Geneva, the home of ProtonMail, is a major international spy hub thanks to the UN. Snowden was even working in Geneva for some time.
- techrich 7y agoEveryone has to agree with the bully in the play ground. The bully is not around forever though. A new one comes along.
- akskos 7y agoarchive link for anyone else who is unable to access the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20190529151510/https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190529151510/https://steigerle...
- KirinDave 7y agoA bunch of folks have been warning that ProtonMail is essentially well-polished marketing, smoke and mirrors. It isn't just their position on law enforcement or data collection; they've made a series of very awkward cryptographic mistakes that sort of give the game away. For example, using problematic crypto libraries, omitting salient facts from their marketing copy, and repeatedly failing to deliver on promises to correct the above issues.
- ziddoap 7y agoI'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I'd love to see some source material for these claims - specifically the "repeatedly failing to deliver on promises to correct the above issues" in regards to their crypto.
- KirinDave 7y agoNot even 2 months ago they misrepresented crypto capabilities and we're forced to agree they'd fix it. Still waiting on further action. There are others, you can just search for them. This is one I just happened to have on hand, on this very website. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370
- ziddoap 7y agoI will read into it, thanks for providing additional info.
- A2017U1 7y agoA lot of people have also been launching large scale sophisticated ddos attacks against protonmail. Combine that with baseless over-exagerrated claims easily refuted every 3 months and what does that tell you?
- KirinDave 7y agoThis claim was refuted? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370 Sure seems like they got caught lying, to me.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- protonmail 7y agoProtonMail team here. These allegations are false. Hidden at the bottom of the article, is this: "Public prosecutor Walder of the Competence Center Cybercrime contacted me, saying he had been misquoted". In other words, the alleged source (a public prosecutor) has also supported our denial of these false allegations. ProtonMail does not voluntarily offer assistance. We only do so when ordered by a Swiss court or prosecutor, as we are obligated to follow the law in criminal cases. Furthermore, end-to-end encryption means we cannot be forced by a court to provide message contents.
- sebiw 7y agoFrom the addendum: > I was live-tweeting the event, including the interesting presentation by public prosecutor Walder. The remark that ProtonMail was a (potential) PDCS would have been too trivial to be live-tweeted. The insight on the other hand that ProtonMail voluntarily offers assistance for real-time surveillance, was spectacular and I therefore live-tweeted the statement. In its transparency report, ProtonMail – as mentioned above – itself refers to at least one case of real-time surveillance.
- protonmail 7y agoThe prosecutor in question has come on the record and said he was misrepresented. ProtonMail is also on the record as saying the "voluntary assistance" claim is false and untrue. Unless there is some massive conspiracy/cover-up involving a Swiss public prosecutor, the most likely explanation (the article is wrong) is probably the correct one.
- chmars 7y agoIsn't it more likely that the state prosecutor spilled the beans? The statement even matches your own transparency report where you describe a case of IP logging, a typical real-time surveillance measure: 'In April 2019, at the request of the Swiss judiciary in a case of clear criminal conduct, we enabled IP logging against a specific user account which is engaged in illegal activities which contravene Swiss law. Pursuant to Swiss law, the user in question will also be notified and afforded the opportunity to defend against this in court before the data can be used in criminal proceedings.' https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/ https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/ (You mention April 2019, the statement by the state prosecutor was made at the beginning of May, i.e., he was probably really happy about your cooperation.)
- bigdang 7y agoWhile ProtonMail’s marketing has always stood out as over the top self-congratulatory, the reaction of people saying “oh no, I need to find an alternative now” represents a fairly naive understanding of the very nature of communication platforms on the internet, especially email. There is no alternative here. There is no company that will ever solve the problem, within the existing email protocol, where one unencrypted sender (say, marketing emails) can send to a so-called “encrypted receiver” and not have an intermediary able to temporarily read the emails. This is inherent in the design of the system. ProtonMail is not end-to-end encrypted in this case, and no email provider can be on the traditional web. There are no alternatives. There is no hard, scientific, mathematical solution to this. The best you’ll get is “soft encryption”—the equivalent of encryption where the third party offering the service chooses the encryption key.
- groovybits 7y ago> There is no alternative here. Technically, there is: Encrypting our own mail with our own keys.
- donjh 7y agoSee https://thehelm.com/ https://thehelm.com/
- groovybits 7y agoI actually own a Helm, and I like it very much!
- DINKDINK 7y agoWhat are the marginal benefits (and costs) of running a Helm over ProtonMail service? I can see none. The justified concerns the security community has with ProtonMail is: Crypto in the browser is bad (mitigable with Qubes), and How do I know PM isn't serving me a backdoored JS. IIRC, Helm has auto updated binaries so backdoor-free code isn't a delta. The best I can come up with is: server+CPU observation/isolation is stronger on local hardware relative to PM at the cost of network observation. Hypothetical: "Ok a Spectre-style attack is out, spam emails and let's do some timing-correlation traffic analysis"
- NutritionFacts 7y agoI recall e-mailing ProtonMail years ago and asking why they chose GoDaddy as a registrar considering their entire existence is based on enhancing security/best practices. The response I received back was very disappointing and even concerning. I don't think they understand the concept of threat modeling.
- vinay_ys 7y agoToday, mobile phones are super powerful, always-on and almost always connected. We should be able to run mail completely on the mobile device? There could be blind relay mailboxes in between to help store/forward the mails until they are retrieved by mobile phone app.. and of course there's end to end encryption with no metadata leakage in the relay. Possible? Already exists - app? relay?
- silversconfused 7y agoThis is how email was intended to work, but anti spam measures now prevent "any normal user's device" from originating a message. To deliver a message you would need to find a trusted relay to add legitimacy flags to the message, or you need a trusting recipient with a friendly network path between you so a plain message would not be blocked.
- vinay_ys 7y agoI know how email works. Have run very large deployments. I'm asking if such a 1-person completely decentralized convenient deployment solution exists? If not, why not?
- silversconfused 7y agoBarrier to entry was raised significantly. You have to partner with someone to make it work, as an individual. Helm looks expensive but interesting.
- oyebenny 7y agoDoes ProtonMail perform real-time surveillance of users? Yes or No?
- cblades 7y agoWhat does real-time surveillance mean in your question?
- chmars 7y agoMy own definition does not matter. Swiss law matters: 'The order may require real-time surveillance to be carried out and the handover of the retained secondary data of telecommunications from past communications (retroactive surveillance).' https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/20122728/index.html#a26 https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/20122728/...
- everdrive 7y agoThere's a lot of paranoia in this thread. The whole point of end to end encryption is that it protects against court-mandated searches. (among other things) It doesn't prevent the search, it renders the search less useful. End to end encryption in email is somewhat silly, because the vast majority of the time you will be sending email to a private company, or to a gmail address, or generally just to another party that will not respect your privacy at all. The real benefit to something like ProtonMail is that they're not Gmail. They're not scanning every message you send you send and using it to build an advertising profile on you. If you're really worried about government warrants, email is not the tool for you.
- jasonsync 7y agoEnd-to-end encryption protects against the service provider (employees) from easily reading your data. This is the biggest benefit. Of course the service provider can be compelled by law enforcement to hand over encrypted data. Law enforcement may then either attempt to brute force the encryption key password, or compel the user to provide the encryption key password (typically the account password with end-to-end encrypted services): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law Does ordering you to hand over your password entail a form of self-incrimination or a violation of the right to silence? Would granting police the power to compel passwords cross a line centuries old against forcing a person to speak to build the case against them? https://globalnews.ca/news/5310901/canada-privacy-passwords-law/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5310901/canada-privacy-passwords-...
- everdrive 7y agoAre there cases where company employees are reading your email for some reason other than marketing? Serious question --- I'm not too aware of how and where this is documented. Your point about being compelled to hand over your key password (email password) is valid and interesting, but I'm inclined to restate my original point: email is not the tool for you if you believe you're apt to be arrested and your communications subpoenaed.
- 7y ago
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoDo Swiss court orders go by another name? I mean, they specifically use the word 'request'. Request by the definition, as opposed to an order, is voluntary. I will add that I find it funny, whenever such topics come up, that people who love authority and agree with surveillance will literally change the wording to fit their desired narrative. I see a lot of people in this thread talking about 'orders' when that word was never used originally and would remove the ambiguity that allows the argument that proton does real time voluntary surveillance.
- idlewords 7y agoIf you want to communicate securely, don't use email. Every email provider in the world is subject to some government authority, and there is not a government on the planet that will allow a service to operate without some provision for surveillance (nor should it!). But before you move everything to the secret decoder ring, think about what you are actually trying to achieve. Don't want your email to be read by the FBI? Move it to a server in Switzerland and it will be read by the NSA. I like ProtonMail and I hope they succeed. I find their marketing (explicit or implied) that suggest it protects you against targeted government surveillance annoying and disingenuous.
- npx 7y agoI'm a happy Protonmail user and I think this (even if it were true) is only an issue if you are being unrealistic. All companies can be legally compelled to take action regardless of their jurisdiction. If you have some gratuitously paranoid threat model, you should be using Tor anyway. I like their service much more than GMail and I feel much more comfortable with regard to data privacy when using it.
- portroyal 7y agoHappy users of any service aren't nearly as vocal as the unhappy ones. @protonmail; I'm happy too. Thanks for doing the do.
- protonmail 7y agoWe have written up a longer article on the false allegations here: https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/ https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/ The claims made here are categorically false, and have already been refuted.
- TrumpSucks 7y agohey cuckas
- CptHannibal 7y agoProtonMail's response to the allegations https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/ https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/