8 ms·

And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Would you still praise Proton for not working with Law enforcement?

by bnt 7y ago

cblades 7y ago
I hope so. When the phone system was manually-operated switch boards, should the phone companies have been responsible for listening to every call and reporting suspicious activity to the police?
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  That's not the same scenario. Your scenario involves listening to everyone. The GP's scenario involves listening to a specific person with probable cause.
  - takeda 7y ago
    Which translates to listening to everyone. Once they expose data of one user they will get requests for others. Patriot act which supposed to protect population from terrorists not only failed to accomplish it, it was used in war on drugs.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > Once they expose data of one user they will get requests for others. How is this any different from phone wiretaps or other surveillance orders outside of email?
  - cblades 7y ago
    Given that the police wanted information after having already received the threats, they had to have requested some combination of historical and future data. They almost certainly wanted historical data primarily so that they could find the person who sent the threats. There's no way to satisfy requests for historical data without capturing data from everyone.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > There's no way to satisfy requests for historical data without capturing data from everyone. That's not what GGGP suggested. He suggested that they give data for specific people that they already have. You are setting up a strawman here.
      - cblades 7y ago
        > He suggested that they give data for specific people that they already have. ...how were they to know to capture data from those specific people before being asked?
        lern_too_spel 7y ago
        They don't need to. They only need to turn over data they already have for that user and potentially any future data that is generated for that user. Wiretaps work the same way.
  - snarf21 7y ago
    I hate this argument. So there was no crime before email? If you have pc, go get a wire tap or install microphones in their house or get an informant to infiltrate. Police work is hard and requires work but it is also what grants us presumption of innocence.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > If you have pc, go get a wire tap That's what this is. Instead of getting a wire tap on phones, which nobody uses anymore, they're getting a wiretap on email.
fraktl 7y ago
I would. It's not Protonmail who's to be blamed for the potential attack and deaths. There are series of events that lead to people deciding to be terrorists. I'd focus on those reasons rather than hotfixing stuff by exposing 99.9% of other Protonmail users. I would never opt in to affect 99.9% of users because of 0.01% of users. We are all educated enough through events in recent history that clearly tell us how similar use cases lead to abuse, every single time without exception. Given these constraints, Russia's decision to block Protonmail is perfectly fine and the only logical outcome.
- abyssin 7y ago
  It seems you are writing two contradictory arguments. On the one hand you say hotfixing is no solution for terrorism. On the other hand you say blocking Protonmail is fine. Is there some irony that I missed here?
  - takeda 7y ago
    I don't see contradiction there. He is against proton mail disclosing information of its users, and if Russia decides to block access to their service in revenge, so be it.
    - abyssin 7y ago
      Thanks for clarifying, it was a genuine question.
  - fraktl 7y ago
    takeda summed it correctly. I'm not contradicting anything.
- n0mad01 7y ago
  more like 99.999%
- tristor 7y ago
  I agree with your reasoning, and I hear this reasoning a lot in the technical community. I wonder if you evenly apply this to other political issues? There's an incongruity in how people think about privacy rights in the Western world and how they think about property rights, especially in relation to self-defense.
rtkwe 7y ago
Any tool/service private and strong enough to protect political dissidents, opposition journalists and all the 'right kind of people' will inevitably be used by criminals as well. If they can choose to reveal information about one group they can be forced to reveal information about anyone. The only real way around that is to make it private, invite only, and vetted and only invite people with a large enough public presence to be able to have a chance at figuring out if they're the 'right kind of person' which means it can't be open to the average person.
Ragnarork 7y ago
This way of thinking will only ever displace the problem and not solve it. What mean is used to send these bomb threats matters little as the perpetrators can always shift to something else. I mean they could literally just use a physical mailbox, a burner phone, etc., and you'd have absolutely no idea who sent it either and the problem would be the same. Let's not even start with the implications of governments being able to access communications such as journalists and their sources.
xiphias2 7y ago
I never understood why police even accepts anonymous bomb tips. They should respond by requiring the person giving the tip to identify himself.
- golergka 7y ago
  A chance that an anonymous bomb tip will turn out to be true is very small. But it's not zero. Now, for a second, imagine that it really happened. And you're the official who decided "no, we will not act on this". And this decision is in the records. Does this situation look good to you?
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    It's not the official who decides, it should be a general policy. If you look at a similar case, in US. SWAT-ting can be anonymous and can destroy lives, the assymetry of the tips and the resources destroyed by a false tip is unacceptable. The same way for a bomb threat, the officer should act by requiring identification and guaranteeing that it stays private as long as the bomb is real.
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      OK, but before it can become policy, some official or officials have to make it so. Those officials then have to get reelected. That's usually easier when your opponents can't make legitimate-sounding claims that the policies you've instituted led to a bombing.
  - the8472 7y ago
    The official wouldn't make the decision on a whim. He'd have risk assessments, policy documents and what not to back him up.
- kragen 7y ago
  The police want to avoid this scenario: IDIOT ANCHORPERSON COVERED IN MAKEUP: Breaking News: We've just learned that the bombing that killed 152 people in the Podunk Shopping Mall today was known in advance to the police, but they did nothing to inform the public! Now to our reporter on the scene. LOSER IN A SUIT: Hi, this is Rob Harasser, coming to you live from the Podunk Police Headquarters. This is Detective A. Buser Skeptic. Detective Skeptic, I understand you got a call this morning before the bombing? WIFE-BEATER IN A MUSTACHE: Yeah, someone called me this morning. It was hard to hear them, but they said a lot of people would die in the mall today. I asked who was calling and they hung up. LOSER: Did they say they were going to bomb it? WIFE-BEATER: Yeah, they did say something about "a bomb", but I couldn't hear them clearly. LOSER: Did you trace the line? WIFE-BEATER: I did. You know, people think that if they hang up fast enough, we can't trace calls, but that's not true anymore. Even though they called the non-emergency number, I knew where they were calling from in ten minutes. It was a payphone outside the mall. Did you know there are still payphones outside the mall? LOSER: Why didn't you warn people? WIFE-BEATER (looking sad): I thought it was some kid playing a joke. PANCAKE-THICK MAKEUP FACE: Well, there you have it, folks. The police knew, and they didn't tell us.
panarky 7y ago
If Russia had a functioning democracy, with rule of law and an independent judiciary, if Russia's legal system resisted abuses of power, if law enforcement protected the people's interest against the interests of oligarchs and the politically connected instead of vice versa, I might have a different view. But I have little confidence that surveillance requires warrants, or that warrants are only issued with valid probable cause of real crimes, and not against dissidents, journalists, political adversaries and business competitors. Therefore, ProtonMail's only moral and ethical response is to refuse to cooperate with Russia's law enforcement. The same would be true in China if ProtonMail was available there. And given what we now know about the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I'd have to say they've become more like Russia than most care to contemplate.
gwd 7y ago
> And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Do you think Proton are the only people who don't trust the Russian police, and provide them with less information as a result, reducing their ability to solve real crimes? One of the predictable side effects of having a police force / legal system that is used by the powerful to crush dissent that people don't trust you, even when there really are real threats. See also the HK protests regarding the extradition bill, which was prompted by a guy who genuinely did murder his girlfriend in Taiwan.
_eht 7y ago
I would.
craftinator 7y ago
You aren't going to do well here with this argument. There exist principles, which are action guiding rules. We use principles to keep ourselves from being swayed away from certain behaviors which we believe hold value. For example, many martial institutions hold some variant of the "death before dishonor" principle; this rule basically implies that you will choose to die before fleeing battle. Even though there are many pressures to change behavior, which may be VERY great in the moment, holding to your principles will allow you to lead a structured life guided by rules that you care about. Corporations and business entities can also implement principles (to greater or lesser effect); ProtonMail enacts a principle of not sharing customer data. Thousands of companies hold to this same principle, which keeps honest business able to occur. Imagine if every company on Earth decided that they could sell any and all customer data. Banks selling stats on your income to car salesmen, Walgreens selling embarrassing photos of you too the press, etc. The world would be a fucking madhouse, commerce would break down, and millions would die as societies collapsed. A few lives that may or may not expire due to ProtonMail holding to their principles is nothing, comparatively. It would happen one way or another, just with a different email service.
Vaslo 7y ago
You got downvoted but I can't completely disagree with what your saying. I wish there was something in between where you could expose bombers and pedophiles without exposing normal people even with extreme views.

And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Would you still praise Proton for not working with Law enforcement?

by bnt 7y ago

And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Would you still praise Proton for not working with Law enforcement?

cblades 7y ago

I hope so. When the phone system was manually-operated switch boards, should the phone companies have been responsible for listening to every call and reporting suspicious activity to the police?

lern_too_spel 7y ago
That's not the same scenario. Your scenario involves listening to everyone. The GP's scenario involves listening to a specific person with probable cause.
- takeda 7y ago
  Which translates to listening to everyone. Once they expose data of one user they will get requests for others. Patriot act which supposed to protect population from terrorists not only failed to accomplish it, it was used in war on drugs.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    > Once they expose data of one user they will get requests for others. How is this any different from phone wiretaps or other surveillance orders outside of email?
- cblades 7y ago
  Given that the police wanted information after having already received the threats, they had to have requested some combination of historical and future data. They almost certainly wanted historical data primarily so that they could find the person who sent the threats. There's no way to satisfy requests for historical data without capturing data from everyone.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    > There's no way to satisfy requests for historical data without capturing data from everyone. That's not what GGGP suggested. He suggested that they give data for specific people that they already have. You are setting up a strawman here.
    - cblades 7y ago
      > He suggested that they give data for specific people that they already have. ...how were they to know to capture data from those specific people before being asked?
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        They don't need to. They only need to turn over data they already have for that user and potentially any future data that is generated for that user. Wiretaps work the same way.
- snarf21 7y ago
  I hate this argument. So there was no crime before email? If you have pc, go get a wire tap or install microphones in their house or get an informant to infiltrate. Police work is hard and requires work but it is also what grants us presumption of innocence.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    > If you have pc, go get a wire tap That's what this is. Instead of getting a wire tap on phones, which nobody uses anymore, they're getting a wiretap on email.

fraktl 7y ago

I would. It's not Protonmail who's to be blamed for the potential attack and deaths. There are series of events that lead to people deciding to be terrorists. I'd focus on those reasons rather than hotfixing stuff by exposing 99.9% of other Protonmail users. I would never opt in to affect 99.9% of users because of 0.01% of users. We are all educated enough through events in recent history that clearly tell us how similar use cases lead to abuse, every single time without exception. Given these constraints, Russia's decision to block Protonmail is perfectly fine and the only logical outcome.

abyssin 7y ago
It seems you are writing two contradictory arguments. On the one hand you say hotfixing is no solution for terrorism. On the other hand you say blocking Protonmail is fine. Is there some irony that I missed here?
- takeda 7y ago
  I don't see contradiction there. He is against proton mail disclosing information of its users, and if Russia decides to block access to their service in revenge, so be it.
  - abyssin 7y ago
    Thanks for clarifying, it was a genuine question.
- fraktl 7y ago
  takeda summed it correctly. I'm not contradicting anything.
n0mad01 7y ago
more like 99.999%
tristor 7y ago
I agree with your reasoning, and I hear this reasoning a lot in the technical community. I wonder if you evenly apply this to other political issues? There's an incongruity in how people think about privacy rights in the Western world and how they think about property rights, especially in relation to self-defense.

rtkwe 7y ago

Any tool/service private and strong enough to protect political dissidents, opposition journalists and all the 'right kind of people' will inevitably be used by criminals as well. If they can choose to reveal information about one group they can be forced to reveal information about anyone. The only real way around that is to make it private, invite only, and vetted and only invite people with a large enough public presence to be able to have a chance at figuring out if they're the 'right kind of person' which means it can't be open to the average person.

Ragnarork 7y ago

This way of thinking will only ever displace the problem and not solve it. What mean is used to send these bomb threats matters little as the perpetrators can always shift to something else. I mean they could literally just use a physical mailbox, a burner phone, etc., and you'd have absolutely no idea who sent it either and the problem would be the same. Let's not even start with the implications of governments being able to access communications such as journalists and their sources.

xiphias2 7y ago

I never understood why police even accepts anonymous bomb tips. They should respond by requiring the person giving the tip to identify himself.

golergka 7y ago
A chance that an anonymous bomb tip will turn out to be true is very small. But it's not zero. Now, for a second, imagine that it really happened. And you're the official who decided "no, we will not act on this". And this decision is in the records. Does this situation look good to you?
- xiphias2 7y ago
  It's not the official who decides, it should be a general policy. If you look at a similar case, in US. SWAT-ting can be anonymous and can destroy lives, the assymetry of the tips and the resources destroyed by a false tip is unacceptable. The same way for a bomb threat, the officer should act by requiring identification and guaranteeing that it stays private as long as the bomb is real.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    OK, but before it can become policy, some official or officials have to make it so. Those officials then have to get reelected. That's usually easier when your opponents can't make legitimate-sounding claims that the policies you've instituted led to a bombing.
- the8472 7y ago
  The official wouldn't make the decision on a whim. He'd have risk assessments, policy documents and what not to back him up.
kragen 7y ago
The police want to avoid this scenario: IDIOT ANCHORPERSON COVERED IN MAKEUP: Breaking News: We've just learned that the bombing that killed 152 people in the Podunk Shopping Mall today was known in advance to the police, but they did nothing to inform the public! Now to our reporter on the scene. LOSER IN A SUIT: Hi, this is Rob Harasser, coming to you live from the Podunk Police Headquarters. This is Detective A. Buser Skeptic. Detective Skeptic, I understand you got a call this morning before the bombing? WIFE-BEATER IN A MUSTACHE: Yeah, someone called me this morning. It was hard to hear them, but they said a lot of people would die in the mall today. I asked who was calling and they hung up. LOSER: Did they say they were going to bomb it? WIFE-BEATER: Yeah, they did say something about "a bomb", but I couldn't hear them clearly. LOSER: Did you trace the line? WIFE-BEATER: I did. You know, people think that if they hang up fast enough, we can't trace calls, but that's not true anymore. Even though they called the non-emergency number, I knew where they were calling from in ten minutes. It was a payphone outside the mall. Did you know there are still payphones outside the mall? LOSER: Why didn't you warn people? WIFE-BEATER (looking sad): I thought it was some kid playing a joke. PANCAKE-THICK MAKEUP FACE: Well, there you have it, folks. The police knew, and they didn't tell us.

panarky 7y ago

If Russia had a functioning democracy, with rule of law and an independent judiciary, if Russia's legal system resisted abuses of power, if law enforcement protected the people's interest against the interests of oligarchs and the politically connected instead of vice versa, I might have a different view. But I have little confidence that surveillance requires warrants, or that warrants are only issued with valid probable cause of real crimes, and not against dissidents, journalists, political adversaries and business competitors. Therefore, ProtonMail's only moral and ethical response is to refuse to cooperate with Russia's law enforcement. The same would be true in China if ProtonMail was available there. And given what we now know about the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I'd have to say they've become more like Russia than most care to contemplate.

gwd 7y ago

> And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Do you think Proton are the only people who don't trust the Russian police, and provide them with less information as a result, reducing their ability to solve real crimes? One of the predictable side effects of having a police force / legal system that is used by the powerful to crush dissent that people don't trust you, even when there really are real threats. See also the HK protests regarding the extradition bill, which was prompted by a guy who genuinely did murder his girlfriend in Taiwan.

_eht 7y ago

I would.

craftinator 7y ago

You aren't going to do well here with this argument. There exist principles, which are action guiding rules. We use principles to keep ourselves from being swayed away from certain behaviors which we believe hold value. For example, many martial institutions hold some variant of the "death before dishonor" principle; this rule basically implies that you will choose to die before fleeing battle. Even though there are many pressures to change behavior, which may be VERY great in the moment, holding to your principles will allow you to lead a structured life guided by rules that you care about. Corporations and business entities can also implement principles (to greater or lesser effect); ProtonMail enacts a principle of not sharing customer data. Thousands of companies hold to this same principle, which keeps honest business able to occur. Imagine if every company on Earth decided that they could sell any and all customer data. Banks selling stats on your income to car salesmen, Walgreens selling embarrassing photos of you too the press, etc. The world would be a fucking madhouse, commerce would break down, and millions would die as societies collapsed. A few lives that may or may not expire due to ProtonMail holding to their principles is nothing, comparatively. It would happen one way or another, just with a different email service.

Vaslo 7y ago

You got downvoted but I can't completely disagree with what your saying. I wish there was something in between where you could expose bombers and pedophiles without exposing normal people even with extreme views.