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Court rules encrypted email provider Tutanota must monitor messages

135 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Is there anything stopping the German government from seizing their domain and pointing the MX records at a government controlled mail server if Tutanota doesn’t comply?
- Retric 5y ago
  They would presumably also need the correct cryptographic signature.
  - AstralStorm 5y ago
    The DKIM key can be seized and misused in this way easily, or a new valid one can be issued and most of email software will not flag it.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Depends on the registrar used for the domain. Global registrars are not particularly obliged to comply with German law, especially when it is not a case of abuse. However, if the DNS server is located in Germany, they can force that instead.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I assume they could also announce the address space of the mail server with anycast, depending on the current owner and the IP block size (smaller block, less collateral damage by doing so) of commandeering DNS is overly burdensome or exceeds their reach legally.
    - AstralStorm 5y ago
      That would run afoul of DKIM and DNSSEC unless they seize the signing key too. Replacing the latter is particularly hard as DNSSEC operates a separate single trust anchor and is not as easy to circumvent silently as say x.509.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        Right, it’s all dependent on how rigorous sending MXs are validating the receiving MX cryptographically and if the gov can obtain keying material (or rekey). The MITM part is fairly trivial for a competent nation state.
        AstralStorm 5y ago
        Even obtaining valid DNSSEC and x.509 is easy, as DE government has its own trusted key subroot. It is a strong case for using key pinning on all levels, from routing protocols through DNS all the way to email signatures.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        gruez 5y ago
        It's possible, but it would have to be a pretty important target because if it gets discovered, the root would get revoked and can't be used for such purposes again.
        AstralStorm 5y ago
        That would be a political landmine to revoke a lawfult interception root. You could do that, but there's nothing stopping German government from issuing another. Did you see anyone ban Turkey or China roots?
- lightdot 5y ago
  Can't answer you direct question. But if messages sent are end-to-end encrypted, it would make no difference. There is nothing anyone can do to decrypt the content, even if given access to mail servers.
- Archelaos 5y ago
  As you mentioned the German government in particular: From a legal point of view it its a local public prosecutor who orders such operations. However, the prosecutor is not independant like a judge, but bound by directives of his superiors. This chain runs back to the minister of justice. So theoretically the German government may order a monitoring measure, but in practice I think in nearly all cases it would be a subordinate authority. As a side note: there has been complaints recently from the European Court of Justice that criticised that the German prosecutors are not independant enough for European standards. A reform is being discussed in German political circles, but nothing specific is to be expected before this years general election in September.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > As you mentioned the German government in particular [note emphasis] > its a local public prosecutor who orders such operations. Unless Germany uses "public" in wierd way[0][1] the public prosecutor is part of the government. (It's debatable whether they count as part the national goverment, versus just the local/city/whereever government, but the emphasis on "German government" rather than "German government" suggests that's not what you meant.) 0: eg British "public schools", which IIUC are actually the subset of private schools that aren't limited to a specific profession/religion/other demographic 1: In which case maybe I'm just one of today's lucky 10'000[2] who gets to learn interesting facts about the German court system. 2: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053
    - Archelaos 5y ago
      To learn something myself I looked up the definitions of the word "government" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.[1] Most relevant here are the following two: "1 :the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization" (example: 'The government was slow to react to the crisis.') "2 a: the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority ..." What is interesting about this is that the word "government" is usually translated into German as "Regierung", but the German term is more or less exclusively used for the leading part of a body politics (Merriam-Webster's definition 1). When refering to the combined whole of executive, legistlative and judicary we would typically use the word "der Staat" (the state) or would talk about the "Regierungssystem" ("system of government"), which is a bit inconsequently because the "Regierung" is only a part of the "Regierungssystem". So I was reading the sentence of the OP more in the sense of the first definition, because this was closer to the literary translation into German, but can now see that the meaning of the word in English is less precise and therefore more context dependant. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/government https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/government
tantalor 5y ago
> email provider Tutanota > does not consider itself a telecommunications service Is there any point in reading further?
- hundchenkatze 5y ago
  Yes? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Can you elaborate?
- usr1106 5y ago
  I guess the point is that as a telecommunication provider they are legally obliged to provide an interface for lawful interception (only to be used based on court order). If they are not a telecommunications provider there is no law obliging them to do anything. So it's all about legal definitions...
  - salawat 5y ago
    The slippery slope there is once you apply a duck-typing test in a legal context, a corier or a third-party becomes a telecommunications service. I'm sorry, I don't buy that the government should be recognized as having an absolute right to interpose itself in the middle of any two party conversation. Not even by warrant. Justice systems are not, nor should be all-powerful, and that's the direction I see pop up more and more often to the point I'm becoming seriously concerned that rhetoric is sliding in a direction where liberty and freedom is sacrificed on the altar 9f public safety. There is no point being free in a world where you are constantly micromanaged in the interests of maintaining the stability of the state and public, especially when those driving that edifice almost inevitably end up not aligning with the public they putatively serve, and consider anything less than half of the population an acceptable sacrifice to the whims of a slim majority.
foobarbazetc 5y ago
* of specific accounts by legal order. Eh.
- CommieBobDole 5y ago
  And only unencrypted emails, because they don't have access to the encrypted ones. So the takeaway here is "If you're going to do something that law enforcement is likely to get a court order to monitor, don't sign up for an end-to-end encrypted email service and then send plaintext emails over it."
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    I keep wondering where this ends up. I don't think, as a society, we can preserve complete privacy of communication and also have a justice system that is seen to be just. If the bad people can trivially conceal all their communication, and yet we require evidence of wrongdoing in order to convict someone of a crime, how do we balance that? Things like establishing intent (for murder vs manslaughter) have hinged on what the accused said prior to the act. For white-collar crime, proving collusion has hinged on communication evidence. If all the documents that prove fraud are stored encrypted with no way of getting to them, how do we prove fraud? If we can't procure the evidence, how do we convict bad people of the bad things they've done? Do we just prosecute the stupid people and allow anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge to do whatever they like?
    - upofadown 5y ago
      >...we require evidence of wrongdoing in order to convict someone of a crime... Most evidence is not communications. Most crimes have a victim that can testify. Otherwise, how did we ever prosecute crimes in a world were people just talked to one another in private?
      - marcus_holmes 5y ago
        > Most evidence is not communications. Most crimes have a victim that can testify. Yes, there is usually evidence that is not electronic. But removing the electronic evidence makes it harder to secure a conviction. In many cases, the victim's testimony is not enough. If it comes down to the victim's word against the accused's, then we come down on the side of the accused in these cases, because any doubt at all is enough not to convict. To change this we would need to change our entire legal system. > Otherwise, how did we ever prosecute crimes in a world were people just talked to one another in private? Communication is not just conversation. Letters and documents are also communication, and leave a paper trail that could be followed. Now, not so much. If all documents are e2e encrypted, we have a problem proving any crime that doesn't leave physical evidence.
grouphugs 5y ago
the people in this supporting police are fucking idiots, and i can show you why. i can have all of these people implicated in crimes they've never been a part of with 1 25% chance of having them incarcerated. good luck
grouphugs 5y ago
the people supporting police in this thread are fucking idiots, and i can show you all why. i can have all of these people implicated in serious crimes with a 25% chance of incarceration, and a 100% chance at a lot of mental health side effects and monetary side effects. atm i believe that's a good idea and it's worth testing out. if they want police, they're gonna get them right at that there. best of luck everyone, enjoy the games
Zak 5y ago
> The decision will only impact unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails Given the sorts of proposals that have been made to effectively ban end-to-end encryption, the part where it only affects unencrypted messages (and possibly the ciphertext of encrypted emails) is the critical point. The court ruling requires the email provider to intercept emails they already had the technical ability to intercept, for specific accounts that have been connected to a specific crime by evidence.
fitblipper 5y ago
A quote that stood out to me: > The decision comes as nations around the world have sought to weaken encryption to benefit law enforcement investigations. When news articles talk about "an attack on encryption" it should be read as "an attack on companies being able to effectively employ encryption". While the NSA/CIA can and have put in backdoors and breaking changes into encryption standards, when leaders talk about how encryption hinders law enforcement they are trying to groom us for legislation (or executive pressure) which restricts businesses protecting their users and their data. The FBI has applied pressure on Apple to not provide e2e encryption for icloud backups (https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end-to-end-encryption-scrapped-fbi-reuters-report https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end...) and I have no doubt other big companies have passed on stronger protection in the name of complying with government pressure.
- retube 5y ago
  Here is a very interesting perspective from a guy called Andersen Cheng who developed an encrypted messaging app - before removing it from the public domain given its adoption by Islamic State: https://www.ft.com/content/00e6b9d5-a9a2-488d-821f-de6813ca4053 https://www.ft.com/content/00e6b9d5-a9a2-488d-821f-de6813ca4... His proposal is for "threshold cryptography" as a trade off between privacy and allowing law enforcement to do their thing when necessary: to break a message would require agreement / input from multiple parties, including the courts. I think potentially a good compromise.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    I can't read the article, but naively to me this sounds like it requires the app-owner to be able to access the messages when requested, and so whatever thresholds they say they're adhering to (courts, etc), as an end-user I can't know if they might change their minds at some point and read all my messages.
    - 3np 5y ago
      While what you're saying is how it may play out in practice (which is, I argue, the case for any closed-source client), it's not necessary when using threshold encryption; you can construct an encrypted message such that K out of N keys can be combined to decrypt the ciphertext. If those public keys are on the client, it does not require the message to be sent to a trusted server. mtgx's comment points to some practical implementation and logistics issues, though. Never mind how one would handle key revokations... --- In case of the main article, though, that's irrelevant, as an e-mail provider necessarily has access to each unencrypted e-mail as they deliver them to and from the user. I can see it being the least bad way to log messages (if they would need to do so). Rather than logging in cleartext, or encrypting with a single key, it could be a threshold encryption where, say, more than one entity inside law enforcement/high court/etc are required in order to decrypt intercepted traffic. I think our learned instinct has become to say "yeah, would be nice but good luck making anyone implement that"... But why not?
Dah00n 5y ago
I must admit I don't see the problem since this isn't "give us unencrypted mails from your encrypted service" but actually "give us unencrypt mails from your unencrypted service". This is not any different than any other case of "hand over the data". The court specifically only ask for unencrypted mails. Of course one can argue for and against this access by law-enforcement but this is a clickbait headline that sounds as if they have to monitor and hand over encrypted mails unencrypted. >The decision will only impact unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails, as Tutanota can’t decrypt data that has already been encrypted, Tutanota added. It also said this should serve as a warning that for customers interested in maintaining their privacy, encryption is paramount.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  So what makes it different than some "hand over the data", is they are requiring the service to log things they aren't logging at all now, rather than to hand over logs. How significant this difference is, you can argue, but that's the difference I think.
  - swiley 5y ago
    >they are requiring the service to log things they aren't logging at all now That actually is a big deal, last I checked (in the US anyway) you're not really required to log much (if anything) as long as you can keep illegal content/abuse off your service.
    - d4mi3n 5y ago
      This depends a lot on context. For example, if you operate as a lender in the US finance industry, you're legally obligated to do things like: 1. Do KYC (Know Your Customer) checks to verify somebody's identity 2. Cross references customers to blacklists provided by the federal government (anti-money laundering laws, political sanctions, known fraudsters) 3. Maintain records of who you lent money to, when, for how much, and what the declared use of funds was Etc, etc. There are a lot of reasons in a lot of industries where you're required to keep records of things.
aborsy 5y ago
Metadata contains a lot of information in case of email. Also, a lot of emails are from non-Tutanota providers to Tutanota. These emails are encrypted upon arrival with users’ keys, but they could be handed over to law enforcement before encryption.
- upofadown 5y ago
  In this case they are asking for unencrypted content as well as metadata. These days most email is TLS encrypted on the wire so you require cooperation with the email server owner to get the metadata of encrypted messages. So email is not much different than other stuff when it comes to metadata.
doggodaddo78 5y ago
Always use E2EE if you're worried. Then, the major things a govt would get from a warrant would be the metadata and the to/from. How can an email provider be required to spend time and money to spy on all of its users for a government without a specific warrant? Edit: No Clipper chips. Not this again. No way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Worse things have been done before though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive ISPs were required to save logs of their users' traffic in the EU. Eventually this got squashed by the courts, but that took years.
  - doggodaddo78 5y ago
    Yes, I'm well-aware. Beyond the Utah datacenter's storage abilities as a privacy eliminator and blackmail facility, there were a worse series of mass privacy-invasions in the US enabled by corporate interests including FAIRVIEW and the "Room 641A"s. https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub... In these instance, it's not public what volunteering, complicity, inducements, cajoling, and/or leverage were used to attain such arrangements.
Tutanota 5y ago
Hi there, Tutanota team here. We came across the discussion and wanted to say that we're available for any questions. The decision only affects not encrypted emails, the end-to-end encryption of Tutanota is not affected. To the contrary, the ruling - even though we hoped for a different outcome - again shows why end-to-end encryption is necessary. This ruling is a follow-up of a previous court order from 2020. We have posted a more detailed comment here: https://np.reddit.com/r/tutanota/comments/k3sfs5/in_englisch_court_forces_mail_provider_tutanota/ge4xywc/ https://np.reddit.com/r/tutanota/comments/k3sfs5/in_englisch...
- fsflover 5y ago
  But what about the metadata?
  - Tutanota 5y ago
    If you send end-to-end encrypted data, body, subject line & attachments are encrypted. Email addresses (metadata) can't be encrypted due to the way the email system is set up (interoperability).
    - cjg 5y ago
      This is what BitMessage tried to solve, but it looks a bit unloved right now.
      - juskrey 5y ago
        BitMessage was probably the most important experiment in all that blockchain insanity. Among other things, it showed that there are limits for maximum entropy for messaging. E.g. everyone should receive every message to plausibly deny communication, but we have a clear and very short horizon for that amount of data. Hence should expire messages quickly, which does not work in many if not most real world situations.
        KirillPanov 5y ago
dandanua 5y ago
Can someone explain how private emails are used in prosecutions? If it's a blackmail or intimidation then a victim can supply all the necessary evidence. If it's an illegal trade then there should be traces in the real world. In what situations private emails of criminals are absolutely necessary? The only thing I can imagine is an exchange between two criminals of classified information for virtual currency.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Conspiracy charges require actual evidence of ordering people around or of knowledge of operations. This includes certain kinds of money laundering and tax evasion.
regnull 5y ago
Shameless plug time! I'm working on 100% encrypted/authenticated email based on Self-Sovereign Identity and decentralized key registry, check it out at https://github.com/regnull/ubikom https://github.com/regnull/ubikom

135 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

Is there anything stopping the German government from seizing their domain and pointing the MX records at a government controlled mail server if Tutanota doesn’t comply?

Retric 5y ago
They would presumably also need the correct cryptographic signature.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  The DKIM key can be seized and misused in this way easily, or a new valid one can be issued and most of email software will not flag it.
AstralStorm 5y ago
Depends on the registrar used for the domain. Global registrars are not particularly obliged to comply with German law, especially when it is not a case of abuse. However, if the DNS server is located in Germany, they can force that instead.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I assume they could also announce the address space of the mail server with anycast, depending on the current owner and the IP block size (smaller block, less collateral damage by doing so) of commandeering DNS is overly burdensome or exceeds their reach legally.
  - AstralStorm 5y ago
    That would run afoul of DKIM and DNSSEC unless they seize the signing key too. Replacing the latter is particularly hard as DNSSEC operates a separate single trust anchor and is not as easy to circumvent silently as say x.509.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Right, it’s all dependent on how rigorous sending MXs are validating the receiving MX cryptographically and if the gov can obtain keying material (or rekey). The MITM part is fairly trivial for a competent nation state.
      - AstralStorm 5y ago
        Even obtaining valid DNSSEC and x.509 is easy, as DE government has its own trusted key subroot. It is a strong case for using key pinning on all levels, from routing protocols through DNS all the way to email signatures.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        gruez 5y ago
        It's possible, but it would have to be a pretty important target because if it gets discovered, the root would get revoked and can't be used for such purposes again.
        AstralStorm 5y ago
        That would be a political landmine to revoke a lawfult interception root. You could do that, but there's nothing stopping German government from issuing another. Did you see anyone ban Turkey or China roots?
lightdot 5y ago
Can't answer you direct question. But if messages sent are end-to-end encrypted, it would make no difference. There is nothing anyone can do to decrypt the content, even if given access to mail servers.
Archelaos 5y ago
As you mentioned the German government in particular: From a legal point of view it its a local public prosecutor who orders such operations. However, the prosecutor is not independant like a judge, but bound by directives of his superiors. This chain runs back to the minister of justice. So theoretically the German government may order a monitoring measure, but in practice I think in nearly all cases it would be a subordinate authority. As a side note: there has been complaints recently from the European Court of Justice that criticised that the German prosecutors are not independant enough for European standards. A reform is being discussed in German political circles, but nothing specific is to be expected before this years general election in September.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > As you mentioned the German government in particular [note emphasis] > its a local public prosecutor who orders such operations. Unless Germany uses "public" in wierd way[0][1] the public prosecutor is part of the government. (It's debatable whether they count as part the national goverment, versus just the local/city/whereever government, but the emphasis on "German government" rather than "German government" suggests that's not what you meant.) 0: eg British "public schools", which IIUC are actually the subset of private schools that aren't limited to a specific profession/religion/other demographic 1: In which case maybe I'm just one of today's lucky 10'000[2] who gets to learn interesting facts about the German court system. 2: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053
  - Archelaos 5y ago
    To learn something myself I looked up the definitions of the word "government" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.[1] Most relevant here are the following two: "1 :the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization" (example: 'The government was slow to react to the crisis.') "2 a: the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority ..." What is interesting about this is that the word "government" is usually translated into German as "Regierung", but the German term is more or less exclusively used for the leading part of a body politics (Merriam-Webster's definition 1). When refering to the combined whole of executive, legistlative and judicary we would typically use the word "der Staat" (the state) or would talk about the "Regierungssystem" ("system of government"), which is a bit inconsequently because the "Regierung" is only a part of the "Regierungssystem". So I was reading the sentence of the OP more in the sense of the first definition, because this was closer to the literary translation into German, but can now see that the meaning of the word in English is less precise and therefore more context dependant. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/government https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/government

tantalor 5y ago

> email provider Tutanota > does not consider itself a telecommunications service Is there any point in reading further?

hundchenkatze 5y ago
Yes? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Can you elaborate?
usr1106 5y ago
I guess the point is that as a telecommunication provider they are legally obliged to provide an interface for lawful interception (only to be used based on court order). If they are not a telecommunications provider there is no law obliging them to do anything. So it's all about legal definitions...
- salawat 5y ago
  The slippery slope there is once you apply a duck-typing test in a legal context, a corier or a third-party becomes a telecommunications service. I'm sorry, I don't buy that the government should be recognized as having an absolute right to interpose itself in the middle of any two party conversation. Not even by warrant. Justice systems are not, nor should be all-powerful, and that's the direction I see pop up more and more often to the point I'm becoming seriously concerned that rhetoric is sliding in a direction where liberty and freedom is sacrificed on the altar 9f public safety. There is no point being free in a world where you are constantly micromanaged in the interests of maintaining the stability of the state and public, especially when those driving that edifice almost inevitably end up not aligning with the public they putatively serve, and consider anything less than half of the population an acceptable sacrifice to the whims of a slim majority.

foobarbazetc 5y ago

* of specific accounts by legal order. Eh.

CommieBobDole 5y ago
And only unencrypted emails, because they don't have access to the encrypted ones. So the takeaway here is "If you're going to do something that law enforcement is likely to get a court order to monitor, don't sign up for an end-to-end encrypted email service and then send plaintext emails over it."
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I keep wondering where this ends up. I don't think, as a society, we can preserve complete privacy of communication and also have a justice system that is seen to be just. If the bad people can trivially conceal all their communication, and yet we require evidence of wrongdoing in order to convict someone of a crime, how do we balance that? Things like establishing intent (for murder vs manslaughter) have hinged on what the accused said prior to the act. For white-collar crime, proving collusion has hinged on communication evidence. If all the documents that prove fraud are stored encrypted with no way of getting to them, how do we prove fraud? If we can't procure the evidence, how do we convict bad people of the bad things they've done? Do we just prosecute the stupid people and allow anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge to do whatever they like?
  - upofadown 5y ago
    >...we require evidence of wrongdoing in order to convict someone of a crime... Most evidence is not communications. Most crimes have a victim that can testify. Otherwise, how did we ever prosecute crimes in a world were people just talked to one another in private?
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      > Most evidence is not communications. Most crimes have a victim that can testify. Yes, there is usually evidence that is not electronic. But removing the electronic evidence makes it harder to secure a conviction. In many cases, the victim's testimony is not enough. If it comes down to the victim's word against the accused's, then we come down on the side of the accused in these cases, because any doubt at all is enough not to convict. To change this we would need to change our entire legal system. > Otherwise, how did we ever prosecute crimes in a world were people just talked to one another in private? Communication is not just conversation. Letters and documents are also communication, and leave a paper trail that could be followed. Now, not so much. If all documents are e2e encrypted, we have a problem proving any crime that doesn't leave physical evidence.

grouphugs 5y ago

the people in this supporting police are fucking idiots, and i can show you why. i can have all of these people implicated in crimes they've never been a part of with 1 25% chance of having them incarcerated. good luck

grouphugs 5y ago

the people supporting police in this thread are fucking idiots, and i can show you all why. i can have all of these people implicated in serious crimes with a 25% chance of incarceration, and a 100% chance at a lot of mental health side effects and monetary side effects. atm i believe that's a good idea and it's worth testing out. if they want police, they're gonna get them right at that there. best of luck everyone, enjoy the games

Zak 5y ago

> The decision will only impact unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails Given the sorts of proposals that have been made to effectively ban end-to-end encryption, the part where it only affects unencrypted messages (and possibly the ciphertext of encrypted emails) is the critical point. The court ruling requires the email provider to intercept emails they already had the technical ability to intercept, for specific accounts that have been connected to a specific crime by evidence.

fitblipper 5y ago

A quote that stood out to me: > The decision comes as nations around the world have sought to weaken encryption to benefit law enforcement investigations. When news articles talk about "an attack on encryption" it should be read as "an attack on companies being able to effectively employ encryption". While the NSA/CIA can and have put in backdoors and breaking changes into encryption standards, when leaders talk about how encryption hinders law enforcement they are trying to groom us for legislation (or executive pressure) which restricts businesses protecting their users and their data. The FBI has applied pressure on Apple to not provide e2e encryption for icloud backups (https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end-to-end-encryption-scrapped-fbi-reuters-report https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end...) and I have no doubt other big companies have passed on stronger protection in the name of complying with government pressure.

retube 5y ago
Here is a very interesting perspective from a guy called Andersen Cheng who developed an encrypted messaging app - before removing it from the public domain given its adoption by Islamic State: https://www.ft.com/content/00e6b9d5-a9a2-488d-821f-de6813ca4053 https://www.ft.com/content/00e6b9d5-a9a2-488d-821f-de6813ca4... His proposal is for "threshold cryptography" as a trade off between privacy and allowing law enforcement to do their thing when necessary: to break a message would require agreement / input from multiple parties, including the courts. I think potentially a good compromise.
- SamBam 5y ago
  I can't read the article, but naively to me this sounds like it requires the app-owner to be able to access the messages when requested, and so whatever thresholds they say they're adhering to (courts, etc), as an end-user I can't know if they might change their minds at some point and read all my messages.
  - 3np 5y ago
    While what you're saying is how it may play out in practice (which is, I argue, the case for any closed-source client), it's not necessary when using threshold encryption; you can construct an encrypted message such that K out of N keys can be combined to decrypt the ciphertext. If those public keys are on the client, it does not require the message to be sent to a trusted server. mtgx's comment points to some practical implementation and logistics issues, though. Never mind how one would handle key revokations... --- In case of the main article, though, that's irrelevant, as an e-mail provider necessarily has access to each unencrypted e-mail as they deliver them to and from the user. I can see it being the least bad way to log messages (if they would need to do so). Rather than logging in cleartext, or encrypting with a single key, it could be a threshold encryption where, say, more than one entity inside law enforcement/high court/etc are required in order to decrypt intercepted traffic. I think our learned instinct has become to say "yeah, would be nice but good luck making anyone implement that"... But why not?

Dah00n 5y ago

I must admit I don't see the problem since this isn't "give us unencrypted mails from your encrypted service" but actually "give us unencrypt mails from your unencrypted service". This is not any different than any other case of "hand over the data". The court specifically only ask for unencrypted mails. Of course one can argue for and against this access by law-enforcement but this is a clickbait headline that sounds as if they have to monitor and hand over encrypted mails unencrypted. >The decision will only impact unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails, as Tutanota can’t decrypt data that has already been encrypted, Tutanota added. It also said this should serve as a warning that for customers interested in maintaining their privacy, encryption is paramount.

jrochkind1 5y ago
So what makes it different than some "hand over the data", is they are requiring the service to log things they aren't logging at all now, rather than to hand over logs. How significant this difference is, you can argue, but that's the difference I think.
- swiley 5y ago
  >they are requiring the service to log things they aren't logging at all now That actually is a big deal, last I checked (in the US anyway) you're not really required to log much (if anything) as long as you can keep illegal content/abuse off your service.
  - d4mi3n 5y ago
    This depends a lot on context. For example, if you operate as a lender in the US finance industry, you're legally obligated to do things like: 1. Do KYC (Know Your Customer) checks to verify somebody's identity 2. Cross references customers to blacklists provided by the federal government (anti-money laundering laws, political sanctions, known fraudsters) 3. Maintain records of who you lent money to, when, for how much, and what the declared use of funds was Etc, etc. There are a lot of reasons in a lot of industries where you're required to keep records of things.

aborsy 5y ago

Metadata contains a lot of information in case of email. Also, a lot of emails are from non-Tutanota providers to Tutanota. These emails are encrypted upon arrival with users’ keys, but they could be handed over to law enforcement before encryption.

upofadown 5y ago
In this case they are asking for unencrypted content as well as metadata. These days most email is TLS encrypted on the wire so you require cooperation with the email server owner to get the metadata of encrypted messages. So email is not much different than other stuff when it comes to metadata.

doggodaddo78 5y ago

Always use E2EE if you're worried. Then, the major things a govt would get from a warrant would be the metadata and the to/from. How can an email provider be required to spend time and money to spy on all of its users for a government without a specific warrant? Edit: No Clipper chips. Not this again. No way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Aerroon 5y ago
Worse things have been done before though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive ISPs were required to save logs of their users' traffic in the EU. Eventually this got squashed by the courts, but that took years.
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  Yes, I'm well-aware. Beyond the Utah datacenter's storage abilities as a privacy eliminator and blackmail facility, there were a worse series of mass privacy-invasions in the US enabled by corporate interests including FAIRVIEW and the "Room 641A"s. https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub... In these instance, it's not public what volunteering, complicity, inducements, cajoling, and/or leverage were used to attain such arrangements.

Tutanota 5y ago

Hi there, Tutanota team here. We came across the discussion and wanted to say that we're available for any questions. The decision only affects not encrypted emails, the end-to-end encryption of Tutanota is not affected. To the contrary, the ruling - even though we hoped for a different outcome - again shows why end-to-end encryption is necessary. This ruling is a follow-up of a previous court order from 2020. We have posted a more detailed comment here: https://np.reddit.com/r/tutanota/comments/k3sfs5/in_englisch_court_forces_mail_provider_tutanota/ge4xywc/ https://np.reddit.com/r/tutanota/comments/k3sfs5/in_englisch...

fsflover 5y ago
But what about the metadata?
- Tutanota 5y ago
  If you send end-to-end encrypted data, body, subject line & attachments are encrypted. Email addresses (metadata) can't be encrypted due to the way the email system is set up (interoperability).
  - cjg 5y ago
    This is what BitMessage tried to solve, but it looks a bit unloved right now.
    - juskrey 5y ago
      BitMessage was probably the most important experiment in all that blockchain insanity. Among other things, it showed that there are limits for maximum entropy for messaging. E.g. everyone should receive every message to plausibly deny communication, but we have a clear and very short horizon for that amount of data. Hence should expire messages quickly, which does not work in many if not most real world situations.
      - KirillPanov 5y ago

dandanua 5y ago

Can someone explain how private emails are used in prosecutions? If it's a blackmail or intimidation then a victim can supply all the necessary evidence. If it's an illegal trade then there should be traces in the real world. In what situations private emails of criminals are absolutely necessary? The only thing I can imagine is an exchange between two criminals of classified information for virtual currency.

AstralStorm 5y ago
Conspiracy charges require actual evidence of ordering people around or of knowledge of operations. This includes certain kinds of money laundering and tax evasion.

regnull 5y ago

Shameless plug time! I'm working on 100% encrypted/authenticated email based on Self-Sovereign Identity and decentralized key registry, check it out at https://github.com/regnull/ubikom https://github.com/regnull/ubikom