6 ms·

For those criticising ProtonMail, what else could they have done? When the law for the country the company is based in says they must do a thing, they can't ju

For those criticising ProtonMail, what else could they have done? When the law for the country the company is based in says they must do a thing, they can't just say "no". It's unfortunate that it happened, but the fact that this could happen shouldn't come as a surprise.

baybal2 5y ago
> For those criticising ProtonMail, what else could they have done? Moving to some Central African, or Central Asian nation, and full-handedly buying the government?
- yaris 5y ago
  Only for US buying that same government in their turn, plus a couple neighbour governments to ensure peopleware excess in case of war?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    There been a number of US laws prohibiting US government from "purchasing" corrupt regimes... Egypt is one of biggest US military aid recipients.
ezoe 5y ago
Shut down(sabotage) the entire service immediately. No working service, no new log. They still can implement IP logging to comply with the government, but alas, service is not working right now. At least, Lavabit did that when they were demanded by US government for the TLS private key to spy on Edward Snowden. Destroy the server equipment, then seek political asylum to the Non-EU countries. Their selling point is they never log IP address. Fulfill that promise or they lose the trust. They chose break the promise. The only unique selling point they have compared to the competitors.
- yaris 5y ago
  If they were shutting down their service every time police requests logs then their servers wouldn't have time to even boot properly. In their "clarification" they claim they received 700 orders in 2020. It is ~2 orders/day.
  - ezoe 5y ago
    I really don't know the situation but it sounds like for these 700 orders in 2020, they can legally challenge the validity of order in the court. But this one particular order, their excuse sounds like it comes from other channel, something akin to the order of Roman dictator so they have no veto power. Sabotaging and seek political asylum to Non-EU countries is the best action they could take in order to keep their face, and resist the dictator.
    - yaris 5y ago
      So you suggest them to drop their business (which took years to build), abandon their families and run because their local court (or police) issued an order, one of several hundreds they have to process each year? Also - in which country could they seek political asylum exactly? Surely not the Commonwealth, not EU, not Russia (PM is banned there because they did not comply with Russian FSB orders), not China, not Saudi Arabia... Not so many places left, it seems.
      - ezoe 5y ago
        Whether you like it or not, ProtonMail's business model conflict with most of the jurisdictions. In that sense, they are no better than PirateBay, Wikileaks or Sci-Hub.
  - istingray 5y ago
    And more legal requests are coming. Protonmail has a target on its back. That 2/day will soon be 20/day. That means Protonmail needs to stop training users to "trust us". It's a losing strategy. Protonmail must educate users to treat it as an adversary. And to still provide a product worth using. Train users to use Tor. Promote other tools for dissenters.
_threads 5y ago
Depending on the risk, they might say no: many companies prefer pay a fine than respect the law for worse reasons than this

baybal2 5y ago

> For those criticising ProtonMail, what else could they have done? Moving to some Central African, or Central Asian nation, and full-handedly buying the government?

yaris 5y ago
Only for US buying that same government in their turn, plus a couple neighbour governments to ensure peopleware excess in case of war?
- baybal2 5y ago
  There been a number of US laws prohibiting US government from "purchasing" corrupt regimes... Egypt is one of biggest US military aid recipients.

ezoe 5y ago

Shut down(sabotage) the entire service immediately. No working service, no new log. They still can implement IP logging to comply with the government, but alas, service is not working right now. At least, Lavabit did that when they were demanded by US government for the TLS private key to spy on Edward Snowden. Destroy the server equipment, then seek political asylum to the Non-EU countries. Their selling point is they never log IP address. Fulfill that promise or they lose the trust. They chose break the promise. The only unique selling point they have compared to the competitors.

yaris 5y ago
If they were shutting down their service every time police requests logs then their servers wouldn't have time to even boot properly. In their "clarification" they claim they received 700 orders in 2020. It is ~2 orders/day.
- ezoe 5y ago
  I really don't know the situation but it sounds like for these 700 orders in 2020, they can legally challenge the validity of order in the court. But this one particular order, their excuse sounds like it comes from other channel, something akin to the order of Roman dictator so they have no veto power. Sabotaging and seek political asylum to Non-EU countries is the best action they could take in order to keep their face, and resist the dictator.
  - yaris 5y ago
    So you suggest them to drop their business (which took years to build), abandon their families and run because their local court (or police) issued an order, one of several hundreds they have to process each year? Also - in which country could they seek political asylum exactly? Surely not the Commonwealth, not EU, not Russia (PM is banned there because they did not comply with Russian FSB orders), not China, not Saudi Arabia... Not so many places left, it seems.
    - ezoe 5y ago
      Whether you like it or not, ProtonMail's business model conflict with most of the jurisdictions. In that sense, they are no better than PirateBay, Wikileaks or Sci-Hub.
- istingray 5y ago
  And more legal requests are coming. Protonmail has a target on its back. That 2/day will soon be 20/day. That means Protonmail needs to stop training users to "trust us". It's a losing strategy. Protonmail must educate users to treat it as an adversary. And to still provide a product worth using. Train users to use Tor. Promote other tools for dissenters.

_threads 5y ago

Depending on the risk, they might say no: many companies prefer pay a fine than respect the law for worse reasons than this