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Police shut more than 14,000 accounts on Mega, Tutanota and Protonmail (therecord.media)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] [email protected] 149 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

They said they would protect your privacy, not facilitate criminal activity.

If the whole reason you want privacy is to facilitate criminal activity, you're going to have a bad time.

But it also raises the question: Doesn't political dissent often get categorized as "criminal activity?"

I think the bigger question is if these services will stand up for obviously bogus charges when it comes to political dissidents. I actually don't really have a problem with them being willing to shut down accounts associated with ransomware. However, I do understand how exceptions made for "criminal activity" can end up being directed at people who simply have a differing political opinion.

Finally, when it comes to political dissidence: If you are under the thumb of an authoritarian government, is violence taken to achieve freedom considered a "criminal act" by these privacy companies?

These companies have potentially put themselves in a very thorny situation in regards to their intended purpose.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I think there was someone who was bitching here at one time, about ProtonMail handing out some user's account by court order. And they were trying to be snarky like "oh, guess ProtonMail doesn't care about your privacy after all!" or some shit.

And your comment here completely clarifies the differences about protecting privacy from enabling you to continue your criminal activity.

I myself cannot be 100% sure my privacy would be protected, if the service I knew, was having their door knocked because they knew I'm up to no good.

Your privacy is ensured from the likes of spam, advertisements and corporate eyes reading your e-mail. Not criminal activity.

[–] EncryptKeeper 26 points 9 months ago

ProtonMail advertises their service by saying they won’t comply with any court orders except by the Swiss.

I’m not sure where this particular court order came from, but if it was from a foreign government, that would be a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I want to know what happens when something is only a criminal activity in a state.

Is an Alabama resident moving eggs and IVF clinics to a different state considered criminal activity?

How about a Texas resident talking about getting an abortion in a different state?

I'm not sure if state governments can even requests this but it does interest me what Proton's response would be. What if it was countries instead of states?

[–] doublejay1999 23 points 9 months ago

As this thread had shown, there are dozens of serious questions for them to answer. Not least of which is the fact since you are not a criminal until a court has found you guilty , who are they calling criminal?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

On the plus side, being that they're in European countries, they likely have the enviable position of being able to ignore and chastise the worst excesses of USA law. However, that's my question as well, this is all well and good, but it also puts them in the position of having to have a "scale" of which crimes are "worth" legally complying with, and which ones are "worth" ignoring and fighting.

They don't have to support the fanatical religious government in Afghanistan, for instance, but surely there are dissidents there who would like to be able to communicate without being monitored in Afghanistan as well. Where's the line? Is the line different for each country and it's laws? Are they going to count the absurd "religious crimes" there as the same as more egregious crimes like ransomware?

It actually would behoove these groups to codify and communicate their positions on this wholesale now because the issue isn't going to go away.

[–] blazeknave 10 points 9 months ago

I definitely agree with you. If a warrant is valid and attained honestly and legally in good faith through real evidence of serious crimes, that's different than sending dick pics through Prism. In theory that mirrors how IRL should work.

Is there any kind of social contract RFC proposed to set global standards for boundaries? To your point, companies prefer to have clear discreet understanding of the laws, compliance, and generally accepted best practices. Easier, safer, cheaper. Everyone wins.

Imagine variable scoring on different traits per entity, that would make different rules/boundaries applicable! E.g., North Korea's independent journalism score makes them inapplicable for XYZ activities (email account access, phone unlocks? 🤷).. CSAM 100% inexcusable, tiers of limits on disinfo or hate speech..

Would anyone reading this take something like this seriously? I can't own this. I'm not at all an expert. But I have friends at places like Mozilla, EFF, and standards bodies, to whom I could reach out and maybe help with intros.

..And then you realize your tl;dr is 'who wants to play pretend world police with me?!?!'.. and to what ends is it enforceable? Realistically any major entity can pull out of anything at the cost of their customers (and potential civil damages suits). Microsoft can stop supporting SPF, Schneider can stop supporting standard voltages. It'll cost them customers, but it's not regulatory/mandated, correct? If pornhub builds a city in the Pacific and refuses to relinquish emails about human trafficking, does the UN send armed forces? Obviously not. But do they get disconnected from 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 or w3c's yellow pages?

So what would make someone or some entity, trusted? Just curious for the thought exercise to see what you all think, and the sociological repercussions.

[–] sturlabragason 56 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd like to know more about the specifics involved. I've migrated my whole suite over to Proton and just want to know the specifics here. Guess I won't know until Proton decides to frame their answer in a blogpost.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You don't need that: Proton will only surrender accounts/information to local authorities with the appropriate paperwork - and that's their selling point on privacy, swiss law being pretty protective of privacy ; in this case, a corpus of evidence has been submitted by a recognized foreign entity & considered valid for action in regard to swiss law.

That's what makes proton secure for journalists, political opponents and such: no swiss judge will enable any random dictator to get a dissident's info, it won't fly with swiss law. And if that escalates to bogus criminal charges, it is still up to a swiss judge to decide how and if to proceed.

You put your trust in Switzerland here, not in a nerdy business with an atom-smashing background.

[–] sturlabragason 1 points 9 months ago

❤️👆🔥

[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'd be interested in seeing the number of E2EE enabled accounts used for criminal activity versus the number of regular ol' free Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc accounts. Governments absolutely have a hate-on for E2EE, so the police calling out these services specifically raises questions of motive.

Not that we should not be shutting down criminals... but this sort of framing tends to suggest that E2EE services are inherently criminal enabling, and that does not feel like a mistake.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Forgive my question, but if the email is encrypted and the service is unable to read it, how are they sure the accounts in question are criminal? How would they know any account was?

This is confusing to me so I am grateful for any insight.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Fair question!

If an email address is being used for fraud, they don't need to see the encrypted copy; they can see the copy sent out to other people from that address. So if I send you a message from my Protonmail to your Gmail, the following is true:

Copy @ Protonmail: E2EE.
Copy @ Gmail: NOT E2EE.

There are other, circumstantial ways to tell as well. If you're trying to scam people with DudeBro Cryptocurrency, you necessarily reveal the address you use when you send our your spam or scams. If I send malware from [email protected], the proof that I sent the malware does not require you to see my server stored mail; you can just look at your own copy to see.

Does that make sense?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So any email address is not encrypted even if the message goes to another encrypted account? Is this correct?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, the "to address" cannot be encrypted as it is necessary to deliver the mail, the "from address" are needed to send a notification when the "to address" doesn't exist.

Technically, the "from address" probably can be encrypted, like in signal; but I think it is required in the current email standard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Thank you. This helped.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Surely Proton also receives the mails in plaintext? There's no E2EE about it. You have to take their word that they encrypt it and discard the plaintext data.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Email encrypted at rest maybe. Email is awfully insecure whilst in transit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

There's typically reason to suspect the account owner first. They're not trawling through random accounts, law enforcement doesn't have the time or authority to do that. Note that intelligence agencies are not law enforcement, I'm not talking about what some spy agencies might do.

Since this is law enforcement, typically you don't have a verdict to rely on, but they'd have a warrant or subpoena to get the necessary evidence to further the case.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It's an interesting set of priorities, for sure.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I thought proton would fight before they'd comply?

[–] jqubed 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They won’t and supposedly can’t turn over information from or about the account, but they’ll absolutely close the account for engaging in illegal activity since that is a breach of their terms of service (depending on activity, of course. Complaining about the government? Probably won’t get shut down. Hacking someone to steal something valuable? They’re shutting you down).

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

They won’t and supposedly can’t turn over information from or about the account

Sort of, but not entirely. They use E2EE for message contents, so they would not be technically able to hand over that data (assuming their E2EE system is not compromised). However, they do NOT use E2EE for email headers, which includes email subject lines, recipients, and other metadata.

From https://proton.me/support/does-protonmail-encrypt-email-subjects:

subject lines in Proton Mail are not end-to-end encrypted, which means if served with a valid Swiss court order, we do have the ability to turn over the subjects of your messages.

From https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained:

Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

They’re not going to jail for you. Never assume a service provider will put themselves at risk on your behalf.

[–] yamanii 12 points 9 months ago

Like TechLore once said: "No company is going to jail for you because of your 5 dollars."

[–] SuperSynthia 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Everyone should ask themselves what is their actual threat model. That will tell you whether not this news truly affects you. Any criminal worth their salt probably wouldn’t roll with Proton or Tuta if they practice good OpSec

[–] MadBigote 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What's wrong with both Tuta and Proton? I'm by no means involved in any crime or anything, but I degooglefied and moved to Tuta for mail. Was considering self hosting, but I've been procrastinating it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

As you can see from this piece of news, an encrypted email service does nothing for your privacy. But at the same time it limits you and makes you a captive user. Which is ironic considering that's probably why you left Google.

You don't have to self host. Just use a regular email service, perhaps hosted in a country with decent privacy laws if you want, but download your email on your PC instead of keeping it online on theirs. This way you get to backup your email too.

The most simple way to do this is to pull your email with a POP connection but set it to only delete messages after a few days not instantly (this way you can still access them over IMAP for a while from mobile or webmail).

Another approach is to pull your incoming email to your server, set up your own private IMAP server and webmail, but use the service's SMTP. This is a form of email self-hosting that gives you the best parts of privacy and control but you don't have to deal with the risk of having your SMTP blocked for spam.

[–] MadBigote 7 points 9 months ago

I mean, I left Google because I hated them tracking me 24/7, and trying to sell me stuff based on my profile, though privacy is indeed a concern. Any option you may recommend i could use while k move to a privet email server? I wanted to get out of Tuta anyway since their platform feels stiff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Party of the snowden leaks were that the five eyes capture and record everything.

Everything.

Your pop solution with deletion only deletes your copy; not the one the NSA has. Maybe that's not part of your threat model, which is fine, but it's part of mine

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Then you need to stop using email altogether. Encrypting only one server like Tuta or Proton does nothing if you correspond with people who are not on it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

100% agree

Which is why I am not the one advocating personal hosting and POP + deletion as a privacy solution

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I've been trying to explain this to people for years, but there's so much blind love for Proton here that my comments are usually drowned out.

[–] recapitated 0 points 9 months ago

That's it I'm going back to Juno.