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Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

Refuse to comply with unfair laws? That's precisely what those activists that Protonmail ratted on were doing, and that's precisely what Protonmail should have done.

It's funny how some fancy cryptographers from their ivory towers will stand for privacy rights... as long as they don't actually take any risks for themselves. Unlike the actual activists who were house searched and arrested and now risk jail time for an arguably-noble cause, it's not like security researchers actually risk anything beyond a few fines (which they could crowdfund for) if they don't comply with law enforcement.

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> Refuse to comply with unfair laws?

And do what exactly, go to prison? Expecting that is unreasonable at best.

When was the last time you heard of sysadmins ending up in prison, apart from obvious criminal conspiracies like Silk Road?

see my other comment in this thread for more detail on how that's a misinformed argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28434187

> apart from obvious criminal conspiracies like Silk Road

You are being downvoted because the only person to whim Silk road is an "obvious" criminal conspiracy is you.

haha thanks for explaining. I'm personally not in favor of drug criminalization, i was referring to the fact that by law that is considered a criminal conspiracy.

but also i'm not exactly super fan of defending Silk Road, since there was some "hitman hiring" scheme involved at some point in the operation

This is exactly the point: never expect that the people running a service are going to go to prison or pay a significant fine to protect you. It's not going to happen. You need good OPSEC, yourself, because you don't want to go to prison.

I partially agree, and partially disagree. No i don't expect volunteer sysadmins to take huge risks for me. However, i expect huge organizations like Protonmail who claim to care for privacy to do just that.

Moreover, the risks in this case are not big because this is a clear case of political repression and any form of judicial scrutiny would have raised considerable eyebrows.

You can't stand a chance against 5 dollar wrench attack suggested by xkcd.

Hey, that gives me an idea. Cryptographers should arm with the nuclear weapon. Owning the nukes and declare to detonate it when they detected a threat of 5 dollar wrench attack.

You just invented a government

He's kidding, he's referring to this: https://xkcd.com/538/

> Refuse to comply with unfair laws

Are anti-squatting laws unfair? And do note we're talking about squatting to make a point in one of the most valuable cities in the world, Paris, not squatting to have a roof over your head in the middle of nowhere.

> Are anti-squatting laws unfair?

Yes. But France doesn't have anti squatting laws (contrary to UK/Netherlands), and for good reasons. Squatting was common practice (even encouraged) after WWII ended to rebuild communities, and there's even "requisition" provisions in the law so that people don't have to squat but the mayor/préfet can seize unused dwellings to house people (although this law is rarely applied).

Now, there are laws against home theft, which is a good thing. Nobody can just come into your residence while you're away for a week and squat it; only far-right media invent (from the void) cases like this but in practice, as a squatter you have exactly 0 legal protection if you do this, and you will be evicted instantly and thrown in jail.

On the other hand, if you squat an abandoned building and make it your primary residence, you have all the "residence" protections any tenant enjoys, including the right to a "fair" (cough cough) trial to determine your fate, the right to the trêve hivernale (evictions are suspended in winter, except in special cases like home theft), as well as the right to a minimum 2-month delay before eviction to find yourself a new accomodation.

I'd be happy to continue elaborating on why your argument is misinformed (and why people usually squat in the big cities not on the countryside) but this comment would be too long. Let me know if you have questions.

PM had no idea who the users were or what criminal charges they were facing. They had to comply with the Swiss law and provide the IP address.

Simply using any web search engine for that address would have given them clues that this could be a case of political repression and demands more consideration than collaboration-by-default.

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