Big PR win for Proton in the aftermath of https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/protonmail-scandal-tarnishes-sw...
> Encrypted email service ProtonMail has been at the centre of a social media storm ever since a police report revealed that the company shared the IP address of one of its users as part of a French investigation that led to the arrest of climate activists.
Which service or solution (if any) has your favour?
So what Protonmail did wrong was to not ask for payment while handing out the metadata?
I disagree with your position that this is what protonmail should have done.
> The court records show that the FBI sought Lavabit's Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) private key. Levison objected, saying that the key would allow the government to access communications by all 400,000 customers of Lavabit. He also offered to add code to his servers that would provide the information required just for the target of the order. The court rejected this offer because it would require the government to trust Levison and stated that just because the government could access all customers' communication did not mean they would be legally permitted to do so. Lavabit was ordered to provide the SSL key in machine readable format by noon, August 5 or face a fine of $5000 per day.[28] Levison closed down Lavabit 3 days later.
>Before the Snowden incident, Lavabit had complied with previous search warrants. For example, in June 2013 a search warrant was executed against a Lavabit account for suspected possession of child pornography.
From the register:
> After much wrangling, Levison eventually handed over Lavabit's cryptographic key in digital form, after earlier trying to satisfy a court order by printing out and handing over a copy of the key in 4-point type, a move that irked the judge handling the case.
From vice / the US Attorneys Office / Eastern District of Virginia:
> At approximately 1:30pm CDT on August 2, 2013, Mr. Levison gave the FBI a printout of what he represented to be the encryption keys needed to operate the pen register," a motion for sanctions signed by James L. Trump from the US Attorney's Office reads. According to the case docket, the documents were unsealed on March 4.
What exactly did / do you expect Proton to do here? They were given a legal mandate to comply and they complied. Did you have a fantasy that they would fight the Swiss and French governments (and apparently Europol) when given a valid court order and risk their entire existence?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
By complying they also risked their entire existence.
Their brand seems destroyed already.
ProtonMail fucked up. Badly and majorly. So far the only thing they've proved is that it's not a their main tag line "Secure Email. Based in Switzerland" is basically meaningless bullshit. It's not secure, and they'll backstab their customers without even putting up a fight. There's no sugar coating it, and there's no way to take it back, there's no way to distract the community form.
Their reputation is as good as dead. I feel bad for people who still use it as a "secure" email.
A different argument could be made that they could be using more privacy-preserving tech that would make compliance not possible... but even then a court order + gag order could compel them to start logging.
Why this ruling is so important is it sets legal precedent that Protonmail is in the right to not turn over user data to the government. The Swiss legal system tends to be pretty firm about things and this will likely make it next to impossible for a repeat of their past fiasco to happen.
Proton mail lied, and then pretended like they didn’t. They decided it makes sense to sacrifice a customer on the account of their own fuck up and false promise.
Proton mail is a shit company, and more and more I’m convinced they’ve bought shills to go out and divert attention.
In the world of security, proton mail is a less than a zero. Their main clientele will be in the same scam business they are.