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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

Proton is mired in shenanigans.

Evidence points to ProtonVPN being a white-labeled version of Nord VPN. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571653 and https://archive.is/iZ2l2 (archive of relevant but broken [2] link @ HN thread)

Protonmail has its own issues that have been discussed on HN. Source: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/

Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases, but Proton is not a panacea, and no guarantee they aren't compromised themselves.

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As someone who works for Proton VPN, I can assure you we do not resell any white label VPN services, and that the people I work with every day are incredibly smart people who truly, deeply care about users’ online privacy.

I’ll concede that this isn’t much better evidence than the links you provided, but that archived site in your comment really doesn’t read like a reputable source of truth, either.

How can we really know? At the end of the day, trusting a company to protect your best interests is, on average, a losing proposition.

It seems to be a link to an archived site because the original comment has been retracted by the author.

Source? What’s the reason for given for the retraction?

Your article links to this as proof:

https://archive.ph/1vaZ8

Direct link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258203

The allegations have been retracted.

Proton .... the Fed honeypot that nobody wants to talk about, except, some sane and rational people who have looked at the evidence.

Obviously any provider can be a honeypot in theory, but I don't understand the following either:

- How can ProtonVPN be free and why is it in Lithuania?

- Why does a Swiss privacy company get EU funding if the EU wants to erode privacy all the time?

- Why is a cell phone number required for registration?

- In general, how do they make money? Other free providers like gmx are full of cheesy advertisements.

"Obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases"

Wait --- 'obviously'?!? Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

>Do you have any info on this because that is a wild claim.

Not only has the concept and implementation of automated law enforcement portals been around since the 90s, the Snowden docs revealed that major providers were providing such portals. AND that their inter-datacenter communications were being piped directly into global intelligence databases without.

These portals, NSLs, and other mechanisms have also been codified into law for over a decade, and their existence is extremely well documented as well as reinforced.

It sounds like a wild claim, but unfortunately, it is extremely based in reality. And, it's so well documented that to be ignorant of it at this point is akin to incompetence.

You're making a wildly different claim than the initial one. The initial claim is "obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases". Portals for law enforcement which likely require some kind of warrant and very likely have regular audits are not slightly the same thing as directly piping the data to the intelligence community. As for "their inter-datacenter communications were being piped directly", that was revealed by Snowden and you correctly used the past tense "were". Is there evidence that either Alphabet or Meta are giving direct access to their users' data beyond what the law requires?

(Disclaimer, employee of Google, my opinions are my own and all that. I have no info beyond what is public knowledge.)

> Portals for law enforcement which likely require some kind of warrant

It was recently reported that major tech companies (including Google) release user data without warrants, and without even authenticating the party requesting the data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842757

That's an interesting article, thanks for the link. It doesn't support the original claim very strongly however. It showcases there's a flawed process for obtaining user data (which is still obviously bad) but it's far removed from Microsoft, Google, or Fb directly piping their data over to the NSA.

Lots of "likely" and "were" in your comment...

I'll be honest, this is really the first time I've seen a tech circle in which this whole surveillance apparatus is not a common established knowledge.

To be clear I'm not saying there isn't an extensive surveillance apparatus. I'm saying the claim that giant tech companies are willfully providing unrestricted access to user data to the intelligence community is not at all an "obvious" one as claimed and requires evidence. Do you disagree with that?

> "obviously Gmail and such are piped directly into global intelligence databases"

well, they were. without google's consent :) past tense, obviously

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

> XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data

> XKeyscore is a complicated system, and various authors have different interpretations of its actual capabilities. Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald explained XKeyscore as being a system which enables almost unlimited surveillance of anyone anywhere in the world, while the NSA has said that usage of the system is limited and restricted.

Think about that for a split second: anyone, anywhere. Also, who would you trust more: the US government, or a man who sacrificed his life, health and wellbeing to expose this scandal to the world?

Alas, privacy for the masses is dead.

We've known it for literally a decade now... How can you be ignorant of the whole Snowden docs?

Snowden docs

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