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Comment by shaan7 | Hacker News Reader

Your statements are correct but they aren't relevant to parent's point. Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens. While it has the potential of a lot of negative effects, like the inability of other innocent citizens to use their email account. It is the same thing when the GoI went ahead and blocked pastebin.com because of a bunch of pastes.

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> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens.

If all the available platforms allow for data sharing and tracking on judicial orders, then a perpetrator does not have a safe way to give threats, without the risk of being identified.

In my opinion, this is a deterrent in itself, the fear of getting caught.

Ah my bad, I should have explicitly mentioned that merely a threat does not constitute a safety issue enough to justify a broad ban. If such a ban could prevent a real attack, then sure.

Yes, personally even I would feel disturbed and anxious when somebody threatens me, but it would be too broad to classify mental disturbance as a safety issue. I am saying this having survived an episode where my father was threatened for life.

> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens

I agree that it's a half assed patched, but if a platform isn't responding to litigation or law enforcement requests, there is always the chance of bad actors weaponizing that loophole.

And it's not like Proton AG hasn't been linked to terror attacks. The perpetrator of the Bataclan Massacre used Protonmail to communicate with handlers, leading to the French government to require email platforms like Proton AG to honor French law enforcement requests [1].

[0] - https://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-manuals-...

[1] - https://www.ejn-crimjust.europa.eu/ejnupload/DynamicPages/Fr...

That is false information, there was no connection between Proton and the Bataclan attack.

Upvote this. Can't edit my previous comment which misread the wired article linked or can @Dang just delete the offending comment for incorrect/misleading info?

> blocked pastebin.com because of a bunch of pastes

Say what now?!

It was a temporary block due to an overly broad denylist the Indian government put out in 2013. Pastebin ended up getting unblocked in India in the same time period as well.

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