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Comment by lordofgibbons | Hacker News Reader

The heart of the issue is this:

> Under Swiss law, Proton Mail was compelled to collect and provide information on the individual’s IP address to Swiss authorities, who then shared it with French police.

They can claim all the privacy guarantees they want, but unless the privacy is guaranteed by cryptography, it's an empty gesture. Nobody is willing to do prison time to protect your privacy.

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> The heart of the issue is this:

No, that was last year's issue.

This time it's:

> The core of the controversy stems from Proton Mail providing the Spanish police with the recovery email address associated with the Proton Mail account of an individual using the pseudonym ‘Xuxo Rondinaire.’ This individual is suspected of being a member of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalonia’s police force) and of using their internal knowledge to assist the Democratic Tsunami movement.

and

> Upon receiving the recovery email from Proton Mail, Spanish authorities further requested Apple to provide additional details linked to that email, leading to the identification of the individual.

Expeacting a lawful corporation to shield you from the law is absurd. The state has the right to obtain this information - so, if you want it hidden, you need to find a provider that doesn't operate under the bounds of the law. You'll soon find out that A LOT of niceties go away once you're not dealing with legal matters: you can't guarantee that you'll get the service you payed for, you can't re-gain access if you lost your main security, etc.

I think they should do like Mullvad claims and keep zero logs. You cannot share what you do not have.

This does not stop the host from being compelled to wiretap future communications.

Just don't try to make encrypted email happen. It can't, and we don't need it to be. We have better solutions for encrypted communications, for those that need it.

It's harder and requires more red tape.

you can be required to keep logs - they need to design a system that cannot collect logs - You cannot share what you cannot have.

I’d be more interested in a system that can prove to me that it’s not collecting logs. Hard, but not impossible.

As long as we are talking about classical communication (and not quantum) it is impossible to prove that it isn't collecting at least ciphertext logs.

Not really. Tor, I2P, and Monero manage this just fine. Building on these technologies should allow one to have privacy and anonymity without any exotic quantum technology.

Well they don't actually, Tor especially has enormous amounts of government nodes so they can trace and log exactly what and who. And all of those still rely on the IP network which always will allow logging without you ever knowing, it's just math really, the proof of not-logged is just impossible.

Interesting, do you have a source? All fully p2p networks are vulnerable to sybil attacks to some extent, but specifically a source that Tor actively has enough "government nodes" to de-anonymize everything.

These technologies give privacy and anonymity under normal conditions, but they do not prevent anyone from logging ciphertexts. If someone has logged ciphertext, and the government subponies someone to divulge their private key and subponies whoever has the ciphertext, those ciphertexts as good as plain text.

I mean, I don’t think anyone really expects that encrypted messages are necessarily secure in context of stolen private keys. I assume that a lot of encrypted traffic is either recorded at the ISP/backbone level or at least can be on demand.

Consider a certified tamper-resistant operating system which cryptographically certifies the versions of software it operates, and prohibits uncertified processes from running. The certificate of authenticity verifying the software is made available to the clients which connect to the remote application. This cert specifies all of the program transforms which were required in order to produce the compiled software, and they specify the capabilities required for the transform.

It is certainly a very hard and complex problem but I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as “impossible”. Maybe you know something I don’t know, though.

> Consider a certified tamper-resistant operating system which cryptographically certifies the versions of software it operates, and prohibits uncertified processes from running.

If I own the hardware, I can decide how the software is executed, including containerizing your certification processes to make them feel warm and fuzzy and happy but in reality they are running inside a simulation.

If push comes to shove I could theoretically manufacture my own RAM sticks that copy everything and your OS wouldn't even know, but there's a 99% chance I could successfully pull it off at the kernel virtualization level.

I mean it's clear, the governments of the world are colluding to ensure that all companies and users must incriminate themselves by collecting logs. They're trying to do the same with cryptography.

gullible vpn fans believe anything

or at least their favorite youtuber with the paid ads and zero domain knowledge of network topology

serious question I have is whether “internet reseller” is a compelling service. because that's all that VPNs are, and I dont mind paying to use them for that purpose.

I would say that Mullvad seems to be the exception - they know their stuff. You can even pay with cash for even more anonymity.

How would a recovery email feature be possible without them knowing what your recovery email is?

If you are super duper serious about securing yourself, recovery email is non-viable. Every piece of data is a potential vector towards exposure.

Which comes directly into the problem of security vs convenience.

Of course, but you can't blame Proton that you chose to prioritize convenience over security. If you don't want Proton to know who you are, don't use that feature.

Proton Mail can't give email content, only things like email address, ip adressese etc.

Email content is encrypted and Proton Mail has no access

Is the implication that you should use a VPN from a different provider? Like so you’re not getting email and VPN and whatever from the same place?

You could encrypt the source IP on all your outbound TCP packets, but it might not work very well.

a minor point but you can't _encrypt_ source IPs, you can only obfuscate or more accurately, proxy.

I was being sarcastic. The suggestion above that the privacy of an IP address could be "guaranteed by cryptography" is silly. Cryptography is not a hammer that can be used for all problems. At some point you have to transmit your IP over the internet if you want a reply.

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