This is just false. If your servers are seized I guarantee they also want your disk encryption password. How to prevent it? No disk, and no way into the OS without booting it with some special arguments.
As far as I know they were not able to access any of the mail in his account.
But they have extradition treaties with other countries.
Unless we believe a human being is manually entering these in their hundreds of us vpn servers every time they restart?
The data is still there, so I don't consider this "no less secure".
Remember, the courts consider decryption keys just like house keys, they can be demanded by the police and are not protected by the fifth amendment
*Within the USA.
Proton VPN is based in Switzerland where the fifth amendment doesn’t apply anyway as a US-specific constitutional concept. They might have stronger or weaker protections in this area, I don’t know, but not the fifth amendment.
They are based in a country with more than five amendments to its current federal constitution, but since they are unlikely to want to construct a minaret, the prohibition on doing so in the current Swiss federal constitution’s fifth amendment doesn’t affect them in any meaningful way.
Do we really assume not being in the US directly fixes everything?
When...
- Most social media used is US-based
- Phone markets like Android and iOS are US-based
- Browser stores like Chrome are US-based
- They have US-based servers
- They have US-based customers
- They have customers specifically wanting to access US-based content
The list goes on...
And they even have a .com domain, which is US-based.
Nobody said anything about fixing everything. When the US fifth amendment doesn’t apply, people have fewer protections from the US government, not more.
Also, I should correct myself slightly on when the US fifth amendment applies: in the rare case where US officials do conduct a custodial interrogation abroad, US courts will recognize the US fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination for statements made to those US officials in that context, even for statements made by foreign nationals. But US courts will not recognize those rights for statements made to foreign officials, outside of two rarely applicable exceptions. Also, of course, dealings within the US with US government officials are constitutionally protected for all nationalities.
I’ve edited my comment upthread accordingly.
With respect to Proton’s home government of Switzerland, they might have more protections or fewer protections than the US fifth amendment offers versus the US government when it does apply - I have no idea and avoided making any assertion either way about that.
Anyway, even in the US, providing a decryption key would only be protection by the fifth amendment if testimony by a human is involved - not simply, for example, turning over a USB key or even a piece of paper on which the key is printed So this question is mostly moot for the scenario we are discussing, except if information in a human mind is needed to access the key.
…there are some technical tricks to retrieve RAM values after power loss
If you are worried about the gestapo seizing your servers and freezing the RAM, is there any mitigation in place?
SGX encrypted memory would work as a solution for this, probably.
I have so little trust in computer security I assume the powers that be have a USB stick with 0 days that can compromise any modern OS by just plugging into an active machine.