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They should go out of business, they are no better than yahoo mail.
A bit of legal mental masturbation that is widely viewed as nonsense from what I've read.
Saying "I wasn't served, I wasn't served, I wasn't served, oops I can't say that anymore" is the legal equivalent to saying "I was served" and courts are not likely to let you play by such semantics.
True, and wasn't that similar to the song Protonmail was singing?
Or, if you prefer, how Protonmail was masturbating ;-)
mail in a box please~
While I can understand that many now bash ProtonMail, frankly, I don't think that's smart nor is it justified.
The relevant frame is "all email providers" and the relevant question/criterion is "is ProtonMail - within that frame - a particularly good or bad provider?".
What we should ask is
The answers, as far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong), are
"But ProtonMail said that they offer secure and privacy respecting services!" you say? So what, they are a company and virtually all companies offer, let's call it diplomatically, "selective truth" that is, they mostly - or even only - tell you the nice part. Plus they move more or less smartly within the given walls. Example: What's the definition of "secure and privacy respecting"? Some might take that to mean "we'll go to any length and do whatever is required to protect you and your data no matter what" -but- "we treat your communications with reasonable care and also minimize risk surfaces as fast and as well as we can" also matches.
In an ideal world the former might be true (in the optimal case), but in the real world companies have to obey the (often rather imperfect or even sh_tty) laws without much of a fight and they must earn money, so of bloody course they paint a nice picture and are at least as much driven by marketing and sales as by technical or ideological factors.
In summary, ProtonMail never really could offer guarantees that you and your communications and data are absolutely safe, private and secure but they try a bit harder than others and go to a somewhat greater length. Absolutely no surprise that they obey to the authorities and don't risk their company for a few small customers. Hey, in e.g. the USA they might have been slapped with a muting order on top of it.
So, sorry, but most of your anger should be directed at yourself if you stupidly trusted the "total security and privacy" fairy tale.
(And No, ProtonMail is not a favourite provider of mine. They IMO just happen to be one of the less crappy and customer ignorant ones. That's not much but in the real world it's way better than what most have to offer).
Proton[Mail|VPN] banking on "no logs" as one of their main leverage against competitors. Both brands compromissed. Avoid at all costs if integrity matters.
They claim in their blog post that they informed the user, and it is implied, though not explicit, that it was immediately.
Overall agree with your more nuanced approach. What makes PM special is that they have encryption on by default, so provided the actitivist was writing with other PM users (or someone who implemented some form of PGP) then all that could be shared was an IP address.
Use Signal
What are your favorite email providers, if I may ask?
No. I do not handle their encryption. Please keep me out of their mud.
None. I handle all email accounts of any importance myself (my own email server) and for unimportant stuff I use more or less whatever is available for free. I'm not expecting any security whatsoever from those (and not even much from my own email server). For truly sensitive communication I do not use email at all; it never was designed to be and is not the right way to communicate sensitive matters.
ProtonMail happens to be one of the Providers whose free services I occasionally use. I liked that they at least tried to not be crappy but I never expected them to really provide security and privacy beyond a rather superficial degree.
If I ever needed a professional email service @jar would likely be the first I'd look at.
The Swiss privacy laws are so overhyped! Did you know that the safe and secure Swiss Banks have to give the U.S. account details of all U.S. citizens, even If they live in another part of the world, or even in Switzerland itself?
Never forget: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
Most court orders i've seen carry a gag order these days.
Warrant canary's are a meme, they're a false sense of 'them giving a shit'. You really think any of the VPN's with one haven't got a warrant? I've seen tiny VPN customers with maybe 100 clients get them, and you think the big boys haven't?
It's a lie.
Francisco
climate-activism is a crime!
the west knows best?
woohoo.
Your opinion
Well, at least for the last thousand years, I'd say a resounding YES!
Your opinion
Backed by facts. Where are people living in better conditions and are wealthier? In the west. Where do most people from around the world want to escape to? To the West.
Where are most people from around the planet migrating to? To the West. Know of many people who want to migrate to mother Russia or China? I didn't think so.
If anything that proves only that the west sells itself better. "wealth" for example is an easy sell ... but one also needs to see that poverty also exists in the west and that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing continuously.
That's not to say that wealth or capitalism is per se bad but it's not like all the migrant get wealthy; many if not most of them stay in the lower income bracket but in a wealthier country (which may be harder than living in a poorer country).
If one wants to know how life is in Russia one must ask Russian and to learn how life is in say the UK one must ask the Brits - many of them, not just a small and biased selection. Example: of bloody course those who "escaped" say Russia prefer their new life in say the UK, that doesn't tell you a lot about Russia. This is even more true for people who say that they "escaped" their country; to those I wouldn't attribute much weight because they obviously are extremely biased.
Btw, quite many Russians and Chinese also return to their home countries.
I don't know whether e.g. Putin would be a good president for the (western) country I happen to live in; probably not. But he is the president of Russia so the relevant question is how the Russians like him, and they seem to like him a lot.
At the end of the day it's not a question of Russia, the UK, or the USA, neither necessarily one of where more wealth is to be found. The question is if people (most of them anyway) are more or less content with their government and if they feel well. (Note: I'm talking about today, not about the USSR).
cancelled protonmail and switched to mxlogin last black friday - no regrets
It's easy for a court to prevent you from saying something publicly, I'm curious where they can force one to publicly state a falsehood.
I can't see how a court would overrule someone's freedom of speech (stating you haven't received a warrant and really haven't is totally lawful) to force them to say a lie. Any specific court cases where this occurred?
This may happen in North Korea. "Long live the Supreme Leader!"
It would be interesting to see. I suspect if the feds wanted to challenge it they'd probably find a way to win it, but what language they'd have to use would be intriguing.
It's weird. Normally, gag orders are justified to prevent evidence collection tampering or tipping off the next ones to be raided/served. I don't see the purpose to allow the provider to immediately inform the customer, who isn't enjoined from public statements...
Or for 'National Security'
I think they'd just say "quit trying to be a clever git".
I think the court would say that by removing the "canary" you are effectively saying you received a warrant, which you're not allowed to do. Saying "we have never received a warrant" continuously and then not saying and claiming you are not admitting you've received a warrant is sophistry.
A link from the relevant Wikipedia page summarizes succinctly:
"If it's illegal to advertise that you've received a court order of some kind, it's illegal to intentionally and knowingly take any action that has the effect of advertising the receipt of that order. A judge can't force you to do anything, but every lawyer I've spoken to has indicated that having a "canary" you remove or choose not to update would likely have the same legal consequences as simply posting something that explicitly says you've received something. If any lawyers have a different legal interpretation, I'd love to hear it."
Naturally because Common Law legal systems seem designed to maximize ambiguity in order to enrich lawyers, there are those who disagree. For example, the EFF disagrees. Of course, the EFF won't be on the hook if they're wrong, so...
@TimboJones raises good points that would no doubt be argued but I would bet on the feds winning. Judges take a dim view of people trying to find clever ways to subvert the intent of the law.
Anyway, the tools to have privacy and secrecy in your email exist - use PGP. It's just a hassle. Which do people value more highly? Clearly convenience is more important to them than security.
In the current case swiss laws are relevant.
YES! Plus, using signal or some such seems to be cooler and looking and feeling cool is probably of even higher significance than convenience to many.
What many people seem to not understand is that those devices and laws are just the first level. There's more levels, up to "tailored access", the NSA and friends tainting crypto (which goes quite far thanks to insurers de facto forcing that tainted crypto on companies and people ("one must use one or the other level of NIST approved crypto")), plus of course there's also the good old rubberhose e.g. in the form of gag orders.
Pretty much every regime, no matter whether right or left, always and since at least hundreds of years had means to not allow people to really communicate freely and to, if deemed necessary, jail them away or kill them plus to observe and if deemed necessary interrupt the flow of information (or change the contents) and communication.
Just two "nice" examples are certain brit press laws and the fact that the "good, free, and democratic" west Germany had the postal service (presumably working together with spooks) open, look into, and read most if not all letters before sending them across the internal border to the "evil, not democratic, not free regime-controlled side". And no, the people were never informed about that secret eavesdropping on them by their countries authorities.
so is there an alternative for protonmail?