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They had the application removed from the Android and the IOS application stores.. That isn't blocking blocking ProtonMail..
I'm not sure what you mean, sorry. I just mean one could use Mullvad (or Tor, but that would hurt exit node people) as well as a few other providers.
Not a valid reasoning in my opinion. Sending anonymous (snail-)mail has been possible since the dawn of time and noone has ever thought about it being a problem but if someone sends an anonymous email it's suddenly putting people in danger, when an email is actually even limited to nothing but text. I don't buy it.
Honestly I would have to side with the Indian Govt on this one. I have seen this happen to people close to me as well. Bomb squads all around the place, children, parents panicking, everyone in general panicking and then suddenly a news report coming that the mail that was sent via gmail was some kid in some adjacent school.
I think Google, Microsoft are pretty compliant and handover IP in such cases quickly. Can't listen to "apply for swiss court order" when the clock is ticking.
So anyone's IP is fair game as long as the requester claims that there has been a bomb threat or should the services also log the contents of every mail leaving their servers, so they can verify it? Not to mention that knowing the sender won't do much about a possible bomb anyways.
If it is terrorism related/threat to life, it is better to handover the info ASAP when the request is coming from a Govt with proof. Logging timestamps and IP's is useful for cases like this. "contents of every mail leaving their servers" - I am not sure what is the best solution for this without prying on everyone. "knowing the sender" always helps. I am kinda happy that the Govt takes these threats seriously.
Good thing that this comment was provided by @shruub for free. No need to buy it.
How would you prove that an email with alleged content has been sent? Also what qualifies as government in that scenario? Will lil Kim get your personal details if he says you threatened to bomb him?
That's because there is no solution to prove outgoing messages besides logging everything.
In the long run maybe. It won't stop any bomb from ticking though, so it might as well take a slower and safer route. Besides if such measures would prove effective they would just get worked around anyways. It's a cat and mouse game that's nearly impossible to win and basically privacy sacrificed for an illusion of safety.
It wasn't so much directed at you but more at the idea that blocking email providers would somehow improve safety.
Before that, they contacted the police using spoofed numbers. Additionally, some specific phrases in the letter may indicate that it was written by someone who lives in Ukraine.
I see. So it's suspected to have been Ukrainians.
Yes.
You could hash the subject/content of email and check if it matches with the alleged content.
But lives are not being threatened.. This is just fact-finding..
Fair enough. That would usually work. It's easily neutered by including your threat in some externally hosted picture though and getting random people to produces raw/accurate email data could prove hard to impossible (i'm not even sure if all of the big providers make that available).
Oh alright, I see. But yeah, same with cloudflare and other extensive IP blocking or similar.
While I agree with the sentiment, I still applaud for proton for actually not handing over the sender information.
Its not about who's right, its about the integrity and security for the people using it. If proton would do such thing it would hurt more actual legitimate users who needed privacy the most.
It is inevitable that bad apples would use such service, and proton chose to protect everyone than leave holes for vulnerability.
For all we know the government could still lie about it and target actual legitimate vulnerable entities.
The problem with this is that if you are a victim of this kind of terrorism, your views will likely change. Your family and friends will want to see justice done, and they will demand that criminals and terrorists be punished. Due to the existence of these services, however, it may be difficult to find the perpetrators.
If only there was a way to fuck people doing these "pranks" while keeping journalists and regular people just wanting privacy private..
There's no privacy in these cases. Once the person is identified, it becomes like xkcd #538 in real world.
There is definitely a grey area when it comes for morality vs integrity.
Some people would agree that they would rather commit a crime to bring justice for themselves or someone else. Are they wrong? or is the justice system wrong?
There is a reason why vigilante exists and definitely to do what is not possible on the current legality of our system.
Back to the point, US did the same thing with TOR. When you need anonymity, you need to make it harder to become noticeable by hiding in the crowd, so they made TOR publicly available. While this is great in terms of privacy this also makes the bad apples easier to blend in. The US did accept this trade off for the sake of their anonymity as it is inevitable.
In proton's case they chose integrity but then, they can always choose to leak their personal information.
This scope of topic is definitely very debatable, you know you have the power to change things but is not allowed to be because you are limited by what the majority wants you to be. But if you choose to be different than what people expect you to be, suddenly you are reprimanded by the majority.
But in this context Terrorism. Is proton really doing the right thing? Should a few bad people ruin the security that most people have with proton? Is this secretly a sabotage by a different company?
It is inevitable that whatever Proton choses within one of the choices, people will have divided opinions, but is what proton doing worth it? If the terrorism became real, will proton fall apart? Is there really true privacy when it comes to business?
Is it really that hard to obtain a valid Swiss court order? Even if Proton gave up the IP, someone knowledgeable enough to use Proton would have been using a VPN or simply signed up from TOR.
I mean, there would be e.g. in the EEA with rare court orders over 2 countries.