A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
Proton didn’t “help the FBI”. Proton was forced to help the Swiss government. By law, Proton has to refuse to help the FBI, because that would break Swiss privacy laws. But if the FBI convinces the Swiss government to help them, then the Swiss can just kick in Proton’s doors and seize all their servers if Proton refuses a legal warrant.
Proton is privacy focused email, it is not anonymous email unless you use Tor and pay with Bitcoin.
if you need reminding to not use a credit card to stay anonymous then your bitcoin likely wouldn’t be anonymous either, so why bring it up in the first place. someone might take the statment and run with it
Proton chooses to retain data associating accounts with personal information from credit card payments, and they choose to advertise Swiss legal jurisdiction as a privacy feature.
they choose to advertise Swiss legal jurisdiction as a privacy feature. Swiss legal jurisdiction as a privacy feature > privacy feature <
if you stick a privacy fence up around your house, does it make you anonymous? of course not, because privacy does not mean anonymous. you should not blame someone else because you are confused on the difference between privacy and anonymity.
given that Swiss law means complying with MLAT requests from many countries including the US, why do you think Proton chooses to retain data linking user accounts with payment identities?
if you stick a privacy fence up around your house, does it make you anonymous? of course not, because privacy does not mean anonymous. you should not blame someone else because you are confused on the difference between privacy and anonymity.
i am not confused at all about “the difference between privacy and anonymity”; the former is a broader concept which includes the latter. Privacy regarding one’s identity (or avoiding revealing the link between related identities, which is what is usually meant by “anonymity”) is one of many types of privacy.
Proton mail advertises that their service is designed for “privacy”, not “privacy except not with regards to your legal identity which we decided to needlessly retain information about and which you should obviously expect us to give to the authorities upon request”.
where did you get the notion that “privacy” excludes “anonymity”? this is not a rhetorical question, i am interested to know because I see these “difference between privacy and anonymity” comments frequently lately and i wonder where this meme originated.
why do you think Proton chooses to retain data linking user accounts with payment identities?
fraud prevention and account security, which they specify on their website. especially if you opt into their increased security protocols, your payment information can used to validate your identity to protect your account from being stolen.
where did you get the notion that “privacy” excludes “anonymity”?
the dictionary. proton does not advertise themselves as anonymous email. since the two words have wholly different meanings, where did you get the notion that someone advertising apples was selling oranges? idk if you’re trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, but your position is ridiculous because anonymity was never advertised, and you’re trying to infer it is to justify your position that proton has done something wrong. you’ve already reached your conclusion and are trying to twist the literal meaning of words to justify your biases.
proton does not advertise themselves as anonymous email.
So, i just checked, and they actually do (albeit with caveats, including not using your name when signing up, but no mention of when paying) here and here among other places.
I see also that those pages are promulgating exactly the “anonymity vs. privacy” false dichotomy that you are. Proton writes (emphasis mine):
Privacy means controlling who receives specific information. In the email context, this means encrypting your message so no one besides its intended recipient and you can read it — not even the service provider.
Their very narrowly-scoped definition of the word privacy is inconsistent with how most of the world uses the word. Proton is defining email privacy to mean solely the confidentiality of the body of the message (which they also provide a trivial-for-them-to-circumvent protection of, incidentally) but the word “privacy” elsewhere (eg, in law, technology, academia, and colloquially) has a much broader meaning.
Proton isn’t even consistent in their own usage of their absurdly-narrow definition of privacy: in their How to send an anonymous email guide they write:
Where your email provider is based affects your privacy. Privacy laws can vary dramatically, and some countries have data retention laws that require companies to store and hand over sensitive user data. Email services based in a privacy-friendly countries, like Switzerland, can offer stronger protections.
Do you think by “privacy” and “sensitive user data” they’re only talking about the body of email messages here, as per their earlier definition?
And, regardless of whether or not a company advertises its services for anonymity (as Proton does, it turns out): after clicking the above links and thinking about it a little more, do you still think that retaining and revealing links between users’ pseudonyms and legal identities is really not a privacy issue?
No. That’s the point. We have different ideas about what it means to help. I think help is simply doing something (or not doing something) that benefits someone else. You (and others) seem to also give it some additional qualities related to consent, agrement, or support. Since I don’t ascribe any moral judgement to the word and only use its most limited literal meaning, I hope it’s more clear to you how confusing it can be when you infer morality from amoral terms, and try to refrain from doing so in the future. Communication would be much smoother if people were more deliberately literal with their word choice.
Proton didn’t “help the FBI”. Proton was forced to help the Swiss government. By law, Proton has to refuse to help the FBI, because that would break Swiss privacy laws. But if the FBI convinces the Swiss government to help them, then the Swiss can just kick in Proton’s doors and seize all their servers if Proton refuses a legal warrant.
Proton is privacy focused email, it is not anonymous email unless you use Tor and pay with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not anonymous
not if you’re an average internet user who thinks bitcoin can’t be anonymous, no.
if you need reminding to not use a credit card to stay anonymous then your bitcoin likely wouldn’t be anonymous either, so why bring it up in the first place. someone might take the statment and run with it
Proton chooses to retain data associating accounts with personal information from credit card payments, and they choose to advertise Swiss legal jurisdiction as a privacy feature.
if you stick a privacy fence up around your house, does it make you anonymous? of course not, because privacy does not mean anonymous. you should not blame someone else because you are confused on the difference between privacy and anonymity.
given that Swiss law means complying with MLAT requests from many countries including the US, why do you think Proton chooses to retain data linking user accounts with payment identities?
i am not confused at all about “the difference between privacy and anonymity”; the former is a broader concept which includes the latter. Privacy regarding one’s identity (or avoiding revealing the link between related identities, which is what is usually meant by “anonymity”) is one of many types of privacy.
Proton mail advertises that their service is designed for “privacy”, not “privacy except not with regards to your legal identity which we decided to needlessly retain information about and which you should obviously expect us to give to the authorities upon request”.
where did you get the notion that “privacy” excludes “anonymity”? this is not a rhetorical question, i am interested to know because I see these “difference between privacy and anonymity” comments frequently lately and i wonder where this meme originated.
fraud prevention and account security, which they specify on their website. especially if you opt into their increased security protocols, your payment information can used to validate your identity to protect your account from being stolen.
the dictionary. proton does not advertise themselves as anonymous email. since the two words have wholly different meanings, where did you get the notion that someone advertising apples was selling oranges? idk if you’re trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, but your position is ridiculous because anonymity was never advertised, and you’re trying to infer it is to justify your position that proton has done something wrong. you’ve already reached your conclusion and are trying to twist the literal meaning of words to justify your biases.
So, i just checked, and they actually do (albeit with caveats, including not using your name when signing up, but no mention of when paying) here and here among other places.
I see also that those pages are promulgating exactly the “anonymity vs. privacy” false dichotomy that you are. Proton writes (emphasis mine):
Their very narrowly-scoped definition of the word privacy is inconsistent with how most of the world uses the word. Proton is defining email privacy to mean solely the confidentiality of the body of the message (which they also provide a trivial-for-them-to-circumvent protection of, incidentally) but the word “privacy” elsewhere (eg, in law, technology, academia, and colloquially) has a much broader meaning.
Or, to put it more simply: Category:Anonymity is (literally) a subcategory of Category:Privacy.
Proton isn’t even consistent in their own usage of their absurdly-narrow definition of privacy: in their How to send an anonymous email guide they write:
Do you think by “privacy” and “sensitive user data” they’re only talking about the body of email messages here, as per their earlier definition?
And, regardless of whether or not a company advertises its services for anonymity (as Proton does, it turns out): after clicking the above links and thinking about it a little more, do you still think that retaining and revealing links between users’ pseudonyms and legal identities is really not a privacy issue?
Since they “helped” the Swiss court by following necessary Swiss law, didn’t they “help” the FBI?
If they didn’t even know the FBI was asking the Swiss courts, one could still say what they they did was “helpful” to the FBI.
don’t be pedantic. you know exactly what I meant when I said they didn’t help the FBI.
No. That’s the point. We have different ideas about what it means to help. I think help is simply doing something (or not doing something) that benefits someone else. You (and others) seem to also give it some additional qualities related to consent, agrement, or support. Since I don’t ascribe any moral judgement to the word and only use its most limited literal meaning, I hope it’s more clear to you how confusing it can be when you infer morality from amoral terms, and try to refrain from doing so in the future. Communication would be much smoother if people were more deliberately literal with their word choice.
You’re being very pedantic for nothing.
Yes. It would save a lot of confusion online if people were more pedantic. One might even call it helping.
No. You’re creating debates and arguments over insignificant shit.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive.