And if those bomb threats proved right and people get killed? Would you still praise Proton for not working with Law enforcement?
It's not Protonmail who's to be blamed for the potential attack and deaths. There are series of events that lead to people deciding to be terrorists. I'd focus on those reasons rather than hotfixing stuff by exposing 99.9% of other Protonmail users.
I would never opt in to affect 99.9% of users because of 0.01% of users. We are all educated enough through events in recent history that clearly tell us how similar use cases lead to abuse, every single time without exception.
Given these constraints, Russia's decision to block Protonmail is perfectly fine and the only logical outcome.
Most individuals who hold a view based on logical principles tend to be consistent on that application while people who react more emotionally will tend to flutter in the wind more.
I’d be curious to hear your reasoning.
Exactly. And thats the only point which needs to be made here.
It's like if one person was drink driving and hit someone. saying : "Well now thats it, we need to ban driving".
Why don't we just strip prisoners naked and keep them in glass cages? We would certainly need fewer armed guards if that were the case.
Thank goodness we are not there yet.
there are so many steps in that process where someone can be busted.. also keep in mind that most terrorist organisation are already infiltrated, and the "agents" are just waiting for the right time to bust them (not too early so they have enough evidence/they learn more about the connections/ resources) and not so late that there is a chance for the attack to go through.
This is why London attacks wete effective, it was lone wolves.
Every time I see in the news that "a bomb failed to go off and X arrests were made" I feel that the 3-letter-agencies gave "them" playdoh instead of <insert explosive>.
There is a balance between privacy and catching bad guys, but I often get the sense that much of this community believes the police should never be able to invade somebody's privacy even if they have evidence that person committed a crime. That doesn't seem like a sensible balance to me, and it's an extreme position to take. Am I misunderstanding?
Second, a warrant for breaking into physical property in their jurisdiction is very different than digital property on servers in a different country. For one, Russia's judges have no authority there.
The only real way around that is to make it private, invite only, and vetted and only invite people with a large enough public presence to be able to have a chance at figuring out if they're the 'right kind of person' which means it can't be open to the average person.
But I have little confidence that surveillance requires warrants, or that warrants are only issued with valid probable cause of real crimes, and not against dissidents, journalists, political adversaries and business competitors.
Therefore, ProtonMail's only moral and ethical response is to refuse to cooperate with Russia's law enforcement.
The same would be true in China if ProtonMail was available there.
And given what we now know about the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I'd have to say they've become more like Russia than most care to contemplate.
Do you think Proton are the only people who don't trust the Russian police, and provide them with less information as a result, reducing their ability to solve real crimes?
One of the predictable side effects of having a police force / legal system that is used by the powerful to crush dissent that people don't trust you, even when there really are real threats.
See also the HK protests regarding the extradition bill, which was prompted by a guy who genuinely did murder his girlfriend in Taiwan.
I mean they could literally just use a physical mailbox, a burner phone, etc., and you'd have absolutely no idea who sent it either and the problem would be the same.
Let's not even start with the implications of governments being able to access communications such as journalists and their sources.
Patriot act which supposed to protect population from terrorists not only failed to accomplish it, it was used in war on drugs.
How is this any different from phone wiretaps or other surveillance orders outside of email?
There's no way to satisfy requests for historical data without capturing data from everyone.
That's not what GGGP suggested. He suggested that they give data for specific people that they already have. You are setting up a strawman here.
...how were they to know to capture data from those specific people before being asked?
That's what this is. Instead of getting a wire tap on phones, which nobody uses anymore, they're getting a wiretap on email.
There exist principles, which are action guiding rules. We use principles to keep ourselves from being swayed away from certain behaviors which we believe hold value. For example, many martial institutions hold some variant of the "death before dishonor" principle; this rule basically implies that you will choose to die before fleeing battle. Even though there are many pressures to change behavior, which may be VERY great in the moment, holding to your principles will allow you to lead a structured life guided by rules that you care about.
Corporations and business entities can also implement principles (to greater or lesser effect); ProtonMail enacts a principle of not sharing customer data. Thousands of companies hold to this same principle, which keeps honest business able to occur. Imagine if every company on Earth decided that they could sell any and all customer data. Banks selling stats on your income to car salesmen, Walgreens selling embarrassing photos of you too the press, etc. The world would be a fucking madhouse, commerce would break down, and millions would die as societies collapsed. A few lives that may or may not expire due to ProtonMail holding to their principles is nothing, comparatively. It would happen one way or another, just with a different email service.
Now, for a second, imagine that it really happened. And you're the official who decided "no, we will not act on this". And this decision is in the records. Does this situation look good to you?
If you look at a similar case, in US. SWAT-ting can be anonymous and can destroy lives, the assymetry of the tips and the resources destroyed by a false tip is unacceptable.
The same way for a bomb threat, the officer should act by requiring identification and guaranteeing that it stays private as long as the bomb is real.
Those officials then have to get reelected.
That's usually easier when your opponents can't make legitimate-sounding claims that the policies you've instituted led to a bombing.
IDIOT ANCHORPERSON COVERED IN MAKEUP: Breaking News: We've just learned that the bombing that killed 152 people in the Podunk Shopping Mall today was known in advance to the police, but they did nothing to inform the public! Now to our reporter on the scene.
LOSER IN A SUIT: Hi, this is Rob Harasser, coming to you live from the Podunk Police Headquarters. This is Detective A. Buser Skeptic. Detective Skeptic, I understand you got a call this morning before the bombing?
WIFE-BEATER IN A MUSTACHE: Yeah, someone called me this morning. It was hard to hear them, but they said a lot of people would die in the mall today. I asked who was calling and they hung up.
LOSER: Did they say they were going to bomb it?
WIFE-BEATER: Yeah, they did say something about "a bomb", but I couldn't hear them clearly.
LOSER: Did you trace the line?
WIFE-BEATER: I did. You know, people think that if they hang up fast enough, we can't trace calls, but that's not true anymore. Even though they called the non-emergency number, I knew where they were calling from in ten minutes. It was a payphone outside the mall. Did you know there are still payphones outside the mall?
LOSER: Why didn't you warn people?
WIFE-BEATER (looking sad): I thought it was some kid playing a joke.
PANCAKE-THICK MAKEUP FACE: Well, there you have it, folks. The police knew, and they didn't tell us.
I don't know anything about the situation in Russia, but that definitely happened in Northern Ireland.
It's not the difference between anonymous tip and non-anonymous tip, but between anonymous tip and no tip at all, because no one wants to be punished for doing the right thing.
Remember Richard Jewell from the Atlanta Olympics?
They aren't wrong. Federal circuit judges and the Supreme Court have ruled that police have no duty to protect anyone in particular. They routinely suffer no meaningful negative consequences for serious failures in their work, including killing people who are unarmed, not resisting, and not suspected of committing any crime.
And after the Boston police screwed up the Mooninite promotion for Cartoon Network in 2007... well, it's enough to say that Turner had to pay for and publicly apologize for the police response to their fancy LED-illuminated handbills--absolutely Kafkaesque.
If I ever find a suspicious package, I'll certainly alert bystanders to retreat. I'll pull the firm alarm on my way out. I'll call the firefighters. I'll call the local newspaper and television station newsrooms. I might even call the triage nurse at the nearest ER. But someone else can be the one to call the cops.