Well I guess Proton cannot be trusted. You know what they say, centralization corrupts absolutely
The whole idea of encrypted email is pointless. There's absolutely no guarantee it's encrypted in transit or encrypted at rest on any machines it transits through unless you encapsulate the messages with PGP and then you still leave a trail of envelopes everywhere. Any government who wants your data will come round and beat it out of you or the provider as best as they can. And if you have the pay the provider, as evidenced here, they can point to you and then beat you for it. Beating being metaphorical or otherwise.
Use any old shitty email provider and make sure you can move off it quickly if you need to. Standard IMAP, not weird ass proprietary stuff like proton. Think carefully what you do and say. Use a side channel for anything that actually requires security.
Personally, if you want private Comms, just don't use email. The protocol is just not suitable.
And from what little I can tell from the article, it was account payment data, not content from the account.
Proton was never designed or advertised to resist this kind of threat.
I cancelled my Proton account when all of that hit Mastodon. Their VPN was good, but I dont support nazies and their toadies.
The single most useful link I found was this Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli...
> [Proton's] homepage touts that “With Proton, your data belongs to you, not tech companies, governments, or hackers.” However, [...] Proton previously handed over an IP address at the request of French authorities made via Europol to Swiss police. Yen wrote a Twitter post at the time, stating, “Proton must comply with Swiss law. As soon as a crime is committed, privacy protections can be suspended and we’re required by Swiss law to answer requests from Swiss authorities.” ---https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru...
Big surprise: swiss company complies with swiss law!
And the same happened now, quoting the part of the submission that you can read without signing up:
> 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.
Anyway, regarding your claim, it's a whole rabbit hole of statements they made but broadly speaking it sounds like you're right: Vance supported legislation which Proton campaigned for and, subsequently (as of 2025-01), Proton loves the US Republican Party, believing they would stand up for 'the little guy'. To be fair, they bring some evidence that sound like it can be verified and back this opinion up somewhat, but even if it's a correct opinion on this sub-topic, it's still supporting authoritarianism. Anyway, this is where I'm going to stop trying to politically analyze their situation and just not recommend Proton anymore...