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0 pointsistingray4y ago0 comments

The problem is that engaging in "potentially dangerous activities" includes such a wide range of people. Think about a journalist in Afghanistan, a whisteblower in the USA, or a human rights activist in China. They're all engaging in potentially dangerous activities. Are they "dumb" because they don't understand all the ins and outs of surveillance? How about some empathy for them as users?

The proposed statement above is intended to help people like that.

Do I have such activities? Nope. But I believe that those activities should be enabled, whether for me in the future or others around the world.

I advocate on behalf such "dumb" people by supporting simple services like Protonmail with my money. If Protonmail isn't supporting these users, why should I bother supporting Protonmail?

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7 comments · 4 top-level

jelling4y ago· 2 in thread

Also ProtonMail's only reason for being is that they are supposed to provide some higher level of privacy. If they don't, how are they any different than a commodity grade SMTP/IMAP provider? I will withhold judgement until I know more about the case but the early context does not look good for ProtonMail's value proposition, which is the least of things.

lavabiopsy4y ago

Is it though? I don't know much about this company but their main selling point seems to be end to end encryption for mail messages. That's not a "privacy" feature by itself. Now it is a tool that you can use it to gain more privacy, but you could also have people who use it to cc all their emails to their entire facebook list. So it seems it all depends on how you use it and what type of privacy you try to achieve.

blululu4y ago

End to end encryption is a privacy feature by itself. The example of using an email service to send a mass email to a dislist is irrelevant to the possibility that it would also be able to preserve privacy in other communications. You could send an email directly to the local police chief if you wanted but that does not preclude wanting privacy elsewhere.

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blub4y ago· 1 in thread

* Think about a journalist in Afghanistan, a whistleblower in the USA, or a human rights activist in China*

The former's safe because no one's going to deliver IPs to Afghanistan and the latter are doomed, because the US and China are following a policy of total surveillance. That ship has sailed decades ago.

lobocinza4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they or anyone else in the future deliver users IPs to the Taliban government specially with they get recognition from more nations.

ivan_gammel4y ago

You do not have to understand all aspects of privacy to realize that governments may have sufficient resources to track your identity and to put enough pressure on businesses to provide information they need.

At the same time, Tor is not the only, the required and the sufficient way to ensure privacy. There are different circumstances requiring different approaches. In many cases Tor will be redundant, in some cases it may be impossible to use, will offer insufficient protection or will actually put the person in an immediate danger, so giving this kind of advice is at least equally harmful as not having full disclosure on logs.

raxxorrax4y ago

> Are they "dumb" because they don't understand all the ins and outs of surveillance?

US military personell and from other nations is posting on TikTok. At least those probably don't work in reconnaissance.

They aren't stupid and this isn't a technical problem, it is a legislative problem. Real security has been undermined since the early 2000 and before. Western powers just ape China or Russia at this point.

That the Swiss people gave authorities these surveillance capabilities is pretty stupid though. Alpine air must have been pretty thin that day.

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