@skinnylatte This headline is incredibly biased. Did Proton help the FBI? Or did they hand over data to the Swiss government that the Swiss government ordered them to, and then the Swiss helped the FBI unmask an anonymous protester?

I keep seeing this post pop up in my feed with permutations of "WHY PROTON DO THIS!?" -- Because they were legally ordered to.

We're doing a disservice to ourselves for not recognizing the bounds of the privacy that Proton, or Tuta, or any other "private" email service provides, and looking at this moment as a failure by the provider - when really it's the failure of a user to recognize the technical & legal bounds of of their comms services to keep them anonymous.

The lesson here, i think, is about opsec, and knowing the bounds of the tools we're employing for whatever our goals are.

@r3dr3clus3 @skinnylatte If you don't have the data, you can be ordered to give it up by whomever, and you can't. Proton mail claims privacy, but it in fact saves enough data to identify a single individual.

The headline is not biased. Proton claims things they actually can't uphold. This is not the fault of the customer. Stop blaming the victim.

@Pyrogenesis "The headline is not biased" - so I'll ask again: Did Proton help the FBI? Or did Proton comply with a Swiss Court Order, and the Swiss government helped the FBI?

A more unbiased headline might be, "Proton turns over user payment information because of Swiss Court Order".

I'm not blaming a victim. I'm demanding better activism. We live in a world where organized activism is becoming more and more crucial, and it's the responsibility of activists, especially those organizing activism, to understand the capabilities and limitations of their communications networks.

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm saying I want people to realize that it doesn't matter if this was Proton, or Tuta, or some other "private" service, and realize that they are all beholden to legal systems that determine the minimal amount of data that must be collected, the length of time it has to be retained, and how personally identifiable that information is.

So if I'm "blaming the victim" by saying, "There is a valuable lesson to be learned here, and it's not just dunking on Proton" then sure, that's what I'm doing and I stand by it.

EDIT
For anyone going, "tHiS iS wHy I uSe TuTa!", here's a link to a page with a big red banner that Tuta rejected 75% of all court orders in 2025. Which is very cool, don't get me wrong - that's super cool - but what are those other 25%?
https://tuta.com/blog/transparency-report

Am I more into Tuta than Proton at this point? Yep. Do I think Proton was really the issue this time? Nope.

Stay sharp.