So it sounds like they had their hand forced in that instance to provide the data and got a court ruling that allows them in the future to not retain that data. I would trust them.
This is how they try to portray it after their choice to comply. Fully.
They also said in the clarification thingy:
The identity and location of the activist was already known to the French authorities…
It’s only by them I heard this claim.
Proton gave the IP address, person got arrested is the story I know and it’s the one presented in the euronews article.
…(they had already been evicted once before for squatting, and the nature of squatting means that their location is known).
What a weird statement to make to justify giving up an IP address. Actually, I find it weird in all contexts.
Cmon… It’s a sentence linked to the next one. They are not using that as a way to justify anything, they just explained…
This is precisely the reason I used both quotes. For me, their “explanation” is pure nonsense. Even more so due to their claim latter on in this same text, saying that:
we are activists, too.
On your question on which email provider I’m using, I could say that my activity does not demand precautions like VPN but there are some providers that I don’t use. Proton is one of them, because they promised to users and delivered for police. And what did they have to say on their promises?
We will be making updates to our website to better clarify Proton Mail’s obligations in cases of criminal prosecution and we apologize if this was not clear.
This sounds to me like “sorry for making false promises, we thought it sounded cool”.
Based on this statement it looks like they were compelled by the courts:
In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from Swiss authorities which we are obligated to comply with. There was no possibility to appeal this particular request.
They also provided an update:
In October 2021, Proton won a Swiss court ruling that email services are not telecommunications providers. Consequently, email services are not subject to the data retention requirements imposed on telecommunications providers and are exempted from handing over certain user data in response to Swiss legal orders.
So it sounds like they had their hand forced in that instance to provide the data and got a court ruling that allows them in the future to not retain that data. I would trust them.
This is how they try to portray it after their choice to comply. Fully.
They also said in the clarification thingy:
It’s only by them I heard this claim. Proton gave the IP address, person got arrested is the story I know and it’s the one presented in the euronews article.
What a weird statement to make to justify giving up an IP address. Actually, I find it weird in all contexts.
So sure you do you. I totally don’t trust them.
The euro news article also links the French source and they say that a lot of the work was analyzing photos on Instagram
Cmon… It’s a sentence linked to the next one. They are not using that as a way to justify anything, they just explained how ip was “enough”.
Not that you would need trust. Just use tor or a vpn if you need to hide ip while doing stuff you know police is interested in…
I wonder which email provider you are using right now after being so confindent :P
This is precisely the reason I used both quotes. For me, their “explanation” is pure nonsense. Even more so due to their claim latter on in this same text, saying that:
On your question on which email provider I’m using, I could say that my activity does not demand precautions like VPN but there are some providers that I don’t use. Proton is one of them, because they promised to users and delivered for police. And what did they have to say on their promises?
This sounds to me like “sorry for making false promises, we thought it sounded cool”.
It’s badly written imo. There are 2 implicit informations:
Ye, I’m asking to know which provider you use that does not comply with local law
Promises were never false. They did not track ip and they don’t. They had to start for that specific user after the order…
It’s more like “we didn’t add extra clauses to our statements to make it clearer from start that bla bla bla”.
Marketing can be useful for a lot of reasons but it should never take the place of education. And vice versa.
That’s the definition of a false promise.