Proton Mail gave FBI payment data from Swiss servers, proving encrypted email privacy has limits when governments use legal treaties to demand user information.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60387297

Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data for [email protected] — the account linked to Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta. The FBI obtained this information through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request on January 25, 2024, identifying the activist behind the anonymous account through their credit card identifier.

  • Venia Silente@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    Furthermore, you can pay with bitcoin or even cash (sent to their HQ by mail). That way they’d have even less on you.

    With the caveat that in some of their procedures they (seem to?) require to append account information in the mail, so if the postage can be traced back to you that’s an issue.

    • tb_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      Yeah, not sure how it’d work with return addresses and whatnot. But if the letter itself is intercepted there’s probably more that can be used to trace back to you, unless you only handled the money and paper in a clean room.

      • Venia Silente@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        7 hours ago

        Well, the entire procedure requires you to first trust the snail mail chain in the first place, so it’s a different category of trust that “trust a CC provider”. Snail mail used to be sacred, but it’s been known not-to for a long while now. And at the point that you can expect the acabs are willing to inkdust and laser your mail for biological traces, that means you are facing a nation-state adversary with nation-state power, so you should be looking into nation-state level defenses instead.