cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/40877

Email is inherently insecure. If you want or need secure communications, that’s what software like Briar, Matrix, or Signal (yes despite some drama).

Secure emails can always be done manually with PGP and will be a lot hardier than trusting an organization that gives away subscriber payments to Western-backed coup attempts and color revolutions.

  • @Lynda
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    42 years ago

    I wonder if they support ALL activists, or take sides, or if they choose which ideologies should be cancelled or supported. The last thing I want is to support technocrats.

    • savoyOP
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      82 years ago

      You can’t be entirely sure, but their plain outward support for these nationalist movements means they’re at odds with their opposition, Hong Kong/China & Belarus/Russia. For the former, the Hong Kong protestors were clearly a guise to attempt to destabilize China. The latter is slightly less obvious as Belarus isn’t socialist and Lukashenko isn’t a communist, and the protests weren’t entirely nationalist, but it was co-opted in an effort to further Western imperialism given Lukashenko’s dismissal of giving into neoliberal measures that benefit the US et. al..

      And given everything I’ve seen from them is also in English, it means they cater entirely to Western audiences and obviously hyper-focused on English speakers, who will all fall under the umbrella of US hegemony more so than most. Yet they were incredibly quiet during the BLM protests in the US last year, making zero effort to proclaim they’re on the side of activists that aren’t funded by the US. There’s no mention of siding with the activists fighting the continued attempts to destabilize China, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, etc. - and that’s all recent.

      Overall it’s very suspicious. They cannot be trusted to provide encryption and security given their agenda easily made clear.

    • @SineNomineAnonymous
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      62 years ago

      For example, if you’re an eco anarchist in France, you’re screwed. They do take sides

      • @southerntofu
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        72 years ago

        To be clear, this is not speculation. Protonmail actively collaborated with EUROPOL in a clear case of political repression against anarchists in Paris. It appears they were the ones suggesting to the french police that they make the request via EUROPOL, and that they did not try to delay/protest the request.

        • @DamnGoodTech
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          -22 years ago

          To be fair, Proton’s hands were tied. It was either give up the customer data for a few customers or their business would have to be shut down for all the users relying on it.

          In reality the activists made a crucial mistake of not using a VPN. If they used the Proton VPN in conjunction with Proton Mail they would have been safe.

          • @southerntofu
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            42 years ago

            To be fair, Proton’s hands were tied.

            No, not really. I know you mean it as a metaphor, but i think it’s important to point out in some countries as a sysadmin you could literally have your hands tied and cops beating the shit out of you. Avoiding this is a privilege european sysadmins have and can use.

            It was either give up the customer data for a few customers or their business would have to be shut down for all the users

            That’s definitely not so clear cut. Usually and to my knowledge the worst you can get for failing to keep logs (data retention laws) is a fine, which for a business like Proton is not really a problem as we’re not talking about a small hosting non-profit, and i’m sure people would be happy to take part in a crowdfunding for that.

            And they could have just gotten away with it. As you can learn from other hosting collectives like njalla (or weirder “offshore hosting” companies) not answering to the cops is always an option, or even answering that you don’t have the information they requested.

            If they used the Proton VPN in conjunction with Proton Mail they would have been safe.

            Why always blame the victim? I agree it was preventable, but that’s no excuse for the way some of us tech people collaborate with those fucking fascists from the police who will do anything to protect the status quo.

            Also worth noting, from what i gathered, Protonmail in fact setup IP logging just for this user specifically. So in this setup, Proton VPN would not have been safe either.

          • @poVoq
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            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

            • Marxism-Fennekinism
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              2 years ago

              why do you think using the VPN by the same company would have helped at all?

              Commercial VPN providers have proven time and time again to not be trustworthy. From VPNs handing over IPs they swore they didn’t have, to that one VPN getting hacked and the hacker leaking data they pinky promised they didn’t log, to the very real possibility of some VPNs being government surveillance honeypots. Using a VPN would very likely not have saved the environmental activist in question. Tor/Tails/Whonix might have, but when the Western State is this hellbent on ruining you because you undermined their capitalism/imperialism, you’re likely screwed no matter what/

              Now if only they spent this much effort to catch rich sex offenders and not people who simply give a shit about the future of humanity on this planet.

          • Marxism-Fennekinism
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            12 years ago

            To be fair, if they shut down it would be better because you’d have one less Western white knight funding terrorists on Hong Kong and Belarus.

            • @southerntofu
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              32 years ago

              Wait, what? How is Protonmail a white knight if they’re not standing up for anything? How are comrades struggling against injustice and domination in Hong Kong and Belarus terrorism? Sorry to be a little harsh, but you sound just like the nazis calling the French resistance, or the French calling the Algerian independence movement terrorists.

              Here’s a short read about Hong Kong, and an entire anarchist blog from Belarus.

                • @southerntofu
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                  2 years ago

                  If your comrades are the riot cops and the intelligence services, i’m happy to call you a nazi even if that’s a stretch of the original definition. Fuck that shit! If you call yourself a socialist, think about it: which side are you on? Are you on the side of the people fighting against the elite? Or secret police detaining, torturing and disappearing them?

                  • This is what no class analysis leads to. Your whole world is upside down lol. Other communists are nazis, but rioters that killed innocent workers deserve “socialist” solidarity? (Rioters, that literally waved UK flags and called for trump to annex them lol. Rioters that called for independence for HK, despite independence only having around 20% support. Rioters that returned to their luxury houses with their house staff afterwards lmao).

                    What do you want me to say lol. You instantly think I’m a nazi as well for… going against the state department line? Not thinking the same as you? idek. I didn’t even say anything lol, just that there is 0 point calling comrades nazis. In your benevolence you leave me with two choices: either I accept your point of view and thus purify myself (stop being a nazi) and then I can be considered a proper socialist, or I don’t and I will be your enemy. And thus I ask myself: how can you speak for all socialists?

              • Marxism-Fennekinism
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                2 years ago

                Hong Kong is already free, and became free when the Brits were driven out of it. The recent Hong Kong protests were nationalist/separatist. See here: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/6d22ace49a8605ff1915577f9d992b37315e7618/socialism_faq.md#what-about-the-hong-kong-protests Some protesters were literally begging Trump to annex them.

                I know less about Belarus, but https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7328 and @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml’s answers in this comment thread https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10554/comment/18109 seem to be pretty useful resources.

                Also see @savoy@lemmygrad.ml’s comment in this very thread for more info on both: https://lemmy.ml/post/90607/comment/93083

                • @southerntofu
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                  2 years ago

                  Hong Kong is already free

                  Oh well if the ministry of truth said so then i guess there’s no alternative interpretation?! I’d still like to point out that just because a country has some level of administrative autonomy doesn’t mean people are free: nationalist independence is not popular freedom.

                  That link you gave lists a lot of broken resources. First they assume China is a communist government, which is factually false: have you seen a classless society in China? Abolition of work and State? Then they assume just because some corrupt imperialist US media gave voice to one or two “leaders” (a figure they probably fabricated themselves) that all people supporting the movement are like them. It’s such a strawman argument that reeks of political police propaganda it’s a shame: it’s just like when the french government tried to paint the whole gilets jaunes movement as an antisemitic or royalist movement because you could find one or two of these in the demos, despite them being in the minority and getting kicked out of demos when they were spotted.

                  Also, i think it’s important to point out that just because some people appealed to the US and “international scene” doesn’t mean they actually support US imperialism. For example, the Kurdish revolutionary movement strongly relied on military/diplomatic intervention from USA and France to resist ISIS and Turkey… which of course failed to some extent when the interests of our respective empires were not aligned with the kurdish interests anymore. But as a strategy it has taken them so far (instead of being wiped out in the aftermath of the siege of Kobane back in 2014). Today the Kurdish liberation movement has strong(er) ties to the Zapatistas and other liberation movements across the planets: we can’t really say the Zapatistas are really friends with the USA. It’s easy for you to judge from your armchair that asking for help from this or that person is wrong: the day you face extermination by a government we’ll see how you react.

                  https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7328

                  The linked mastodon post has been deleted. But according to other links, it seems on lemmygrad.ml it brings you upvotes to advocate for death penalty for people you disagree with, and to say the people being detained and tortured by political police are liars. Then to say because one nazi paraded a flag (where?) the entire uprising is a neonazi movement. Oh, and that the government of Belarus is leftist somehow? This sentence especially makes me laugh:

                  Belarus is the last ex-Soviet country that still holds some socialised institutions (Lukashenko famously said that trade unions would be established in all businesses by the end of the year)

                  So you’ve got “socialized institutions” yet people living in misery and you need permission from the chief supreme to establish trade unions? Is that what you call socialism? Does that sound like a compelling argument to you as a leftist?

                  On the topic of US regime change, the NED has funded projects in Belarus to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.

                  OK so a few hundred thousand dollars thrown in by an imperialist org, and suddenly an entire popular movement has been bought? This makes no sense. When the US wants to fund a coup, they spend millions if not billions, and their PR machine works a lot better: just look at what happened in Venezuela, or back in the day with the Contras movement in Nicaragua. Or with the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan (hello Ben Laden).

                  As a leftist, think about it: which side are you on? Are you on the side of the riot police and secret police? Or on the side of the people? Are you on the side of the Cheka or the Cronstadt soviet and Makhnovtchina peasants? Are you defending the established order of economic privileges of the ruling class, or siding up with the people burning shit down?

                  • Seeing I wrote the comment you are responding to, I’ll allow myself to bring a clarification about this point:

                    Belarus is the last ex-Soviet country that still holds some socialised institutions (Lukashenko famously said that trade unions would be established in all businesses by the end of the year)

                    In 2020, Lukashenko met with the chairman of the Federations of Trade Unions of Belarus and said the federation should put forward requests to all businesses (or as many as possible) to have a union represent their sector. He then added that all businesses that did not comply with this request would be shut down.

                    Source: https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-urges-to-set-up-trade-unions-at-all-private-enterprises-by-year-end-134890-2020/

                    The context in which I wrote this was soon after he said this, and iirc it was a popular topic on lemmygrad at the time.

                    So no, you don’t need approval from Lukashenko to be unionised or form a union lol. He even said workers don’t have to join it if they don’t want to.

      • @Peter1986c
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        22 years ago

        In case of that French activist, it was not for the political position made (on ecology) but because of having squatted in private property (as far as I remember reading). So there is some need for nuance here.