[spinax]

> ProtonMail, in fact, had to comply with a Swiss court order, which came after the French police had requested Swiss cooperation through Europol, making use of international judicial assistance.

What exactly did / do you expect Proton to do here? They were given a legal mandate to comply and they complied. Did you have a fantasy that they would fight the Swiss and French governments (and apparently Europol) when given a valid court order and risk their entire existence?

[dskloet]

They could and should have communicated more honestly about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28427996

[throwawayswede]

Stop intentionally missing the point. It's not about them complying with the law or not, it's about them promising something that they did not deliver on, regardless of whether they couldn't because they didn't know or the lied, it doesn't matter. Customer confidence won't be partially restored without them owning up to it. First by fighting it in court, not pretending like it's all been out of their hand, then by having their system implemented in a way where they could even start secretly logging their users (even to comply legally). Hiding behind fine print and ambiguous wording (like "oh, we said only by default").

ProtonMail fucked up. Badly and majorly. So far the only thing they've proved is that it's not a their main tag line "Secure Email. Based in Switzerland" is basically meaningless bullshit. It's not secure, and they'll backstab their customers without even putting up a fight. There's no sugar coating it, and there's no way to take it back, there's no way to distract the community form.

Their reputation is as good as dead. I feel bad for people who still use it as a "secure" email.

[maxwell]

You're really making the Nuremberg defense?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

By complying they also risked their entire existence.

Their brand seems destroyed already.

[spinax]

Since we're tossing around wikipedia links,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

[throwawayswede]

Lol, dude, you're missing the entire point. I understand it hurts to learn that a company you've been paying turned out not to be what it claims to be, but no one is "tossing around" wikipedia links other than you. And you're doing it sort of badly, the link you tossed is equivalent to just throwing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security in an argument.

[Cycl0ps]

See also,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law