To a certain extent, there is truth in that phrase. Of course, it can also be used as justification for gross abuses. I, for one, am glad that the NSA (singular placeholder example) exists and has hard working people doing their jobs there striving to see to it that I and my family don’t get massacred. Everything in balance and it is up to us as citizens to demand accountability through the legitimate oversight systems that are put in place. That doesn’t mean we have a right to see how they make the sausage. Folks who work at these agencies are regular people, not bogeymen, and they have skin in the game too - themselves and their families. I bet if you knew a tenth of what some folks at the NSA knew, you’d shit your pants and never leave your house. There are a lot of really bad people in this world who are trying to do extraordinarily bad things.
I don’t really care that the NSA has my data (I actually care a lot more that Google has my data). I’m not the needle, I’m the haystack. They bring in so much information on a second-by-second basis, they cannot possibly examine all of it thoroughly. There are only 24 hours in a day. They have a finite number of people (who have non-NSA lives outside of work) and a finite (but large) budget, so they have to create tools to help sift through the information and prioritize what they can and can’t do. And they are still a government bureaucracy which is incredibly inefficient and debilitating in-and-of itself. On top of that, there is considerable oversight. Just because it’s secret oversight, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. That’s kind of the whole point of a representative government.
My thoughts on this subject apply exclusively to “western” or “five-eyes” or “democratic” (as much as that’s possible) agencies that I believe are generally focused in the direction of goodness - trying to prevent very bad things from happening. This is certainly not the case throughout the world and there are places that use their extensive intelligence apparatus to manipulate, oppress, and instill fear in their people. As I mentioned above, that’s a different scenario entirely and what’s really hinted at by the phrase you cited. Could any society find itself heading down that road, of course. This is a hard issue. It’s not black-and-white, so conversations like this need to happen. That being said, I think it often gets lost who is actually “the NSA”. It’s not a singular bogeyman, but a large network of real people generally trying to do the right thing and they must be held accountable when things go astray.
So Leaseweb could be compelled by Dutch law to intercept any traffic to your non-Secure Core servers that use their facilities. With no court oversight. And you’re fine with that. Got it.
Me too. I am not convinced by their probity, transparency and even some of their technical skills. Running a catch-eye website (and client) isn’t enough to reach the top. Both airvpn and vnp.ac stay my choice, at least for the moment.
That’s an excellent point that’s lost on most people who sign-up to VPN services. To frame it another way, it is more likely that authorities will simply by-pass the VPN provider and go straight to the data center for the tap, the VPN provider would never even know about it.
ProtonVPN specifically isn’t bound to their laws. The data center however indeed is. Which is ultimately a moot point when the VPN server is the point of failure.
They themselves can’t be obligated to do anything. The data center however will spread their cheeks for anyone that comes knocking. But as i said earlier. Don’t. Use. US. or. UK. Servers. Without. Secure. Core.
Or hell, even with secure core. Just use one of the servers that ProtonVPN operates themselves in Switzerland, Iceland or Switzerland.
Honestly, i simply don’t believe that eliminating the entire countries privacy and blatantly cockslapping the 4th Amendment is the best way to stop Johhny Jihad from slitting my throat in the street.
We have an insane amount of resources that don’t require turning the constitution into a dumpster fire to begin claiming that we have to erode our democracy to protect it. It’s counter-intuitive. Maybe the NSA are just happy white picket fence red blooded americans that want nothing but happiness and prosperity for all of us. But their actions have shown otherwise, and regardless the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I for one am not going to stand by and just let every government probe my digital anus for a threat that this probing doesn’t even solve. When we have a terrorist commit an attack that was on a watch list along with 30,000 others and we did nothing to stop them, that’s not the time to ask for more anus probing. That’s when you look at your security apparatus and remind yourself you can’t even do shit with everything you have.
I don’t care if it’s Tor, VPN or a can and some string. I will find other ways to communicate securely and i won’t give up because the men in black claim to be the good guys; and that’s something i refuse to debate with anyone.
No, again, you didn’t read the article. A three week court order was granted and extended multiple times. A court order is always required. And it is not just Leaseweb that this is impacted by. Any provider in Netherlands is subject to this law.
Exactly. This is ultimately a test of whether Proton is true to their principles. They claim to take privacy seriously and even gloated when SS7 was hacked (“That’s why we never will support text 2FA!”) so if they don’t address this, they’re hypocrites. I am optimistic they’re not and will do the right thing, however.
For me PIA is just 1 of my VPN providers. Reasons I use them is they’ve been in this game a long time, they are the largest provider that uses bare-metal servers(over 3,000), with so many servers/users, there hasn’t been any court cases that has shown PIA to of turned on any it’s users.
Could their whole system be compromised because they’re US based? I suppose anything is possible, but based on their huge number of servers/users and no documented prosecution of any of their users?! I’ll stick with them until something gives me reason not to.
Yep, but they show they are willing to put up a fight (they’ve publicly challenged court orders on behalf of users, and won) and they dropped Leaseweb when this instance became public knowledge.
The fact of the matter is I’m blindly trusting whatever VPN provider I choose. I’m going to err on the side of a company that has shown they’ll put up a fight for my privacy. Maybe Proton will, maybe not. We’ll see. But their answer about Leaseweb is not reassuring in the slightest.