News ProtonMail hit by PayPal account freeze

If they can't crack your encryption they'll starve you to death. Nice.

 

Someone now needs to crowd fund a paypal alternative.

 

Maybe these Swiss can figure out how to open a bank and compete directly. (but what would they know about banking...)

 

Look at their stretch goal for $1,000,000...

"Our ultimate stretch goal will fund development of encrypted file storage and sharing."

In other words, piracy.

Also they fail to exclude certain Countries (like for example Iran, North Korea and Cuba) from all encryption services, which is a very big no no according to the US Government.

 

Oh, that settles it then. We might as well just lock them up right away - no need for legal oversight and those pesky rights thingies.

 

Nothing new there

 

Since when is Switzerland a member state of United States of America ? Did i miss something ? I am asking because US export bans do not apply to anything else but US.

 

So only people who are pirating software have a need for encrypted file storage and sharing ?
Maybe we should close down every cloud storage service that allows users to share the files they uploaded, like the storage you get with Office 365, or Dropbox.

So now the US can freeze the assets of anyone that doesn't abide by their laws ?
Last time i checked each country sets its own laws and foreign policy.

 

And since when has the US Government let borders stand in their way of trying to enforce their will?
Also remember that they didn't take protonmail to court, they simply got the funding cut off which doesn't require any legal basis whatsoever because If someone dares to complain they'll just yell Terrorism and the protests about the lack of legal process will go away.

The argument that it is the users that are responsible and not the file hoster didn't stop governments from taking down other file hosters like for example megaupload or hotfile and it didn't stop them from getting the TPB founders thrown in jail in very dubious trials either.

Why bother with a trial with evidence and all that when certain companies like paypal can be influenced to cut off funding?

 

Very, very worrying.

Out of interest, is there any reason why they had the funds resting in a PayPal account? Surely any sane person would use PayPal as a transitory processing system rather than a bank account - especially if PayPal have a history of doing this to companies the US Government just happens to not like very much?

If ProtonMail is not directly involved in criminal activity, then surely the US government have no jurisdiction to freeze their funds?

I have no need for encrypted email, but I would certainly make use of ProtonMail if it ever got to production status. It's no longer the case that only people with something to hide use encrypted services - with so many government organisations like the NSA and GCHQ having a total disregard for anyone's privacy in the name of "national security", I should be entitled to secure what is mine.

 

Umm... that WAS my point!

You seem to be back-tracking.

 

Indeed, It's a worrying trend isn't it.
Good job we don't do the same thing in RL, to think how many times a company would have been taken to court because people used one of their product or service illegally.

OMG you sold this person a car and he used it illegally why didn't you stop them ? you need to stop making cars.

 

I'm lucky enough to have a Protonmail account. I know someone has hacked my POP mail and webmail accounts as the details in some of the emails I get sent are way to accurate to be standard advertising tracking.
Only my ISP would have records of these and the people I send them to. I trust my ISP and the people I email about my personal stuff, so who else is seeing it?
Protonmail, Mmm, read that if you can!
I realise this could be used for nefarious purposes, but it's up to the various agencies to up their game with intelligence from other sources. I'm sure some sophisticated codes are used by dangerous, or just plain unpleasant people anyway via standard email. There's no such thing as "rights" in the real world, but it's nice to be able to send a personal email to a friend without some cretin or other reading it!

 

SOD PAYPAL, many paypal users will have a debit card so use it!

 

https://protonmail.ch/blog/paypal-freezes-protonmail-campaign-funds/

UPDATE 2: 7/1/2014, 1700h, PayPal has let us know that the restrictions on our account have now been lifted and we have been able to extract our funds. Thank you for your support on this matter, it no doubt played a large part in getting PayPal to do the right thing in record time.