To be fair, Protonās 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.
I would look for a hosting provider that hosts servers outside a 5-eyes country (which is just about every western country, unfortunately). After doing A LOT of web searching I came across cloudsigma. They have servers in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. No, they havenāt paid me for this (although, cloudsigma, if youāre reading thisā¦Iām your biggest fan!).
Iād give https://dnt.abine.com (also called Blurā¦not really sure what to call them) a look. Itās kinda like privacy.com but from what I can tell thereās more privacy and any card you create is client-side encrypted.
I presented an idea at the recent Linux conference. I think I probably botched the talk. :-(
In any case, the idea I was proposing was thisā¦
Just hire people.
The current way of hiring is high risk low reward.
But if you initially hire someone for a small project as a 1099 thatās low risk high reward. Seeing how the handle a small project can indicate how theyāll handle a large one.
Not sure of a left solutionā¦I suppose passing a law that limits the number of interviews a company can do; or creating a public hiring department so that all hiring decisions are decided at a state/local level and then passed on to employer; or shutting a company down if there are too many complaints about their hiring processā¦but I can imagine a lot of issues with these.
It can be very tempting to immediately jump on the āban signalā bandwagon, but I think it would be wise to take a step back and understand where theyāre coming from.
In reading the blog post their focus is on user privacy as their top priority. I donāt believe signal would make this decision without privacy in mind. Whatās the alternative?
If spammers run rampant, Signal has a bigger privacy nightmare on their hands. Maybe by a miracle you got Grandpa to join you on signal. But a spammer then reached out to him with āhot young singles in your areaā and Grandpa just had to click. Now suddenly Grandpaās retirement savings are gone.
So Iām not saying itās not worrisome. Iām saying letās remain open-minded. After all, itās nearly impossible to have 100% open source software in any stack. Youāre either using an AMD or Intel CPU. Theyāre both closed source, but they allow you to interact with a privacy community.
Does a wrench make us more lonely?