Not a fan of the format of the essay. Short sentences. Repetition. Not normal language — punctuated fragments.

Ironically, I ran this AI-generated post through AI to summarize and isolate the claims of fact. TLDR: The complaint is largely about Proton Meet, which is hosted by a US-based company and is underpinned by a lot of US-hosted companies. Other core Proton services are not part of the complaints, though it's noted that sometimes Proton has given up user metadata from US court orders (such as payment and contact info, not actual VPN or email contents).

I may be downvoted for acknowledging I used AI to help add context with my comment, but the essay was truly painful to try to read after a few paragraphs.

Just post the prompt next time.

Sigh. It's one thing to plop out 7500 words of fluffed-out LLM-staccatto, but then to demand that I:

> Read the whole piece. Not the first section. Not the first section and a skim. The whole thing.

...boy. Sure seems in tension with the claim that

> when the receipts are this good you don't need to editorialize. You just need to line them up and let people read.

tl;dr: Proton complies with legal process, and Proton Meet routes traffic through California.

And somebody paid for something they wanted to keep secret using a credit card in their name. The latter of which was disclosed via MLAT request, when the former came under investigation for terrorism.

Perhaps their Proton Wallet product might be of interest to the more discerning breed of alleged-terrorist...

Absolute insanity from other commenters here. I totally disagree about it being hard to read - it’s fine.

And others bitching about being instructed to read the whole thing, clearly didn’t.

It’s not JUST about Proton Meet. The article goes on to point out that even for Proton Mail, around 10,000 foreign subpoenas were complied with last year.

It draws attention to the STARK contrast between their messaging and their actual culpability when it comes to compliance with foreign powers.

The author also goes on to talk about the hypocrisy in Proton’s use of AWS, Google, DigitalOcean and Google and Apple app stores, which goes to more or less completely undermine Proton’s standing here.

It’s also worth drawing attention to their class action waiver, AND their bizarrely hypocritical ToS which flies in the face of their positioning.

Which, you know, others would have found out if they read before commenting.

Like the article requested.

I am always amazed but how many times I have to tell people NOT to trust anything and act accordingly, yet, especially technical ones still fall for the same trick. Email as a protocol is never private, let alone anonymous, even if you encrypt it, it will still leaks meta data, assuming you encrypt even the meta data, you are still IDed but cross over fingerprinting and the likes. But also you have to look for indicators, when a company tries to make put all your eggs in their basket, all your digital life with a false sense of privacy, you know in your gut something is wrong, without spending an extra minute to research the details, same goes when a company still use a phone number to signup or register with no alternative option, like Signal and other, you should know this is not to be trusted. You are probably better safe using a Chinese product if you are in the US for example than using a US or European one despite all the privacy promises, but the same rule still applies, don’t trust them or anyone. Security through obsecurity is another option, especially in AI era, where automated systems can easily ID you based on behavior rather than metrics, that way you can blend in and making it difficult to pinpoint.