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The Only Email System the NSA Can't Access By Ted Baumann, Offshore and Asset Protection Editor Dear Sovereign Investor, It's been a busy month on the privacy front. On August 5, word got out that Russian hackers stole 1.2 billion user names and passwords for a wide variety of websites. Facebook got into hot water — again — over its decision to force its risky Messenger app on unwilling users. A U.S. senator warned that users of wearable fitness-tracking devices are at serious privacy risk and unprotected by any law. The European Union is poised to take steps to counter a U.S. court's order that Microsoft hand over the contents of its Irish servers.
Meanwhile, hackers and snoops gathered last week at their annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, plotting how to beat our best security efforts.
I was also a busy bee. I decided to start using a secure password-generation and management software, called Dashlane, which works across multiple devices. It was getting to the point where I had so many passwords to remember that it was seriously cutting into my productivity.
And I was at risk, because the natural tendency when you have a lot of passwords to remember is to re-use them on multiple sites. That's a BAD idea.
But I also did something I've been doing every week for months now … checking to see whether I had been accepted by the world's most secure email service, ProtonMail.
When Edward Snowden's revelations broke last year, it sent shockwaves through CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Switzerland. A young MIT PhD student working there expressed concern, and soon 40 of the smartest physicists and computer programmers on the planet were pooling their knowledge to found ProtonMail, a Gmail-like email system which uses end-to-end encryption, making it impossible for outside parties to monitor messages sent back and forth.
These are the guys and gals who discovered the Higgs Boson. They are Einstein-level smart. Unlike all other encrypted email services, ProtonMail separates the encrypted message from its encryption key. All the encryption takes place on your computer and the receiver's computer. Neither message nor key are stored on ProtonMail's servers, so there's no way for government to get their hands on them, even with a court order.
But that still wasn't secure enough for this group. ProtonMail decided to go the extra mile to ensure absolute security. They placed all their servers in Switzerland, which has some of the world's toughest privacy laws. That's why I'm on a waiting list — demand for ProtonMail is so high that there aren't enough available servers in Switzerland to accommodate it. But the group is currently raising money to build more.
ProtonMail's founders clearly understand that security and privacy is about more than encryption — the decision to base their service in Switzerland demonstrates that they get the politics part, too.
But politics has a way of resisting evasion. The Government's Fight Against Your Right to Privacy In June, PayPal — the same U.S. money-transfer company that blocked contributions to Julian Assange's WikiLeaks at the U.S. government's behest — froze ProtonMail's funds and blocked all further contributions, without notice or explanation. ProtonMail's two-week "crowdfunding" campaign had set a target of $100,000, but collected more than $300,000 in a few hours.
Why would PayPal do such a thing? Andy Chen, the MIT PhD student who dreamed up ProtonMail, explained that, "When we pressed the PayPal representative on the phone for further details, he questioned whether ProtonMail is legal and if we have government approval to encrypt emails."
That was a seriously stupid answer on PayPal's part. It just reinforces the fact that American tech companies are increasingly an extension of the U.S. government, and so cannot be trusted with anyone's business. Because it's a voluntary step by PayPal, it's much worse than a federal court's order that Microsoft unwillingly turn over the contents of its Irish servers.
This isn't the first time PayPal has closed an account out of deference to government. Regulations by the U.S. Department of Treasury's FinCEN unit require financial organizations to monitor accounts for illegal activity, in essence deputizing private companies to act as monitors. These regulations tend to cause companies such as PayPal to freeze perfectly legal accounts in overzealous lock-downs like the ProtonMail fiasco. Come Together ProtonMail's experience ties together a number of strands we've written about a lot recently. In my Offshore Confidential report this month, I discussed the great opportunity presented by the iAccount, an Internet-based eWallet service, precisely because it's based in China, where the U.S. government can't snoop or confiscate funds.
Last week, my colleague Chad Shoop wrote about the great investment opportunities presented by the rush to create and market secure communications technology like ProtonMail. And as I write, I'm working on another major report on steps you can take to secure your privacy.
The common element in all of these topics is this: you cannot trust the U.S. government or the U.S. private sector to protect your privacy against the growing threat. You need to look elsewhere — and we're committed to showing you exactly where. Kind regards,
Ted Baumann
Offshore and Asset Protection Editor P.S. Don't wait to reserve your seat for the Total Wealth Symposium! I just received an update and we're running out of space. You can't afford to miss our most important conference of the year. I will be discussing how you can develop a Plan B to protect yourself and your wealth. Additional experts will be on hand to share tips on offshore investing, foreign real estate, increasing your portfolio yield and more. For full details and to reserve your seat before the price goes up, click here. | |
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