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I have been using Proton Mail and Proton VPN for over 3 years now. I firmly believe in the fundamental right of privacy online. Indian government has been taking steps like these for quite some time now. They previously asked VPN companies to log and gather every bit of information they could about their users including their name and address (effectively driving all VPN companies out of India) Sometimes, I question the meaning of freedom in India. On paper we are free citizens, but essentially we never seem to get the benefits of living in a free country.

So sending someone something offensive is grounds for banning protonmail, yet the bazillion scam call centers are somehow not a problem.

This seems ineffective on a couple levels. One is that Proton users are a population that’s much more likely to be using a VPN anyway (they even offer a VPN service themselves). Another is that unless non-blocked providers reject email from Proton this doesn’t even solve the supposed issue. An Indian user of GMail is going to still receive and view email sent by Proton, so the goal of the block isn’t even achieved.

Steps like this are all the more reason the decentralized internet has to start being given more priority. It's only a matter of time until the open internet stops being a thing.

Good publicity for proton mail

Wanted to do a TL;DR of this order:

* Some company’s employees receive some inappropriate emails from a ProtonMail address.

* They file complaints and approach the court to identify who sent the emails.

* ProtonMail does not respond to queries about its users from foreign authorities unless the Swiss government directs it to. [1] It didn’t respond to this request.

* The court decides that blocking ProtonMail in the entire country will solve this problem and such problems forever.

[1]: https://proton.me/blog/india-block-proton-mail (key text snippet below)

> Under Swiss law, Proton is not allowed to transmit any data to foreign authorities, and we are therefore required by law to reject all requests from foreign authorities that are addressed directly to us. However, Proton is legally obligated to respond to orders from Swiss authorities, who do not tolerate illegal activities conducted through Switzerland and may assist foreign authorities in cases of illegal activity, provided they are valid under international assistance procedures and determined to be in compliance with Swiss law.

Same old:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/5re9s1/h...

Sounds like an endorsement of Proton Mail to me.

Why not simply block the senders? How on earth does a high court support the demand of a single entity at the cost of the wide public, risking freedom oppression and censor of speech?

I mean this is just absurd.

> On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court directed the Indian government to block Proton Mail, a popular email service known for its enhanced security, following a legal complaint filed by New Delhi-based M Moser Design Associates. The local firm alleged that its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.

How does this make any sense. Would the court block gmail if the same happens via gmail?.

India somehow is stuck in the worst of all worlds. There is no freedom like democratic countries and there is no good government like China.

To any westerners commenting, this is not same as think of the children. Government or courts mostly don't even need to give such excuses in India (max they might say to counter traitors). There is obscene amount of corruption in the country at every step from the local to the highest, and it is internalized by the citizens so much that everyone knows and nobody cares.

Edit: good government above means competent government

I never wanted a Proton email address before now.

Don't they already block internet access to certain regions in order to slow down the spread of information? I'm not very surprised by these actions.

Related but India has been on a slow march to becoming a totalitarian surveillance state. Recently, we got public confirmation on govt. having backdoor access to WhatsApp to surveil on citizens when the FM talked about the Income Tax dept. scanning WhatsApp messages to catch offenders: https://m.economictimes.com/wealth/tax/is-the-government-alr...

Are those essentially just sham cases orchestrated by the government to justify blocking an encrypted service?

It seems like such an insane over-reaction to an absolute non-issue.

They ban proton mail nationwide over a few offensive emails. Will they ban YouTube next if they make offensive videos about them?

This is just the best marketing for Proton Mail. I want to sign up for one immediately after reading it.

I imagine now hackers using Gmail and outlook to spam Indian courts with all sorts of nice images

If only the court order made India block all their SMTP servers from contacting Proton Mail, so I’d stop getting contract role requests thousands of miles from my home with three-week lengths and $20/hr pay to be an AWS Architect and/or Lab Assistant.

Is there any possible action against other vendors like fastmail, etc?

Typically it's amazingly great evidence for the high quality of a mail service that certain governments hate them.

National security above all. Good for India

It intrigues me to wonder, in this day and age, what the legal meaning of "blocking" is.

In any given nation with a default-open Internet, what are the ramifications of a court or legal process "blocking" a service?

Protonmail is clearly more than a mere website; it's a full-featured communications platform; I'm sure it has a mobile app or at least access via the typical POP/IMAP interfaces.

So, "blocking" Protonmail could mean all sorts of things:

- Excise it from DNS

- Demand removal from Play Store, Apple Store, other mobile OS providers

- filter any IP traffic attempting to connect to service via web, IMAP, POP3

- inhibit or interfere with SMTP traffic to/from Protonmail servers, e.g. mail sending and delivery (MTA activity)

- expel/prohibit colocation of physical servers, VPS systems, or middleware that may be within jurisdiction

- deal legally with any physical office presence or employee contingent within the jurisdiction

Now within the Great Firewall of China and other default-deny Internet services, it's not difficult to see that Protonmail could easily be blackholed. But what if you're accustomed to open access like the USA?

There are so many considerations here. A simple court order to "block" an Internet service introduces quite a few layers to peel back. The USA's action against TikTok was fraught with confusion and ambiguity. Because TikTok is likewise a powerful communications service. So, tech people like us need more insight on what it means to "block" a service when a court says so!

First the ban on VPN and now Proton Mail. Facepalm.

India lack technical capability to decrypt web traffic at scale or power to force companies to do it for them. Like what happened with Apple and Telegram.

So this is what they come up with.

...Just use Proton VPN to access Proton Mail ;)