> Except if Fastmail can decrypt user's data, then they can be compelled to backdoor their system, and also compelled to keep it quiet. Australia is part of the "5 eyes", after all, and from an outsider perspective their government seems particularly hostile/authoritarian.
If you don't expect the government to follow any rules, then most of these discussions are moot. But what we've been seeing with the Snowden leaks is that the governments are at least attempting to walk the tightrope of legality. Here in the U.S., that means having at least plausible procedures to filter out non-foreigner communications, and going through legal processes like subpoenas instead of simply breaking into computer systems.
These facts have practical concerns. Unless you hypothesize that the U.S. and Australia are putting citizens in prison using secret courts, the government still has to present evidence in a court proceeding, and that has to comport with the 4th amendment in the U.S., and whatever the equivalent is in Australia.
The law in this area is rapidly evolving, but in my opinion as someone with both a legal and technical background, encryption like what Fastmail has gives 4th amendment arguments a lot more teeth. When your data is in an e-mail service that's readily accessible to the service provider, or even data-mined for advertising purposes, it's susceptible to the charge that it's not private information, because after all you're allowing someone else to rummage through it. But if there are protections in place, even if they can be circumvented if needed, that's different. Now you're talking about something that's more like a safe deposit box at a bank or a rented storage unit, which do have 4th amendment protection. They're locked, and only the owner accesses what's inside as a matter of course. The lock can be broken, in an emergency, but that doesn't change the fact that the owner of the facility does not access the contents as a matter of course.
> Unless you hypothesize that the U.S. and Australia are putting citizens in prison using secret courts, the government still has to present evidence in a court proceeding, and that has to comport with the 4th amendment in the U.S., and whatever the equivalent is in Australia.
rayiner, how about the reports of "parallel construction" by the NSA? While it's true that the government still has to present evidence in a court, according to recent reports [1] the NSA "tips off" organizations like the DEA.
So, what you're saying is only use Google services if you're an US citizen and only use FastMail if you carry an Australian passport -- because otherwise all bets are off?
If you don't expect the government to follow any rules, then most of these discussions are moot. But what we've been seeing with the Snowden leaks is that the governments are at least attempting to walk the tightrope of legality. Here in the U.S., that means having at least plausible procedures to filter out non-foreigner communications, and going through legal processes like subpoenas instead of simply breaking into computer systems.
These facts have practical concerns. Unless you hypothesize that the U.S. and Australia are putting citizens in prison using secret courts, the government still has to present evidence in a court proceeding, and that has to comport with the 4th amendment in the U.S., and whatever the equivalent is in Australia.
The law in this area is rapidly evolving, but in my opinion as someone with both a legal and technical background, encryption like what Fastmail has gives 4th amendment arguments a lot more teeth. When your data is in an e-mail service that's readily accessible to the service provider, or even data-mined for advertising purposes, it's susceptible to the charge that it's not private information, because after all you're allowing someone else to rummage through it. But if there are protections in place, even if they can be circumvented if needed, that's different. Now you're talking about something that's more like a safe deposit box at a bank or a rented storage unit, which do have 4th amendment protection. They're locked, and only the owner accesses what's inside as a matter of course. The lock can be broken, in an emergency, but that doesn't change the fact that the owner of the facility does not access the contents as a matter of course.