Tanguy Ortolo

It should be no news that PayPal have made an habit of opposing to projects that fight for the respect of freedom and democracy by cutting their funds. Anyway, they have just provided us another example of such an abuse, against the ProtonMail project.

ProtonMail is a secure email service project, similar to the defunct Lavabit service, with characteristics that should allow it a greater resistance to external pressure: it is based in Switzerland (which has specific privacy laws and with a strong democratic control) and developed by CERN and MIT researchers.

Well, it seems that this project was not appreciated by some organization, for which PayPal is just a puppet. Long story short, PayPal cut ProtonMail's funds without prior warning nor real explanation. When pressed to explain themselves, they eventually asked them if their email encryption project was approved by the government (which one, by the way?)!

As I said in introduction, this is not really a surprise, but it remind us that PayPal's major position is a threat to freedom and democracy as they still behave as enemies of these values (or as collaborator to known harmful organization, which is close enough) and that no project should rely on them. Fortunately, ProtonMail does not.