By Aihik Sur and Aroon Deep Switzerland-based ProtonMail, which claims to be the world’s largest secure email service, complied with a legal request from Europol through Swiss authorities to provide information about activists in France which led to their arrests. This was confirmed by ProtonMail’s founder Andy Yen. The development has sparked off a debate on social media platforms with many ProtonMail users criticising the email service provider for divulging the very details that it claims to safeguard against authorities. Background: The activists who were arrested were involved with the green movement launched by activist Greta Thunberg and Youth For Climate, involving 130 local groups in France. The NGO has been organising, what it calls, environmental strikes. Recently, it has been protesting against evictions in Maison du Peuple in Nantes, where homeless and those in exile regularly take refuge, a press release by Youth For Climate said. According to Secours Rouge, a charity founded in France in 1920, the recent arrests revolve around anti-establishment protests held in 2020 and this year. “During the investigation, the police focused on the collective “Youth For Climate”. In particular, they were able to use photos published on Instagram, even if they were blurred because of the clothes. The police also noticed that the collective communicated via a protonmail email address. They therefore sent a requisition (via EUROPOL) to the Swiss company managing the messaging system in order to find out the identity of the creator of the address. Protonmail responded to this request by…
