[liberationtech] RiseUp

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Maxim Kammerer <mk at dee.su> -----

Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 23:20:58 +0300
From: Maxim Kammerer <mk at dee.su>
To: liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] RiseUp
Message-ID: <CAHsXYDBwCfoAg5U1nLK6Gcz8EQqim9KkFkt8nmZkprRwYGJuGw at mail.gmail.com>
Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Sahar Massachi <sayhar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As Elijah wrote, the point of riseup is to serve a specific constituency.
>> The point is not to help the general public encrypt their email.
>
> Exactly, and they do that quite well.  Those who use RiseUp's mailing
> lists rave about the service.

First, users raving about a service typically has very little to do
with quality of the service as a security product. I believe that's
why you posted the original question, after all.

Second, the unusual stress of ideology in such a service is very
relevant to product's security in this case. When I read RiseUp's
social contract page [1] some time ago, I found the mild creepiness
and passive-aggressiveness quite amusing, but immediately thought the
following: these guys seem pretty radicalized in whatever hippie
ideology they seem to be adepts of. This probably indicates that in
their closed group, they value ideological loyalty at least as highly
as technical expertise. It means that one of them could be incompetent
and still have administrative access to security-critical systems, or
that one of them could be recruited at some point under a suitable
ideological pretense — compromising the service in either case.

[1] https://www.riseup.net/en/social-contract

-- 
Maxim Kammerer
Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte
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