> Remember, the courts consider decryption keys just like house keys, they can be demanded by the police and are not protected by the fifth amendment

Proton VPN is based in Switzerland where the fifth amendment doesn’t apply anyway as a US-specific constitutional concept. They might have stronger or weaker protections in this area, I don’t know, but not the fifth amendment.

I'm assuming that nothing in Switzerland is protected by the fifth amendment.

You are correct. The fifth amendment to the current Swiss federal constitution prohibits the construction of minarets, rather than protecting anything.

I was this close to looking up myself to see if Switzerland had any fifth amendments. Happy to see someone took it upon themselves.

  …there are some technical tricks to retrieve RAM values after power loss

Do these tricks still work? Did they ever work or is it more internet rumor? Modern RAM refreshes itself really quickly and I suspect signal degradation happens more quickly than historical modules.

If you are worried about the gestapo seizing your servers and freezing the RAM, is there any mitigation in place?

I think it’s pretty much infeasible. Some professor did it in a lab once but I can’t see that level of sophistication being used against a public vpn server, whatever the circumstances.

SGX encrypted memory would work as a solution for this, probably.

It's been awhile since I read about this, but I remember the discharge time of the tested ram was so slow it seemed like anyone reasonably quick and prepared could potentially pull it off, even without freezing. But it was with SDR or DDR and modern ram discharge is so much quicker it is basically impossible now.

If they are determined, they can still seize the machines without powering them down. It has already been done in the past.

I was imagining more the scenario that gman appears and you hastily flip the switch.

I have so little trust in computer security I assume the powers that be have a USB stick with 0 days that can compromise any modern OS by just plugging into an active machine.

> they can be demanded by the police and are not protected by the fifth amendment

*Within the USA.

Is Proton subject to fifth amendment regardless?

Not the US fifth amendment, no. (Edit: it does apply in cases where they are dealing within the US with officials at any level of US government, or when making statements to US officials who are conducting a custodial interrogation abroad.)

They are based in a country with more than five amendments to its current federal constitution, but since they are unlikely to want to construct a minaret, the prohibition on doing so in the current Swiss federal constitution’s fifth amendment doesn’t affect them in any meaningful way.

They have servers in the US though which I assume means they operate some kind of business identity over there.

Yeah, in contexts which are sufficiently US-linked those protections may apply - I’ve edited my comment. Mostly not though.

Anyway, even in the US, providing a decryption key would only be protection by the fifth amendment if testimony by a human is involved - not simply, for example, turning over a USB key or even a piece of paper on which the key is printed So this question is mostly moot for the scenario we are discussing, except if information in a human mind is needed to access the key.

> Do we really assume not being in the US directly fixes everything?

Nobody said anything about fixing everything. When the US fifth amendment doesn’t apply, people have fewer protections from the US government, not more.

Also, I should correct myself slightly on when the US fifth amendment applies: in the rare case where US officials do conduct a custodial interrogation abroad, US courts will recognize the US fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination for statements made to those US officials in that context, even for statements made by foreign nationals. But US courts will not recognize those rights for statements made to foreign officials, outside of two rarely applicable exceptions. Also, of course, dealings within the US with US government officials are constitutionally protected for all nationalities.

I’ve edited my comment upthread accordingly.

With respect to Proton’s home government of Switzerland, they might have more protections or fewer protections than the US fifth amendment offers versus the US government when it does apply - I have no idea and avoided making any assertion either way about that.

If they are accused by the US of a crime, they could be extradited there because Switzerland has a treaty for that.

Good luck with that, Article 7 of the Swiss Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters states that Swiss citizens may not be extradited to a foreign country without their written consent. This protection of citizens from extradition is a longstanding tradition in Swiss law.

Yes but there are cases where the accused may not even be a citizen. Also Switzerland still has a provision with other countries for allowing Swiss citizens to be tried in Switzerland for crimes committed abroad.