I thought I’d share a few more follow-up notes to my previous post on Protonmail and Gmail.
One discussion I’ve seen pop up multiple times on social media is the need for everyone to use encrypted email. The argument goes that if a client is on gmail, it doesn’t help if a sex worker is on Protonmail. The email thread will still end up stored on an unencrypted server, so what have you gained? And since getting everyone to use Protonmail is unrealistic, why bother using it at all?
I think that viewpoint somewhat misses the mark. Privacy online, much like in the physical world, is rarely about perfection. It’s about minimizing risk and guarding against the most likely routes of attack.
If a zealous prosecutor crawled the web for sex worker web sites, or got hold of the database from a forum site or advertising site for sex workers, it’d be pretty easy to compile a list of email addresses for workers who were based in his part of the world. I’d also assume (although I’m not a legal expert) that, given both the source of the email data and the current political climate, showing probably cause to get a warrant would be straightforward. Just throw around the magic word ‘trafficking’. For anyone on Gmail (or a similar unencrypted service) that’d result in exposing all their correspondence with all of their clients.
In contrast compiling a list of client email addresses is a lot trickier. Most people use entirely separate accounts that are isolated from their public presence. I certainly don’t email pro-dommes from my work email or as paltego. These random email addresses typically aren’t on the web and don’t have a lot of associated information. So it would seem to me that, even if you could find one, showing probably cause is now a lot harder. Finally, even if a prosecutor can jump through all those hoops, all he’d get would be the correspondence of one client. That’s a lot lower level of information leakage than all the emails from a sex worker to all her clients. That reduces the cost/benefit ratio for a prosecutor, and hence makes it a less likely route of attack.
It’s obviously better to push as many people as possible towards secure email. But I don’t think you have to insist that it’s all or nothing. A sex worker who uses Protonmail and communicates with people on a mixed collection of email platforms is, in my view, still better off (from a privacy perspective) than one who just uses Gmail.
Similarly, while a modern smartphone with encryption enabled isn’t perfectly safe, it’s certainly better than one without encryption. And tech companies are constantly working to identify and close security holes. You can also enable encryption on modern Windows/Mac PCs and laptops. It’s not a magic bullet to give 100% security, but it’s better than not having it. Defense in depth is the key.
Of course, if you want to avoid online risk entirely, then the only way to be sure is to go old school like this office. Not a computer in sight. Just a pen and paper for her office boy. Hopefully she has a crosscut shredder to dispose of his work once it’s done.
This is of course the lovely Mistress Eleise in an old photograph from Femme Fatale Films.