If he and his network were all using Proton/Tuta/etc. , would these emails have remained private?
The catch with everything that implements E2EE is that, at the end of the day, the humans at each end of the message have to decrypt the message to read it. And that process can leave trails, with the most sophisticated being variations of Van Eck phreaking (spying on a CRT monitor by detecting EM waves), and the least sophisticated being someone that glances over the person’s shoulder and sees the messages on their phone.
In the middle would be cache files left on a phone or from a web browser, and these are the most damning because they will just be laying there, unknown, waiting to be discovered. Whereas the techniques above are active attacks, which require good timing to get even one message.
The other avenue is if anyone in the conversation has screenshots of the convo, or if they’re old-school and actually print out each conversation into paper. Especially if they’re an informant or want to catalog some blackmail for later use.
In short, opsec is hard to do 100% of the time. And it’s the 1% of slip-ups that can give away the game. As an example, we need only look to the group chat of cabinet members using a knock-off Signal client to discuss military operations, and accidentally added the editor of The Atlantic to the chat. Although that scenario highlights more PEBKAC than SIGINT.
What E2EE would do is prevent an internet or other service provider from viewing the data in transit. So without a warrant or other means, they’d have no ability do access these emails. Its also not how these emails were accessed, as far as we know.
I always presumed they got his passwords and simply logged into his accounts.
What’s the theory how the pwd was obtained?
After seeing the state of some of the emails I wont be surprised to find the password was taped to the monitor. And was also “Guest”
Most people write it down someplace.
This is the reason Jim Balsillie, the co-CEO of RIM (BlackBerry), was never sentenced for stock manipulation while he was running the company. All the incriminating evidence would be in his emails, which are encrypted on his BlackBerry and he has never agreed to decrypt them.
Remind me if a device was obtained and cracked to uncover any of these docs.
I haven’t heard exactly how the DOJ obtained the files/emails. It would be interesting to know that. I only see this from DOJ:
These files were collected from five primary sources including the Florida and New York cases against Epstein, the New York case against Maxwell, the New York cases investigating Epstein’s death, the Florida case investigating a former butler of Epstein, Multiple FBI investigations, and the Office of Inspector General investigation into Epstein’s death.
E2EE isn’t a magic defense against a court order.
I mean…if its properly implemented and the communicating parties don’t rat…it kinda can be.
Theres zero problem handing over the encrypted content. Its just not useful for a whole hell of a lot unscrambled
