
Yandex Mail - kpierre
http://mail.yandex.com/
======
api
Actually you laugh, but being spied on by someone with no jurisdiction over
you is better than being spied on by someone who can name you an enemy
combatant because they misunderstand your e-mails that contain a plot synopsis
for a book you're working on or that can label you a child pornographer
because you have naked photos of your grandkids playing in your yard.

~~~
tptacek
So that's happened when, in American history?

~~~
petemcc
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825087)

~~~
tptacek
Pretty sure that's not America.

------
smnrchrds
I actually think Yandex is a good alternative. Assume that all countries have
similar projects like PRISM. Which one would you rather have: your country
spying on you or a foreign country?

If your country is spying on you, it can use the data it gathers against you
in a court, etc. If it's a foreign country, what could they possibly do?

~~~
tptacek
Technically, the FISA law being used by the NSA to capture phone records
doesn't generate evidence that is easily used in court. If you're not a
legitimate foreign target, you can suppress evidence that originates from
FISA, and the NSA is obligated to destroy evidence it inadvertently collects
on citizens.

~~~
mtgx
In theory. In practice, they spy on you for a week, and _then_ obtain a
warrant because they have "probable cause", taken from all the spying.

~~~
tptacek
Is that how it happens in practice? Interesting. Where can I read more about
how data from FISA warrants are used to build probable cause for domestic
criminal cases?

~~~
temphn
[http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-
dots-m...](http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-
theory)

See links to primary sources, including David Kravets:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/spy-court-
stats/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/spy-court-stats/)

~~~
tptacek
I read the Kravets piece at your recommendation only to find that there was no
mention in it of anyone using data obtained through FISA to build domestic
criminal cases of any sort.

------
kpierre
KGB is much better than NSA: they simply don't have money for data processing
on that scale.

Yandex Mail is a great competitor to gmail, some things even work better --
you've got a separate list of thread's attachments, ability to unsubscribe
from whole spam categories in one click, SMS (maybe only in russia) and so on

~~~
ihsw
That's a dangerous assumption to make, many world governments may have
purchased intelligence from the NSA and now they'll have to re-allocate funds
for locally-sourced intelligence.

~~~
stcredzero
Outsource your domestic spying to the NSA cloud!

EDIT: How do we do it? By saving money on counter-intelligence! it's a win-
win!

~~~
slig
Only until patio11 convince them to increase the monthly price 10-fold.

------
Nekorosu
I'm russian. I've left Russia for good because of weather and politics. Now
I'm laughing out loud.

All jokes aside it's interesting to observe politics and technology interplay.
But I'm not too excited I have to take part in some of the events.

~~~
cadalac
What about the low taxes you would have had there?

~~~
ivan_gammel
For that low taxes you get: 1\. Awful state clinics 2\. Corrupt police 3\.
Poor public infrastructure 4\. Irresponsible government So, you have to pay
separately for security, for medicine etc.

~~~
cadalac
1\. Many countries with good care are on the verge of bankruptcy.

2\. Sad to hear.

3\. From what I gather, the corruption in the construction industry extremely
bad there.

4\. Are they really worse than any other country? Starting off of the base of
the previous regime, there's obviously going to be a lot of work to do.

------
ck2
Didn't east germany have warehouses of piles of paper of records of everyone
spying on each other?

It bothers me as a progressive that many liberals don't see how we are a hop,
skip and jump away from that mentality.

From birth to death there is going to be a record of your child's phone calls,
friends, dates, etc. It will never be deleted.

~~~
buster
Aye, and we're still at it deciphering shreddered papers :)

[http://www.goethe.de/ges/pok/ddg/en2491168.htm](http://www.goethe.de/ges/pok/ddg/en2491168.htm)

~~~
ck2
This quote from that article gives me chills because it's what they are saying
now:

 _Erich Mielke 's mania for information: the long-time head of the Stasi,
Mielke believed that "you have to know everything in order to be completely
safe"_

~~~
buster
That's a really good quote in the light of the NSA drama.. i still don't
understand how people can defend this..

------
runjake
In case you hadn't heard, the KGB no longer exists. They've been replaced by
the FSB and SVR.

~~~
akiselev
The FSB is still colloquially referred to as the KGB.

------
eli
So is this post just an excuse to make snarky comments or is there a point
you're trying to make?

------
tptacek
I'm sure the FSB and SVR are only looking at the metadata.

------
sologoub
If you are that worried about FSB spying on you, make sure you are not running
a Kaspersky product:
[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/)

But in all seriousness... it seems to be a rather unfortunate reality of using
FREE email service, that the actual level of privacy afforded to you is
minimal. Russia has a very stringent set of anti-extremism laws that curb free
speech big time. If your content is labeled extremist, it has to be taken down
by an ISP via a swift court order. Note that the "court" is either a single
judge or a small panel of judges making the decision. Under that set of laws.

The hosted paid services like Google Apps is another matter all together.
There the privacy expectation should be extremely high... but who knows if
that's really true.

~~~
huhtenberg
If you are that worried about NSA spying on you, make sure you are not running
Windows.

Because, you know, routine software updates is just what the doctor ordered
for on-demand installation of backdoors.

~~~
omni
I know very little about how Linux works internally, and I use proprietary
video card drivers in Ubuntu. Given Linux's internal handling of driver
binaries, how much damage would these be able to cause if they contained
malicious code?

~~~
happycube
Quite a bit - not total kernel access, given the GPL symbol table export
restrictions, but at least as much as a process running as root in user space.

That said, it's quite likely that such malicious behavior would be detected by
somebody.

------
alan_cx
Wasn't the KGB dissolved in 1991?

~~~
workhere-io
Yes - it was superseded by FSB:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service_(Russi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service_\(Russia\))

------
dantillberg
I imagine the NSA will still find a way to read your mail.

Remember how Google complained loudly about Chinese hackers breaking into a
few Chinese dissidents' gmail accounts?

How pedestrian of them. The NSA is apparently far more efficient at that game.

------
wcunning
Slightly off-topic, but how do people here think Yandex search stacks up
against Google? I mostly use DuckDuckGo at this point, but I like to have
several alternatives and Google is not going to be one of them anymore.

~~~
tripzilch
It's pretty ok. It definitely crawls a different part of the web than G and
DDG, so that's always refreshing.

I used to like it because it still had a lean, plain HTML no-frills interface,
but I see they've added some JS interactivity to it (not much, though).

I thought they had an English version, but I can't find the link :) So all I'm
seeing is Russian, which I cannot read.

~~~
ash
> I thought they had an English version, but I can't find the link :)

[http://www.yandex.com/](http://www.yandex.com/)

------
pentheus
At least they still have an RSS reader. It seems more like a valid replacement
for most Google Reader alternatives that have passed around here before.

------
Ihmahr
I don't think this would be a crazy thing to do.

Russia doesn't drone 'suspected' terrorists based on their meta data.

~~~
jdminhbg
Is this a really subtle joke...? The FSB will very definitely kill you:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anna_Politkovs...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anna_Politkovskaya)

~~~
rdtsc
Somehow that is better. It gets people who are involved in it to get their
hands bloody. That is necessary when taking lives. It should be damaging to
ones psyche and it should be difficult and stressful to kill. It should not be
a push of a button. Go blow up kids herding goats all day, then pick up your
own kids for soccer practice in Langley at night, that's what we are up to
now.

~~~
desireco42
I agree

------
Doublon
"Trust KGB to read your mail
([http://www.russianpost.ru/](http://www.russianpost.ru/)) "

~~~
xentronium
Nah, you're more likely to never receive your snail mail due to incompetence
of the goddamn service.

These are not photoshopped:

[http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_01.jpg](http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_01.jpg)

[http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_02.jpg](http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_02.jpg)

[http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_03.jpg](http://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics5/20121123/mail_03.jpg)

~~~
memracom
What's the problem? This is in Russia where it gets REALLY cold in winter and
never thaws for several months. Or did you think that they would haul the
parcels into a heated building for sorting? Nope. As any Canadian knows, that
kind of snow falls off as soon as you shake the parcel and the paper (at
freezing temperatures) is so slick that it is as if it was lubricated. Most of
that snow will fall off from the vibration of the ride inside the sorting
building. And the recipients will never know that it happened.

Plus, it is a Russian tradition to wrap things in plastic before putting them
in the parcel postal boxes.

~~~
xentronium
> What's the problem?

The problem is that processing centers are overloaded. As a result, more and
more boxes and parcels pile up. Sometimes it gets even more ridiculous, like
recently in Moscow, when some boxes caught fire.

Besides, the whole processing system is so ineffective, that you could send a
box from China to Far Eastern Russia (relatively small distance), which would
first land to be processed in Moscow (great distance) and then be sent back to
Far East.

Also, there is a queueing problem in the goddamn post offices, I won't even
get started on that, it is so infuriating.

------
jmngomes
We're going from "companies launching social networks so they can get your
data to do better advertising" to "governments launching social web services
so they can get your data do better 'threat monitoring'"

------
dancryer
In Soviet Russia, your mail reads the KGB.

~~~
Jgrubb
Reddit in-jokes will get you downvoted here, just a heads up.

~~~
stcredzero
It's a Slashdot in-joke, actually.

~~~
eli
It's actually a Yakov Smirnoff joke, but either way it doesn't really advance
the conversation very much.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Yup, the original was:

“In America, you can always find a party.

In Soviet Russia, Party always finds you!”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversal)

~~~
cema
I have always thought it was all his pun on: "Under capitalism, a man exploits
a man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!" But I may have been
mistaken.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
That’s a real possibility, as that Russian (or Polish, depending on who you
ask) joke had been making the rounds for almost 30 years when Smirnoff moved
to the US in 1977.

[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/unde...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/under_capitalism_man_exploits_man_under_communism_it_is_the_other_way_aroun/)

