Rubio Uses Terrorism Law to Ban Secure Email Service

KomoD 58 points 23 comments August 28, 2026
reason.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

King-Aaron

Anything that is not explicitly pro-Trump is now terrorism. This is the future that is unfolding and yet there is an alarming number of people who are still being dismissive.

ktallett

This seems to be a continuation of what has been going on for decades. Obama was far less heavy handed with his method of stating his disdain for services like this but he wanted any communication platform to be readable to the US government, hence the illegal citizen spying program. We as a group of techy citizens need to keep building applications like this, whatever the designation it gives us.

mdp2021

> violent The mentioned entity is making accusations: the point could be that an authoritative institutional judgement is missing (at list in the article) to establish a responsibility. In fact, the target's rebuttal was «false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering». > our civilization The mentioned entity is making boasting statements: again more justifications should be provided in order to make the stated less perplexing.

xeonmc

This sets the precedence that any entity providing encrypted services who refuses to provide US backdoors can be hit with a terrorist designation, anyone using them becomes criminalized by association. Even Apple would now have to kowtow or face the emperor's wrath. In 2030: "You have DeltaChat installed on your GrapheneOS phone? Why would you use that unless you're a terrorist? Good citizens use government-blessed choices, like Signal and iPhone once they passed the Freedom2029 compliance mandate."

WhyNotHugo

The outstanding thing about these sanctions is that there's no due process: the accuser is the jury and judge. You don't need to be found guilty, or even charged to be sanction. The impact is deep, and global. Each of these sanctions is sending a really strong signal to the world: "stop relying on anything US".

indianwashlets

Report when the EUSSR will be doing the same. Oh, wait...

ChrisArchitect

Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391

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