Martin Steiger also responded. Addendum 2 in his blog article [1]:<p>Tonight, on 29 May 2019, ProtonMail responded to this article with a blog post entitled „Response to false statements on surveillance made by Martin Steiger“. (This article was published on 23 May 2019 and not „earlier today“ as claimed by ProtonMail.)<p>ProtonMail claims that this article is „factually incorrect“ and states first and foremost that it does not voluntarily offer assistance for real-time surveillance. Apart from that, ProtonMail does not respond to the many points raised in this article.<p>ProtonMail essentially refers to my addendum, where I point out that the public prosecutor in question contacted me, saying he had been misquoted. ProtonMail of course „forgets“ to quote my full addendum and shows an incomplete screenshot of my addendum. ProtonMail quotes only the part with the public prosecutor’s claim and not my explanation why I am confident that the public prosecutor was not misquoted. ProtonMail also claims that the addendum is „hidden at the bottom of Mr. Steiger’s article“, although it is linked right at the beginning of this article.<p>In a direct email to me, ProtonMail’s legal department confirmed that real-time monitoring could be carried out. The legal counsel of ProtonMail now argues that ProtonMail is after all a provider of derived communication services and that having to tolerate surveillance carried out by the Swiss Federal Post and Telecommunications Surveillance Service (PTSS) according to Art. 27 para. 1 SPTA is equal to an obligation for real-time surveillance. In addition, ProtonMail threatens to take legal action for defamation pursuant to art. 174 of the Swiss Criminal Code.<p>As mentioned above, the SPTA provides neither for providers of derived communications services without more extensive surveillance obligations nor for telecommunications service providers with reduced surveillance obligations an obligation for real-time surveillance. As also mentioned above, ProtonMail used to claim to be a telecommunications service provider with reduced surveillance obligations. In either case, there is no obligation for real-time surveillance, i.e., any real-time surveillance is performed voluntarily by ProtonMail.<p>ProtonMail once again argues contradictorily and inconsistently. Every user of ProtonMail must still decide for himself whether the email service is trustworthy.<p>[1] <a href="https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/" rel="nofollow">https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surv...</a>