Privacy is a fundamental right

A foundation in law

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects privacy (art. 12) and free expression (art. 19). The European Convention on Human Rights protects respect for private life and correspondence (art. 8) and freedom of expression (art. 10). These texts do not mention VPNs, but they speak about all of us: the right to think, read, write and exchange without a third party keeping a ledger of our moves.

Warren anchors its reason for being in these texts, and writes it down now, before it is needed on the day of a demand. It is a principle I state publicly; no court has tested it yet.

The only defense that holds: not having the data

You can promise to protect data. You cannot guarantee that promise against a seizure, a coercion, a mistake. The only defense that holds is that the data does not exist.

In April 2023, six police officers arrived with a warrant to seize the customer data of another VPN, Mullvad. Mullvad did not keep it and showed as much. Warren follows the same principle: keep as little data as possible, and answer lawful requests with what exists.

What I commit to never do

• Never log your traffic, DNS queries, connections, source IP or data usage.
• Never sell, share or monetize data: there is none to sell, and my commitment is that this stays true.
• Never accept paid affiliation or sponsored placement.
• Respect the law of the countries where I operate, and withdraw a server from a country whose law would impose general monitoring of users.

What a VPN cannot do

A VPN does not make you anonymous and I will never claim it does. A rented server leaves the host a console access; an on-chain payment is pseudonymous, not anonymous. I say these limits plainly, instead of selling a false sense of security.