Privacy is a fundamental right
Warren exists because the right to communicate without being watched is a human right, affirmed long before the internet and still valid on it.
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. There was nothing to seize: the company demonstrated on the spot that the data did not exist, and the police left empty-handed. That is the stance: build so there is nothing to hand over, rather than promise to guard it well.
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.
- Cease operating a server in any jurisdiction that would legally force me to surveil, rather than comply.
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.