Switzerland plans surveillance worse than US

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨underline960@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://tuta.com/blog/switzerland-surveillance-plan

The proposed update to Switzerland’s Ordinance on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic (VÜPF: Verordnung über die Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs) represents a significant expansion of state surveillance powers, worse than the surveillance powers of the USA. If enacted, it would have serious consequences for encrypted services such as Threema, an encrypted WhatsApp alternative and Proton Mail as well as VPN providers based in Switzerland.

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percent@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is the first thing I’ve ever disliked about Switzerland (not that I know a lot about the country).

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- TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You’ve not heard of shady banking, Nazi gold, reluctance to stop dealing with Russia, women not being able to vote until the 70s, and Nestle?
  
  Switzerland gets aggressively simped for online, and there’s certainly some nice things about them, but there’s also some pretty awful things.
  
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  - Klear@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Those are all very bad, but on the other hand their flag is a bug plus.
    
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  - Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, the whole “private banking” history thing the EFF seems to lionize in the article was 100% just for serving lucrative international robber barrons and other criminals. It was never about protecting regular citizens privacy.
    
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  - Birch@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hold up now! I’ll have you know in some parts of the country women couldn’t vote until the 90s! Also unmarried cohabitation was illegal in some cantons until the 80s and paternity leave as a concept only exists in Switzerland since the 00s.
    
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  - Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I think someone like you, Grand Nagus, would admire the Swiss over most of that ;)
    
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  - percent@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I meant current times, not in the past. Sorry, I assumed that would be obvious. There are also some things I like about Germany, though they have a pretty terrible past.
    
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  - rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Strong means attractive. Not getting pummeled in WWII and making some profits, being complicit in some crimes (turning back Jews), and in general being on top for many decades make you look strong.
    
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  - SonOfAntenora@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    My theory is that if you’re cute you’re socially protected and the same applies to states and countries. Switzerland is quite the nice place and there are cultural hubs of historical importance, so it has the cute look now doesn’t it.
    
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Reluctance to stop dealing with Russia is a single positive in the list.
    
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- themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There’s a reason every billionair has a bank account in Switzerland.
  
  And it’s not to pay more taxes. Or to launder less money.
  
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  - jobbies@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    What this says is billionaires are entitled to privacy to hoard their $$$ but nobody else is for everyday life.
    
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- MangoCats@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  For a more extreme example, look to the Principality of Monaco. Being so much smaller, it can be much more extreme.
  
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bort@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This would be catastrophic to Proton AG

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- wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  In their AI announcement yesterday they mentioned that they are moving to the EU because of legal protections.
  
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  - artyom@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The region that repeatedly insists on backdoors in any encrypted communications?
    
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  - LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Link?
    
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SunshineJogger@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why is this world and timeline so hell bent on recreating dystopian sci fi novels from the 80s?

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- DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Because they were about late state capitalism.
  
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- Quill7513@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  two factors:
  
  those novels were warnings about the path we were on
  
  dorkasses like musk and altman missed the allegorical point
  
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  - SunshineJogger@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yea, true. And sad. We’re fucked
    
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- KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Torment nexus go
  
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Bwaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Ah, yes. The country that formerly let you have anonymous secret bank accounts.

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You account is anonymous only if you have over a billion.
  
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  - _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    or are american
    
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rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
No fucking way, but mah direct democracy …

So. Switzerland doesn’t really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense. It’s still an old nation-state with laws made in the olden day when you had to compromise. There are many cases where the “direct” part is optional and requires interested people to assemble signatures yadda-yadda. Not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal. That aside, its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing. Which means that for some issues it will always drift shitward.

It also has separation of 3 kinds of government by degree of locality, but not separation of the “an entity ensuring food safety can’t regulate telecommunications” or “an entity regulating police labor safety can’t regulate riot police acceptable action” kinds.

(Which is why I usually refer to my preference for a kind of “direct democracy” as a revised one-level Soviet system with mandatory rotation, plenty of places and sortition to state worker roles, despite that not having very good connotations.)

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- ruuster13@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Democracy is an infant still learning to walk. You plug the holes and add new institutions for oversight. You don’t shoot the damn baby and start over because you know how you’d force everyone to do it.
  
  Kowloon wasn’t built in a day.
  
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  - rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Democracy is an infant still learning to walk.
    
    Bullshit. It’s older than gunpowder.
    
    And this argument has been used for every political system in history. Even in USSR in materials approved by censors it was normal to joke about it.
    
    You plug the holes and add new institutions for oversight.
    
    Why don’t you do that with real-life mechanisms? A moving part of a machine has corroded enough to have a hole unintended by design. Go on, plug it. Oh, it’s better to replace the part.
    
    That aside, I think you’ve missed my specific arguments, not providing any of your own. Those things about participation as wide as possible and rotation. This means that there should be as many political roles as possible (of a delegate or of a secretary or of anyone), often rotated, with the same person not being able to hold the same or similar post for longer than N months, and with sortition based on some pseudo-random mechanism (pseudo-random to be able to check the results for fraud). To reduce the power of any single delegate or bureaucrat and to make lobbying, bribing and blackmailing them harder. To simultaneously make the population more politically literate - by almost every citizen, ideally, participating in some kind of daily decision-making work. Not voting once a year (at best) from among choices given to them by someone else.
    
    That’s what con artists do - provide the victim with an illusion of choice.
    
    You don’t shoot the damn baby and start over because you know how you’d force everyone to do it.
    
    That’s exactly what you do. One consistent system does one thing by design. Another consistent system does another thing by design. Something in-between organically evolved does neither. Evolution is the survival of the fittest - fittest for survival. So an organically evolved system is approximating the optimum of power. The status quo.
    
    What it does not approximate over time is any idea of public good. That would be nuts - so, metaphorically, you’ve built a wooden bridge, do you think it’ll become more or less reliable over time under snow and rain and sun? Is a 100 years old bridge better than a bridge just built and tested?
    
    And the optimum of power is formed by the existing system among other things.
    
    Which means that it becomes more and more static and degenerate.
    
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- AliSaket@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This is not law yet. The Federal Council (the executive) has started a consultation process at the beginning of the year which ended in May. They are now looking at all the feedback that came in, that was - unsurprisingly - exclusively negative from all sides. If the responsible minister wants to go ahead with it, it goes to the Federal Council for a vote. If they approve it, this would be a decree to change an existing decree and that would come into effect next year or the year after.
  
  And this is where direct democracy comes in: If this is the case anyone can start getting signatures for a public initiative which would change the constitution to prohibit such practices. In fact anyone can start doing that now. If it succeeds, then it’ll come to a popular vote. Threema (a secure chat provider) has already announced that they would do that and I’m sure that they wouldn’t be the only ones to band together in this.
  
  The process might take long, but this is in no way “not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal” and in fact has happened multiple times in the past. Hence why Switzerland has a direct vote on issues every few months because of something called “Referendum”, whereby a popular vote can be forced on an issue passing through parliament. I might have my criticisms of the political system, but this ain’t it.
  
  its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing Well yes, there is some level of representation, so over 8 million people don’t have to decide every little detail on 1000s of changes of law. The system is built upon a “milita” system. I.e. politicians usually have a job. So people have the possibility to vote in experts or their vicinity and know that they won’t solely be career politicians. Unfortunately the laws around financing and propaganda are rather lax, giving an advantage to the rich, which leads to an over-representation of the capitalist class with occupations such as lawyers and business-owners and a clear under-representation of classical working-class jobs such as craftspeople or office workers. This is amendable though to correct the mismatch, if people realize their class interest and don’t fall for the same right-wing propaganda of a party whose playbook has been inspired by the US GOP for decades and who is inspiring Germany’s AfD now.
  
  The main downside of the system imo has to do with people with no knowledge on an issue having to weigh in on them and therefore how powerful propaganda campaigns can be, which means that money buys power, as in every other existing so-called democracy - direct or not. Especially with how money shifts power away from the populace, this is inherent to capitalistic systems and it would be on the populace to protect itself from it. With enough propaganda though, people keep voting for more power of capital unbeknownst to them or not, just as they might vote against their interests on other things. The fact that you have to convince so many people, who hopefully do have some degree of education, makes it a lot harder though, for big capitalists to reach their goals, compared to less direct systems. And I know of several examples, how such a vote did not go in favor of big capital. What usually makes the difference is whether they succeed in portraying their advantage as the advantage of all.
  
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  - rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, so the difference in what I’d like from what you describe as existing is:
    
    The representation should be spread thinner over the population, and with separate organs voting on separate kinds of matters. Ideally so that most of the population would have some short experience in participating in at least one of those organs by reaching the age of 30. Experience is needed to make your last paragraph less problematic, and wide participation - to gain that experience first-hand and also to make it very expensive to blackmail\bribe\threaten enough people. This might also make a referendum an event a bit more rare, because it won’t come to that.
    
    In general it’s very cool that such a system even exists as a proof that nothing is impractical about it.
    
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- MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  So. Switzerland doesn’t really have fully direct democracy in the necessary sense.
  
  Yes, it’s half-direct, who said otherwise? Fully direct on a Nation state level would maybe be possible now with the Internet.
  But we can still overrule them, while germans get tired of their politicians lying on elections and doing what they want. Doesn’t mean they don’t try here.
  
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  - rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Fully direct on a Nation state level would maybe be possible now with the Internet.
    
    That’s my point. It might seem dangerous to rely on the Internet for such basic matters, but it’s already being used to great effect to undermine all democracies. So there’s no choice, it’s like an arms race. (Still, probably for elections it’d make sense to have a countrywide parallel intranet, so that someone’s error in setting up a BGP router wouldn’t disrupt it.).
    
    But yeah, this system has it’s weaknesses with complicated or emotional topics. But then again, we are all humans.
    
    That’s the other side of the problem - modern easiness of propaganda.
    
    OK, I live in Russia, just rather sad to see how many other countries are slowly drifting in the same regrettable unsavory direction.
    
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- CHKMRK@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  It’s still an old nation-state with laws made in the olden day when you had to compromise.
  
  What democracy does not rely on compromise?
  
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  - rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    None. I’m using “compromise” here in the sense of compromising between democracy and elites, with the world order normal 200 years ago. Today those compromises don’t work because of technological progress and different makeup of societies.
    
    Just like those in the USA.
    
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  - antbricks@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Compromises on principles, not compromises with people.
    
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SabinStargem@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Considering that we might have a World War III or 2nd American Civil War in a decade or two, it would be foolish of Switzerland to not permit encrypted VPN. A stable neutrality is very profitable in a world of uncertainty.

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Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Isnt Switzerland the country that struggled with their covid response because of the direct democracy requirements lacking provisions for such changes…amazing they can figure everything out to hurt the public.

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- grumpusbumpus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I visited Switzerland just after the vaccines dropped. The Swiss COVID response far surpassed the response in the United States. They rolled out a nation-wide app for vaccination attestation, and any museum, restaurant, etc. could scan a QR code on someone’s phone with a phone. But do they have a scary, socially reactionary subset of their population? Yes.
  
  In some harmful ways they are fanatically culturally conservative. But they also care about community, sustainability, health, the well-being of children, environmental preservation, organization, and self-reliance. Being a small, rich, homogeneous, topographically-isolated country drives these characteristics.
  
  Surveillance State developments are depressing but not surprising.
  
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  - Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Thanks for the informative comment, a response that outshines the US is literally anything to be fair.
    
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- _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  what covid response? our government simply played on “eigenverantwortung” (personal responsibility). in a country with one of the highest education levels it wasn’t difficult to keep a distance of 2 meters during the peak of the pandemic unless you’re surrounding yourself with naive people. I was able to go swimming in the lake in the summer, and skiing in the winter while Italy, France and Austria had this banned. weird to think about it but I honestly had a pretty fun time during covid and made some of the best friends to date during it. hell, we even had music festivals and our numbers were not horrible. I think you’re thinking of Sweden. happens a lot.
  
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MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Switzerland ‽ really ?

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- Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Holy shit. An actual interrobang.
  
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  - theherk@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    First I’m finding out a ligature exists. Awesome.
    
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  - fartographer@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Tattorack uses octothorpe. It’s not very effective!
    
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lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It was inevitable. What did you all expect from the country that hoarded all that nazi gold?

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Bubbey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If I have to fucking switch mail hosts again… what the hell is the point in using proton for privacy and now I’m sure that’s going to get ruined.

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- frosch@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Wasn’t there an announcement from proton a few days back to possibly move their data Centers out of Switzerland because of this?
  
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  - poutinewharf@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Image
    
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  - Bubbey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    One would hope so, or their fundamental ethics as a company are nonexistent.
    
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  - _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    they’ve been threatening this for year to keep suckling at the tit of governmental subsidies to make Switzerland look more attractive for investors with them being here. I doubt they’ll follow through.
    
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- rozodru@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I self host mine. Honestly I just self host as much as I can to avoid stuff like this because while many European companies are great you just never know. I was with Tuta but decided to self host, same for when I was using Filen for backups. Hell I’m even self hosting my git repos and search engine now.
  
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_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Where’s that dude who was saying Proton was enabling terrorism for threatening to leave the country?

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Kazel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Wenn die Schweiz dann ein Überwachungsstaat ist kann sie ja auch gleich in die EU eintreten

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callouscomic@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Everything goes to shit.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton Switch to Proton

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Its always the next thing, and the next thing and the next thing. This is why I stopped giving a shit. Actually. I do give a shit. I will let them surveil all of my shits, and garbage, and vomit.

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- a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  proton is currently moving their infrastructure out of switzerland because of this bullshit, so no reason to lose your cool
  
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cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
switzerland was never a utopia for anybody except corporations, billionaires, and nazis. their "neutrality" was nothing more than an excuse for unregulated capitalism.

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bigFab@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
“In a democracy, the right way is to argue, not threaten to leave.” Socialist member of parliament said.

Does this man understand the very first day this law would approve Proton is dead? Do politicians understand privacy at all?

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BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Note that this is written by Tuta, Protonmails main concurrent

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- underline960@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Proton has their own post, but the headline was about their AI chatbot, and the news about the Swiss move is buried at the end.
  
  Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals(new window) to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.
  
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philpo@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Switzerland never had solid privacy laws - and is known for intelligence service overreach for decades. They had a Stasi like system of “who to imprison” when “the time comes”. They listen to all IP traffic in and out the country - which is concerning in times of traffic pattern analysis. And they are known for their close cooperation with US intelligence services.

Protons (and Threemas) claim of “soo good swiss privacy laws” is nothing more than swiss-washing. And they know it.

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3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
when legislation removes a whole well know phrase in one fell swoop. Bye bye “swiss bank account”

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- IhaveCrabs111@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  There’ll be a clause that banks are exempt
  
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  - 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There might be but you ruined my quip!
    
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SonOfAntenora@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I know this and i know that political systems in Switzerland are really unique. I think this kind of thing can pass despite the robust involvement of the civil society, mostly because it’s an update on a preexisting law. But this is something I can’t tell as of now.

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Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Powers that would make the US blush!? Give me a fucking break. The US spies on all communication in the entire world.

Proton is a joke and their CEO is an obvious fascist. It was stupid to think a corporation is the answer to privacy anyways. They obey all countries rules and turn over your information the moment they are asked by governments.

The future of privacy in Switzerland is in the hands of the citizens. Let’s hope they make the right decisions and encourage them to do so.

If these corporations really cared about privacy they would be promoting laws to make it enshrined in our constitutions. The reality is privacy is just another way to market to the masses who don’t know better.

My cynical side says these “privacy” focused corporations not wanting privacy to be enshrined in law is because then every business would be privacy minded and their marketing advantage would quickly disappear.

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