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.
Why is this world and timeline so hell bent on recreating dystopian sci fi novels from the 80s?
two factors:
- those novels were warnings about the path we were on
- dorkasses like musk and altman missed the allegorical point
Yea, true. And sad. We’re fucked
Torment nexus go
Ah, yes. The country that formerly let you have anonymous secret bank accounts.
You account is anonymous only if you have over a billion.
or are american
Why would non-billionaire Americans get special treatment?
america is the only country that is except from Swiss banking privacy laws. they strong armed us with something (still dunno until today what exactly) to have it removed for american citizens.
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the informative comment, a response that outshines the US is literally anything to be fair.
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.
Switzerland ‽ really ?
Holy shit. An actual interrobang.
This is like finding a shiny.
Tattorack uses octothorpe. It’s not very effective!
First I’m finding out a ligature exists. Awesome.
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.
Wasn’t there an announcement from proton a few days back to possibly move their data Centers out of Switzerland because of this?
One would hope so, or their fundamental ethics as a company are nonexistent.
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.
It depends, privacy has been their entire marketing pitch forever.
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.
“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?
Where’s that dude who was saying Proton was enabling terrorism for threatening to leave the country?
Wenn die Schweiz dann ein Überwachungsstaat ist kann sie ja auch gleich in die EU eintreten
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.
Proton has already given away data of its customers (climate activists) to the swiss authorities. And only talked about it when the press got onto it.
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.
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.
