Tell HN: Swiss surveillance monitoring nearly everything – impact on Proton etc?

33 points by holigot 2 years ago | 8 comments

Hi,

looks like the news are not available in english language (you have to translate the links below). Overall it doesn't give a good point on Switzerland as a country where you like to have your data hosted or to be a customer of a service?!

The Swiss federal government is monitoring nearly everything! All people in Switzerland can be monitored by the secret service using so-called cable intelligence without cause or suspicion.

But what does that mean for services like Proton, Infomaniak, Migadu and other companies stating that Switzerland is one of the best countries concerning privacy laws?! And does it make a difference when data is hosted in other countries like Migadu (OVH Servers in France) or Proton (Part of their servers is within Germany and they want to host servers within Norway)?

I'm really interested in how the companies will react and what impact it will have in reality?! In general, the whole thing doesn't look good!

By the way: Thanks a lot for all those people and organizations which participated on those story - you're doing great work!

https://www.republik.ch/2024/01/09/der-bund-ueberwacht-uns-a...

https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/2024/01/09/interessante...

protonmail 2 years ago |

Proton analyzed this revelation and found it doesn't impact Proton users due to the way that Proton's encryption and infrastructure works. While the reported practices have long been legalized in the US and Germany, they are very likely illegal in Switzerland and are therefore subject to legal challenge. It would not be entirely surprising if this got overturned by the courts. For example, Proton won a similar court case in 2021 (https://proton.me/blog/court-strengthens-email-privacy).

Deeper analysis on these revelations can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1930vnh/comment....

nani8ot 2 years ago | |

> While the reported practices have long been legalized in the US and Germany, they are very likely illegal in Switzerland and are therefore subject to legal challenge. It would not be entirely surprising if this got overturned by the courts.

Mass surveillance without reason ("Anlasslose Vorratsdatenspeicherung") is illegal in the EU (and Germany), just like it hopefully is in Switzerland. But declaring a law illegal takes time, so Germany simply creates a new law to continue their mass surveillance until courts declare it illegal again.

So I don't know how mass surveillance being likely illegal in Switzerland changes much. Until today it wasn't even publicly known that mass surveillance is a thing in Switzerland, and I won't be surprised if a similar story will make news in a decade again.

German: https://netzpolitik.org/2023/bundesverwaltungsgericht-vorrat...

English: https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-reten...

holigot 2 years ago | | |

Overall it seems that the best way is to use some provider like Proton or use PGP locally. Everything else seems to be insecure. And if not know than with a press release in near/future time saying that country X or Y is making it like other countries did already.

So it's all about encryption.

holigot 2 years ago | |

Wow. Well done and thanks for the detailed explanation!

Interested in what others like Migadu and/or Infomaniak will report on this points!

mdrzn 2 years ago | |

Glad to be paying a subscription.

ksjskskskkk 2 years ago |

swiss companies never had a good reputation for this. the OG nsa scapegoat was swiss.

hnthrowaway0328 2 years ago | |

Considering the history we learned, probably not a secret that they love these kinds of stuffs.

holigot 2 years ago | |

Yes - but I think this one is one step further.