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.
This is the first thing I’ve ever disliked about Switzerland (not that I know a lot about the country).
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.
Those are all very bad, but on the other hand their flag is a big plus.
But on the minus side, it’s a cross
on the minus side we have austria
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.
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.
US is still lacking that last item…
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.
The Nazi gold is still very much a thing. And the descendants of Jewish people who died in concentration camps are often unsuccessful in reclaiming any wealth that was stored in Swiss banks, because they don’t have death certificates and what not. Switzerland is incredibly stubborn and selfish when it comes to anything that would tarnish their neutral stance in banking and politics.
The Nazi gold is still very much a thing.
The Nazi gold was given back. It’s very much not a thing anymore. And back to the jews I mean, not Germany.
Nazi gold didn’t disappear after the Nazis fell. They still pocketed it all, despite knowing where all that wealth came from, and did fuck all to help rebuild Europe.
Other things like their appeasing attitude towards Russia, reluctance to allow weapons exports to Ukraine, and willingness to export weapons to awful regimes are all unambiguously current.
Huh. On the surface, they don’t sound very neutral on the weapons stuff 😕. TIL. I wonder what their underlying reasoning for this is
Money, it’s always money…
I think someone like you, Grand Nagus, would admire the Swiss over most of that ;)
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.
Reluctance to stop dealing with Russia is a single positive in the list.
Oh look, one of Lemmy’s many resident tankies.
Oh look, another one who’s brain has been melted by propaganda.
Imagine simping for a foreign threat actor
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Shady banking: happens everywhere
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nazi gold: happened a long time ago
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women not voting until 70s: happened everywhere
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nestlé: american company with swiss roots
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Switzerland is beautiful, but I have never met a more insular/racist group of people in my travels than in the swiss countryside. Skin colour and language can match, but if your accent is off you might be labelled a dirty foreigner and be treated accordingly.
reluctance to stop dealing with Russia
Can you name examples?
We did always implement all the EU sanctions afaik.
In case you meant us not using Russian assets to help Ukraine like the EU does, iirc they’re using interest, not the actual assets, for that. Which I remember reading (but don’t have a source right now) isn’t possible for Switzerland due to how they are stored in commercial banks rather than central repositories. And just seizing them would be illegal. It’s not like we don’t want to (though that’s probably a factor too), but more like we can’t.
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.
What this says is billionaires are entitled to privacy to hoard their $$$ but nobody else is for everyday life.
For a more extreme example, look to the Principality of Monaco. Being so much smaller, it can be much more extreme.
This would be catastrophic to Proton AG
In their AI announcement yesterday they mentioned that they are moving to the EU because of legal protections.
The region that repeatedly insists on backdoors in any encrypted communications?
As much as it’s dumb, many other places (such as Australia, where I live) are similar at this point.
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Sweden bent over and wants to join the EU
Ah, to live in 1994 again.
I mean to my knowledge the US hasn’t tried to force encryption backdoors recently?
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Which has nothing to do with encryption?
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Link?
https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai
Read the Building EuroStack for the Future section
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.
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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.
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.
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.
It was inevitable. What did you all expect from the country that hoarded all that nazi gold?
Where’s that dude who was saying Proton was enabling terrorism for threatening to leave the country?
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.
Wenn die Schweiz dann ein Überwachungsstaat ist kann sie ja auch gleich in die EU eintreten
switzerland was never a utopia for anybody except corporations, billionaires, and nazis. their “neutrality” was nothing more than an excuse for unregulated capitalism.
Note that this is written by Tuta, Protonmails main concurrent
@poutinewharf commented a screenshot of Proton’s 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.
“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?
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. What’s the new proton everyone will annoy the fuck out of us with?
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.
proton is currently moving their infrastructure out of switzerland because of this bullshit, so no reason to lose your cool
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.
