6 ms·

I think it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems. I had seen (once or twice) people out on the streets campaigning ag

by rasur 10y ago

I think it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems. I had seen (once or twice) people out on the streets campaigning against it to raise awareness on the weekends, but honestly, it was not enough. Only the hard-core techies understood (or appeared to understand) the issue - at least around the area of Zürich where I work I can't think of anyone who thought it was a good idea. Not pleased.

m_mueller 10y ago
Is the article wrong on the requirement of a judge's order for collecting information? As far as I understand they will gather the info nonetheless and have a pro forma judge order to "access" it, correct? So what's the difference to the US - other than vastly inferior technical capabilities and the court in question not being secret?
js8 10y ago
Please correct me if I wrong, but it seems to me from the description in the OP that this is nothing compared to mass surveillance in other countries. Notably, it requires a court authorization to put somebody under surveillance, which is something that even Snowden would approve if I recall correctly.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Yup, this was also my understanding. Nothing like what the NSA or other agencies would do.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Isn't that what surveillance started as in the U.S.? Give 'em an inch...
- tobltobs 10y ago
  They would be allowed to intercept any kind of traffic without any court authorization as long as at least one source is coming from a foreign country. Which will be technically true for nearly all IP based communication in Switzerland.
  - href 10y ago
    They most certainly do need a court order. See Art. 40 and Art. 41. of the NDG.
    - jcfrei 10y ago
      That requirement for a court order is greatly diminished by Art. 30: Verfahren bei Dringlichkeit. It establishes that the federal intelligence service can tap wires without court orders in urgent cases. And let's be honest here, if tapping a wire turns up nothing, do you really expect them to follow the protocol and actually inform the agencies (like the federal administrative court)? I don't have that level of trust in the intelligence service.
      - href 10y ago
        That's the thing isn't it. If I don't trust my government to follow the law, then it doesn't matter what surveillance law we have. The whole vote was a vote of confidence as a result.
        tobltobs 10y ago
        He didn't say, that he does not trust the government, he has problems trusting the intelligence service. The Swiss intelligence service did prove often enough that you can't trust him to respect the law or being especially talented to do his job in a appropriate way.
        href 10y ago
        Sure, still a vote about trust though. My point being that you are asking people if they trust a certain government entity or not. Apparently the trust is there.
        Annatar 10y ago
        My impression is that it was a vote spurned by desire for security and stability, before anything else.
benevol 10y ago
> it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems. Exactly. The systems we create are now about to become too complex for us to understand (the climax probably being the arrival of "AI"). But understanding the systems we live in is the basis for democracy. Are these the signs that democracy will only have been a transitional solution? And if so, what comes after democracy?
planetjones 10y ago
I also live and work in Zurich in a 'techie' job and almost everyone is happy with the new surveillance laws and powers. They are sensible, needed and have the correct number of safeguards. Why do you think they go too far?
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Because some people are either blind or severely minimise existing threats, often while maximising other threats
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Has anybody, ever, in the history of this type of surveillance, provided concrete proof of the effectiveness thereof against the supposed threats that are used to justify it?
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      I don't think there is one about mass surveillance, which is not the case. It seems the case for individual, case-by-case basis is pretty clear (though there seems to be an issue with false positives)
- tobltobs 10y ago
  1.) There have been "safeguards" also at the time of the "Vichen" affair. 2.) The swiss "intelligence service" isn't famous for his intelligence. They should first do their homework on counterintelligence before anything else. Else they will just be used as a Proxy for foreign intelligence services.
- nickik 10y ago
  I also work in Zürich. I hate this. They are interducing survailance and searches without court orders. The security of my device should be valued at least as highly as the security of my apperment. Quite honstly, in my apparment their is nothing of interest to be found. However, my hole live is on my phone, my computer and my servers. I would infact argue that these should have stronger protection. How anybody who supports democracy and the rule of law can agree with things like that, is quite frankly beyond me.
DannyBee 10y ago
"I think it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems." FWIW: This is literally the retort everyone has to anything they disagree with that gets approved. It's unrelated to surveillance. People always assume "if only people knew what i knew, they would have agreed with me". This is a really bad assumption. In fact, most of the time, i'd argue exactly the opposite: People understood fine, they just disagree.
- rasur 10y ago
  Apparently so.
- sgift 10y ago
  It probably boils down to your trust in people. Given many discussions with many people on many topics I tend to stay on the opposite side. Most peoples understanding is about as deep as the most popular news magazines headline, which is not enough for me to consider that they "understood fine, they just disagree" - they understood fine what they've bothered to inform themselves about. So, basically nothing.
  - mk89 10y ago
    >Most peoples understanding is about as deep as the most popular news magazines headline exactly!which is why, however you put it, with parliaments or with referendums, or with any other kind of "democratic" tool, the basis of democracy is information. When people/media have advantages in something, they will be biased, making democracy actually an oligarchy. If I was Swiss, I would try to understand who is selling me this information. Who is behind this wanted "misinformation"? Most of the time it boils down to people having interests in certain companies. Can it be that, let's say, that most newspapers are "getting convinced" by authorities? Just saying, of course.
- mtgx 10y ago
  > FWIW: This is literally the retort everyone has to anything they disagree with that gets approved. Probably because it's true in most cases. Most people don't have a deep understanding of even a single issue, let alone multiple. This could have very well been another "Brexit-like" vote in Switzerland, where people were just scaremongered into voting for the law without understanding all of the implications.
programmarchy 10y ago
I keep hearing this line that only techies understand, but I think it's a problem of historical ignorance. The state education system has little incentive to inform people if its past abuses, so it seems people are blind to the history of state surveillance.
aub3bhat 10y ago
Or maybe they do and are okay with the trade offs. Consider that Switzerland requires voting on each citizenship application. Different countries and cultures have different set of norms. E.g. I can see lots of East and South Asian countries adopting a similar approach.
- sebgr 10y ago
  Only some cantons require voting on citizenship, the others have a more formal process.
Pica_soO 10y ago
Sorry, the problem is that this is the heart of representational democratic systems. You don't need to be a expert, you trust blindly. To call for education here is to demand for the people to install linux as there government. It is not going to happen, because the strong point of this agreement is the fact that no citizen has to be a expert. The idea, to reeducate anyone into a expert on secret services, measurements and counter-measures is .. interesting. Im actually by now for a randomly selected secret service jury. People who get selected by the dice, have the right to move freely within the secret service and the right to watch anything going on anytime. If the outside find something disagreeable, it can present the jury a case and the jury will investigate (if necessary) and judge. It is replaced after a term. Clearly governments bureaucrats ascending to power, can not be entrusted to control the most powerful tool they reach this way.
- rasur 10y ago
  Swiss Democracy is Direct Democracy, not Representative Democracy. EDIT: Meaning similar but not the same, and the power ultimately rests with the people to make the decisions, thus providing some requirement for them to understand the issues, and not just leave it up to their representatives. It's a subtle difference.

by rasur 10y ago

m_mueller 10y ago

Is the article wrong on the requirement of a judge's order for collecting information? As far as I understand they will gather the info nonetheless and have a pro forma judge order to "access" it, correct? So what's the difference to the US - other than vastly inferior technical capabilities and the court in question not being secret?

js8 10y ago

Please correct me if I wrong, but it seems to me from the description in the OP that this is nothing compared to mass surveillance in other countries. Notably, it requires a court authorization to put somebody under surveillance, which is something that even Snowden would approve if I recall correctly.

ekianjo 10y ago
Yup, this was also my understanding. Nothing like what the NSA or other agencies would do.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
Isn't that what surveillance started as in the U.S.? Give 'em an inch...
tobltobs 10y ago
They would be allowed to intercept any kind of traffic without any court authorization as long as at least one source is coming from a foreign country. Which will be technically true for nearly all IP based communication in Switzerland.
- href 10y ago
  They most certainly do need a court order. See Art. 40 and Art. 41. of the NDG.
  - jcfrei 10y ago
    That requirement for a court order is greatly diminished by Art. 30: Verfahren bei Dringlichkeit. It establishes that the federal intelligence service can tap wires without court orders in urgent cases. And let's be honest here, if tapping a wire turns up nothing, do you really expect them to follow the protocol and actually inform the agencies (like the federal administrative court)? I don't have that level of trust in the intelligence service.
    - href 10y ago
      That's the thing isn't it. If I don't trust my government to follow the law, then it doesn't matter what surveillance law we have. The whole vote was a vote of confidence as a result.
      - tobltobs 10y ago
        He didn't say, that he does not trust the government, he has problems trusting the intelligence service. The Swiss intelligence service did prove often enough that you can't trust him to respect the law or being especially talented to do his job in a appropriate way.
        href 10y ago
        Sure, still a vote about trust though. My point being that you are asking people if they trust a certain government entity or not. Apparently the trust is there.
      - Annatar 10y ago
        My impression is that it was a vote spurned by desire for security and stability, before anything else.

benevol 10y ago

> it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems. Exactly. The systems we create are now about to become too complex for us to understand (the climax probably being the arrival of "AI"). But understanding the systems we live in is the basis for democracy. Are these the signs that democracy will only have been a transitional solution? And if so, what comes after democracy?

planetjones 10y ago

I also live and work in Zurich in a 'techie' job and almost everyone is happy with the new surveillance laws and powers. They are sensible, needed and have the correct number of safeguards. Why do you think they go too far?

raverbashing 10y ago
Because some people are either blind or severely minimise existing threats, often while maximising other threats
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Has anybody, ever, in the history of this type of surveillance, provided concrete proof of the effectiveness thereof against the supposed threats that are used to justify it?
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    I don't think there is one about mass surveillance, which is not the case. It seems the case for individual, case-by-case basis is pretty clear (though there seems to be an issue with false positives)
tobltobs 10y ago
1.) There have been "safeguards" also at the time of the "Vichen" affair. 2.) The swiss "intelligence service" isn't famous for his intelligence. They should first do their homework on counterintelligence before anything else. Else they will just be used as a Proxy for foreign intelligence services.
nickik 10y ago
I also work in Zürich. I hate this. They are interducing survailance and searches without court orders. The security of my device should be valued at least as highly as the security of my apperment. Quite honstly, in my apparment their is nothing of interest to be found. However, my hole live is on my phone, my computer and my servers. I would infact argue that these should have stronger protection. How anybody who supports democracy and the rule of law can agree with things like that, is quite frankly beyond me.

DannyBee 10y ago

"I think it really boils down to not enough people understanding the issues and the problems." FWIW: This is literally the retort everyone has to anything they disagree with that gets approved. It's unrelated to surveillance. People always assume "if only people knew what i knew, they would have agreed with me". This is a really bad assumption. In fact, most of the time, i'd argue exactly the opposite: People understood fine, they just disagree.

rasur 10y ago
Apparently so.
sgift 10y ago
It probably boils down to your trust in people. Given many discussions with many people on many topics I tend to stay on the opposite side. Most peoples understanding is about as deep as the most popular news magazines headline, which is not enough for me to consider that they "understood fine, they just disagree" - they understood fine what they've bothered to inform themselves about. So, basically nothing.
- mk89 10y ago
  >Most peoples understanding is about as deep as the most popular news magazines headline exactly!which is why, however you put it, with parliaments or with referendums, or with any other kind of "democratic" tool, the basis of democracy is information. When people/media have advantages in something, they will be biased, making democracy actually an oligarchy. If I was Swiss, I would try to understand who is selling me this information. Who is behind this wanted "misinformation"? Most of the time it boils down to people having interests in certain companies. Can it be that, let's say, that most newspapers are "getting convinced" by authorities? Just saying, of course.
mtgx 10y ago
> FWIW: This is literally the retort everyone has to anything they disagree with that gets approved. Probably because it's true in most cases. Most people don't have a deep understanding of even a single issue, let alone multiple. This could have very well been another "Brexit-like" vote in Switzerland, where people were just scaremongered into voting for the law without understanding all of the implications.

programmarchy 10y ago

I keep hearing this line that only techies understand, but I think it's a problem of historical ignorance. The state education system has little incentive to inform people if its past abuses, so it seems people are blind to the history of state surveillance.

aub3bhat 10y ago

Or maybe they do and are okay with the trade offs. Consider that Switzerland requires voting on each citizenship application. Different countries and cultures have different set of norms. E.g. I can see lots of East and South Asian countries adopting a similar approach.

sebgr 10y ago
Only some cantons require voting on citizenship, the others have a more formal process.

Pica_soO 10y ago

Sorry, the problem is that this is the heart of representational democratic systems. You don't need to be a expert, you trust blindly. To call for education here is to demand for the people to install linux as there government. It is not going to happen, because the strong point of this agreement is the fact that no citizen has to be a expert. The idea, to reeducate anyone into a expert on secret services, measurements and counter-measures is .. interesting. Im actually by now for a randomly selected secret service jury. People who get selected by the dice, have the right to move freely within the secret service and the right to watch anything going on anytime. If the outside find something disagreeable, it can present the jury a case and the jury will investigate (if necessary) and judge. It is replaced after a term. Clearly governments bureaucrats ascending to power, can not be entrusted to control the most powerful tool they reach this way.

rasur 10y ago
Swiss Democracy is Direct Democracy, not Representative Democracy. EDIT: Meaning similar but not the same, and the power ultimately rests with the people to make the decisions, thus providing some requirement for them to understand the issues, and not just leave it up to their representatives. It's a subtle difference.