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Proton threatens to quit Switzerland over new surveillance law
- croemer 1y agoTitle needs a dash after Google, otherwise it reads weirdly
- nickslaughter02 1y ago> "I think we would have no choice but to leave Switzerland," said Yen. Go where? See "Weakening encryption would make European security worse" – the VPN industry reacts to the EU's plan for end-to-end encryption backdoors" https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/weakening-encryption-would-make-european-security-worse-the-vpn-industry-reacts-to-the-eus-plan-for-end-to-end-encryption-backdoors https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/weakening...
- mistrial9 1y ago[flagged]
- manbitesdog 1y agoAnother day, another digital illiterate politician trying to regulate the digital world
- OutOfHere 1y agoAnd they will go where? To the Netherlands or Sweden? EU regulation applies there. They would have to go to Seychelles or Panama, but their servers would obviously still have to be elsewhere. Switzerland would be useless if it can't remain a safe haven.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- McDyver 1y ago> "This revision attempts to implement something that has been deemed illegal in the EU and the United States. The only country in Europe with a roughly equivalent law is Russia," said Yen. They can go anywhere in Europe, since that type of surveillance seems to be illegal
- mrweasel 1y agoThe issue is that countries may not care. The Danish government famously refuses to comply with EU verdicts that makes logging all phone calls and spying on text messages illegal. The Danish supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights have agreed with the government that "it's fine" in a "please think of the children"-moment.
- codethief 1y agoThat's outrageous. Would you have a source for this?
- mrweasel 1y agoThere was a whole special interest group set up to handle the law suites: https://ulovliglogning.dk/ https://ulovliglogning.dk/ all the law suites are on their page, but in Danish. One of the previous ministers of justice flat said he didn't care, as long as it help catch "the bad guys". This a guy who was the leader of the Conservatives. A party that brands itself as the party of law and justice, except when they don't like the verdicts apparently. You can also read about the reaction to the verdict in 2017 (again in Danish): https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-telelogning-den-er-klart-ulovlig-og-skal-skrottes https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-te... where the EU deems the Danish logging unlawful, and the police and the government reacts by ignoring the verdict and wanting even more logging. There is a bunch of followup and related links at the bottom. The site is a tech news site owned by the Danish Engineers Union. There's a Wikipedia page on what is being logged and retained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark It's somewhere between an over-interpretation of EU rules and a misunderstand of the usefulness of the collected data, but the end result is that every single person in Denmark is basically logged and tracked 24/7, unless they go completely offline.
- mrweasel 1y agoNorway has also been a popular destination for these types of services.
- speedgoose 1y agoIf someone knows a Norwegian datacentre offering colocation, that has no connection to USA, please let me know.
- mrweasel 1y agoI have no experience with them, so not a recommendation, but perhaps https://greenmountain.no https://greenmountain.no?
- speedgoose 1y agoI somehow missed them. Thanks for the information. I’m afraid that the lack of public prices and an invitation to contact their salesman means it’s as expensive as it could be, but I’m sure Proton can afford.
- mrweasel 1y agoHaving worked in the hosting and colo business in Scandinavia, it's normally not cheap. It's been a few years, but you're starting around €500 per month (in 2016 I think we could get you started at €350) and frequently you'll need to take at least a quarter of a rack. Most hosting companies doesn't even really want colocation anymore, it's sort a niche product.
- immibis 1y agoThat's normal for colocation. It's not a jellybean service. It's something you have to individually negotiate with your supplier. We've been spoiled by being able to rent virtual servers that are all the same within one provider. Colocation is not all the same. ("Jellybean" is what electronics people call basic parts that are commodities, as opposed to, say, highly specialized integrated circuits. Some say it comes from when electronic part stores would have them in jellybean jars. You could just grab one out of the jar because the individual differences didn't really matter.) There are some places that have jellybean colocation offers (e.g. Hetzner does - notice their normal business is jellybean servers and they run their own data centers, so it looks like a no-brainer to fit colocation into that business model), but it only covers a small portion of colocation possibilities. But typically colocation is just one of those products where every deal is fully custom. That's just how it is. So you have to buy enough of the product to make it worth the salesman's and engineer's time, meaning at least a couple hundred dollars a month worth. By the way, the same is true for business internet access. If you pay the cheapest price for internet (as every residential user does), you get the same basic service as everyone else. But if you're willing to spedn enough money, your ISP will negotiate with you. Though I hear it sometimes takes some prodding to get past the "residential area == ordinary residential connection" assumption (and in many cases their network may not support certain upgrades). And it's true for business transactions in general. You want five screws, grab the best match off the shelf. You want five million screws, we'll make them to your exact specifications boss. (Also related: If you owe the bank a hundred billion dollars, the bank has a problem.)
- petre 1y agoLichtenstein is closer and uses the CHF.
- sealeck 1y agoBut is an absolute monarchy (e.g. non-independent judiciary).
- LAC-Tech 1y agoI feel like you need to complete this thought. Australia has an independent judiciary, and look what they did to tech privacy. So I'm not seeing how it follows that an absolute monarchy is a hindrance.
- sealeck 1y agoThis is very specious reasoning. At least in Australia if you have a legal problem there is a full court system set up that can help you – Liechstenstein is basically just a state owned by a single man attached to a bank (LGT) owned by the same man.
- LAC-Tech 1y agoAustralia's "full court system" completely failed to stop "Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018", where by people can be compelled to install security backdoors at the behest of law enforcement. It looks like Prince Hans-Adams is much more able to protect peoples civil liberties than Australias westminster system.
- bawolff 1y agoBut it isn't. To quote wikipedia: "Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy". It is probably as close as you get though in modern europe.
- sealeck 1y ago
- miohtama 1y agoSweden, having their legacy in social democracy and more state control, hates privacy https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangerous-approach-experts-urge-the-swedish-parliament-to-reject-the-encryption-backdoor-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangero... It was also Swedish EU commissioner who wants to ban end-to-end encrypted chats and brought various proposals to the EU for this.
- maronato 1y agoWhat does social democracy have to do with hating privacy? The UK, US, Australia, and other capitalist flagships are all trying to do the same. Not to mention the Patriot Act.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- KetoManx64 1y ago"Crony capitalist", it's not actual capitalism when the government has its fingers and regulatioms in everyone's finances.
- globalnode 1y agoI guess the human temptation to want to know what people are saying behind your back goes beyond political/economic systems.
- mantas 1y agoSocial democracy is also capitalism. I’d rather word that differently. High-trust societies with little expectation of privacy and valuing community tend to do well with social democracy. Otherwise people end up abusing the system and it’s hard to catch them if privacy trumps community needs. Here in ex-USSR country people are very pro privacy and individualist. At the same time we try to copy a lot of Nordic stuff from our neighbors. It’s a shitshow how those cultures mesh. A lot of welfare abuse, hiding beyond muh privacy to avoid scrutinity.
- odiroot 1y ago
- hammock 1y agoWhat happened to the ideas of offshore data centers and seasteading and pirate radio? Is it time to bring those back (again)?
- Calwestjobs 1y agoonly musk can save datacenters from reaches of earths governments. by transporting every cargo to USA for thorough inspection before flight.
- catlikesshrimp 1y agoIsn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? The problem would be all the debris up there. Maybe destroying one satellite would destroy them all.
- Calwestjobs 1y agoIs not changing BGP route cheaper than taking down a satanlite ? Sorry, satellite.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Isn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? Probably not for Starlink. You’ve got mass-manufactured satellites in a constellation launched on a reüsable, profitable platform on one hand. And on the other hand you have experimental expendable ASAT weapons.
- overfeed 1y agoHow much does it cost to launch ball bearings into an intersecting orbit? They are even cheaper to mass-manufacture. The anti-satellite side has a budget hundreds to thousands of times cheaper, based on average ball bearings to satellite density in orbit, with a decent spread and multiple orbit intersections per day.
- 1y ago
- devwastaken 1y agoMullvad operates out of Sweden. Unlike proton, mullvad doesnt have to respond to court orders. proton gives up user info thousands a year its right on their transparency page.
- Batman8675309 1y agoProton isn’t giving up VPN users. It’s giving up mail users. There’s a huge legal difference.
- immibis 1y agoAll entities with known physical addresses have to respond to court orders, or men with guns will break into those addresses and kidnap whoever is supposed to have responded.
- KomoD 1y agoCorrection:they do in fact have to respond to court orders, but they can't give any info as they simply do not have it.
- ignoramous 1y agoMullvad stores account (kyc) + payment information in line with Swedish tax laws for (I think) 7 years. What Mullvad apparently don't have are data-plane logs. But then, surveillance laws mandate forceful & secret compliance in certain cases (Mullvad may be exempt but who knows: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290)
- LMYahooTFY 1y agoDoesn't Mullvad accept cash without identifying information?
- _t9ow 1y agoYes, they do. They accept Monero too.
- Aeyxen 1y agoIf privacy service providers have to keep logs anywhere, they lose all technical credibility—doesn't matter if you're registered in Panama, the Netherlands, or Mars. Perhaps, we should design systems where compliance is impossible and data simply doesn’t exist by default.
- briandear 1y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 1y agoA lot but that's irrelevant.
- VariousPrograms 1y agoBringing up Nazis, terrorists, and “the children” is always relevant to privacy detractors who think it’s suspicious for regular people to not want to be spied on.
- sschueller 1y agoSwitzerland paid restitutions and changed it's laws which can't be said for crimes committed by many others. While the past should not be white washed it's been 80 years now. A better question is how many banks does Switzerland still have? UBS is threatening to leave if they need to meet the new capitalization requirements the government wants.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoPrivate banks are very different from consumer banks in Switzerland. You might as well consider them as different kinds of things.
- speedgoose 1y agoIt’s still somewhat of a current topic though. https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/nazi-ties-to-credit-suisse-ran-deeper-than-was-known-hidden-files-reveal-285ab620 https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/nazi-ties-to-credit-suis...
- sschueller 1y agoInteresting I'm sure UBS will try to claim that they didn't aquire the liabilities of CS just like Bayer and Dow try too with their acquisitions. However since this acquisition was basically forced upon UBS they would probably have a much better chance in court...
- sschueller 1y agoThis law change died in the "Vernehmlassung" which is early in the process. It's dead with opposition from all sides of the political spectrum. It had no chance. https://www.inside-it.ch/vupf-revision-faellt-in-der-vernehmlassung-komplett-durch-20250507 https://www.inside-it.ch/vupf-revision-faellt-in-der-vernehm...
- j45 1y agoIt’s odd people don’t push for laws to prevent for these kinds of laws to keep bubbling up every few years.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- zugi 1y agoThanks, I LOLed!
- bdangubic 1y agoevery law is temporal, until it gets re-written or killed outright
- edent 1y agoThe law can't bind future lawmakers. That's a common feature of every legal system. Any legal system can pass a law saying "we revoke this previous law".
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoThis is what constitutions are for. When you have the support, you install a constitutional protection that says the government can't do this. Repealing the protection requires the same super-majority needed to pass it, so changing the law isn't just a matter of the tyrants needing to get back to 51% from 49%, they have to get from 33% to 67%. Then you layer these protections against multiple levels of government so they'd all have to be repealed together by separate legislatures before the government is allowed to do it, discouraging the attempt.
- th0ma5 1y ago[flagged]
- bobxmax 1y agoIt seems to me that security and surveillance conscious folks tend to sit on either extreme of the spectrum
- logicchains 1y agoBecause governments aren't persecuting people in the middle of the spectrum.
- ttoinou 1y agoBeing docile could be the definition of being in the middle of the spectrum
- nozzlegear 1y agoBeing in the center of the political spectrum doesn't make you "docile." What a ridiculous notion.
- surgical_fire 1y agoExtremists love to make themselves as victims, and those on both sides hate moderates. It's all bullshit of course.
- ttoinou 1y agoI agree with you in that what I said might not be true for US politics
- mrweasel 1y agoThen why do they need to spy on people? I mean, I agree with you. The center parties typically aren't persecuting massive amounts of people for their beliefs and "thought crimes", but they do still seem a little to happy to spy on people. Probably more relevant in multi-party parliamentary systems, but someone pointed out that: if the left wing parties and the liberales agree on a policy, you should probably just implement it immediately. (Said about the Danish Red–Green Alliance and the Liberal Alliance, an eco-socialist party and a right-wing liberal party respectably).
- ncr100 1y agoWho sponsored this?? Best I could find as a non Swiss: > Threema and Proton In the daily news of 'SRF', Jean-Louis Biberstein, the deputy head of the federal postal and telecommunications service, said that the requirements for service providers are not tightened, but merely specified. A company like Threema would have the same obligations as before after the revision. Threema contradicts this in a statement from the end of April. The Vüpf revision would force the company to abandon the principle of "only collecting as few data as technically required". (From auto translation of report about this already failing to proceed.) Is Federal Post the entity or is it a person, or a group in Swiss government seeking to take authority over information?
- Calwestjobs 1y agoSmall logical question - How can proton deliver mail to you if it does not save anything ?
- LexiMax 1y agoTo me the value prospect of Proton falls down even before that - how can e-mail ever be a secure medium of communication if only one side of the conversation is secure, given how ubiquitous Google and Outlook are in the space?
- pkaeding 1y agoThis is a valid point, but emails between Proton users (or other users of PGP) will not be accessible. And, presumably, it will be harder to see your email if you use Proton, than if you used Google/Outlook if your adversary had to look through everyone else's email to find who corresponded with you.
- zadokshi 1y agoproton account to proton account. > how can e-mail ever be a secure medium Email can be secure, it’s just that the big US players can’t or won’t agree to proton like privacy. I am curious to know what is behind these big US companies being so anti privacy.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago[flagged]
- aaomidi 1y agoMaintaining democracy during peace time is easy. During war time it’s hard. It’s also exactly the time where we should do work our hardest to maintain democracy. I would recommend reading the Lincoln letter to William H. Herndon dated Feb. 15. 1848
- Calwestjobs 1y agoLet every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. Kennedy. Yet we cant even endure tariffs meant to stop war.
- timewizard 1y ago> to assure the survival and the success of liberty. Kennedy. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin.
- ImHereToVote 1y agoWhat war are tariffs meant to stop?
- Calwestjobs 1y agochina vs north america AND europe + chinese proxy war in ukraine, russia is just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-access/area_denial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-access/area_denial essentially USA needs Taiwan to not be invaded by china, with taiwan in chinese hands, even korea will have to do very hard thinking about western direction. which will be disastrous for USA, EU. Taiwan ramped up production of shells. Czech republic is buying shells from them to send to ukraine ( "czech ammunitions initiative" ) so taiwan is able sustain expanded manufacturing capability needed for china taiwan conflict. so czechs are praised for this by other NATO members because essentially, chinese proxy war is making taiwan more secure against china... china wanted to invade taiwan in 2027 that is why biden, trump are relocating chip manufacturing to US for last 7 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhuXY9LBR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhuXY9LBR8 EDIT: look up that part of russia between two inland seas, where georgia and azerbaijan are connecting russia with iran. that part is so important that russia had to invade crimea, wage russo-georgian war just to be able to secure that part / land connection with iran. ukrainian territories currently occupied by russia are "just" AA/AD zone for protection of rostov-on-don which is main railroad, seashipping hub for that iran russia connection land part.
- mystraline 1y ago[flagged]
- user3939382 1y agoIt’s “batshit crazy” to support a politician the majority of the country voted for?
- hnhg 1y agoNot to be pedantic, but Donald Trump received around 77 million votes in the 2024 presidential election, which would be around 23% of the then population, I think.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- user3939382 1y agoI wouldn’t say the correction is necessarily pedantic because non voters’ opinions do count and matter, but it also doesn’t materially change the argument. Calling the majority of people (millions) who voted in an election “batshit crazy” translates to, it’s not possible to rationally disagree with me, everyone who does must be crazy. A totally immature, unproductive though sadly common mindset that we should make a conscious effort to avoid. Moreover it suggests the holder hasn’t thought through the position of the opposition which in turn means they really don’t deeply understand even their own convictions. If millions of people agree about something, there’s a rational explanation.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Long story short, the CEO has publicly backed Trump, Vance, and other officials in this new regime This claim is not supported by your source. Do you have anything stronger than a Reddit thread?
- pmkary 1y agoNo more "Swiss-Privacy" then.
- crossroadsguy 1y agoWhat they would tout as their USP then? Ex-Swiss Privacy?
- lolwtflamo 1y ago[dead]
- mvdtnz 1y ago[flagged]
- beeflet 1y agoYou can disagree with the 2nd amendment but if anything, the reverse is short-sighted. You're suggesting that we massively increase the power of the government forever to solve a short-term security problem.
- lazyasciiart 1y agoCommon sense says that it’s already illegal. They don’t need common sense legislation, they need common sense interpretation of it.
- piuantiderp 1y agoA lot of theater
- notepad0x90 1y ago[flagged]
- neobrain 1y agoNo, he didn't. You're thinking of the story where he expressed support for Gail Slater as head of antitrust and where he subsequently criticized lack of effective work towards tech regulation on the Democratic side. Implying support for Trump here borderlines deceitful disinformation.
- notepad0x90 1y agoWhy didn't you just look it up before making that comment? https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru... This was discussed on HN as well.
- tempodox 1y ago> a "major violation of the right to privacy" that will also harm the country's reputation and its ability to compete on an international level. Exactly. Were the fear mongers and authoritarians so successful that the infected organism starts acting against its own wellbeing?
- nottorp 1y agoTechradar popped up a full screen something with "you may also want to read..." when i hit the browser back button. Entshittification continues...
- Aeyxen 1y agoProton didn't just market 'Swiss privacy,' they built real engineering around non-retention—no logs, no trackers, nothing to subpoena. If Switzerland erodes that, the only defensible move for actual privacy builders is to exit and redeploy somewhere the law aligns with technical reality. Anything else is security theater. If law passes, if Proton leaves, what matters most isn't their press release—it's the engineers voting with their code and hardware locales.
- blablabla123 1y agoTo be fair Protonmail has much more to offer than "just" privacy friendly legislation. The free web mail client is full-featured, time tested and has no ads. That in my opinion already puts it ahead among the main mail providers. Also it has the Proton bridge, VPN etc. etc. I'd say it really depends on the personal threat model and willingness to DIY. My main complaint with it is bad interoperability with gpg though. (I'm not sure how anything less is supposed to help with end-to-end privacy...)
- SomeUserName432 1y ago> The free web mail client is full-featured, time tested and has no ads. I'm currently paying for proton mail, but I'll be migrating away for it once my current period expires, exactly because it's not full-featured. It has the worst search I have ever seen in a mail client. Even after enabling content search it's as good as utterly useless.
- blablabla123 1y agoWell yeah, I mean it has browser-based e2e encryption which is why search only applies to subjects/addresses. For more Proton bridge is needed. IIRC it's possible to also search the message bodies directly but it's quite slow.
- Tika2234 1y agoI hold Proton CEO to his word. I will also terminate my paid account with Proton if they dont leave (to give weight to his word). And Swiss will be on my ban list as well for ANY online services.
- Slava_Propanei 1y ago[dead]