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"We would be less confidential than Google" Proton threatens to quit Switzerland

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-would-be-less-confidential-than-google-proton-threatens-to-quit-switzerland-over-new-surveillance-law
166•taubek•5h ago

Comments

juancroldan•3h ago
Another day, another digital illiterate politician trying to regulate the digital world
OutOfHere•3h ago
And 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.

McDyver•3h 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•3h ago
The 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•1h ago
That's outrageous. Would you have a source for this?
mrweasel•22m ago
There was a whole special interest group set up to handle the law suites: 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-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

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•3h ago
Norway has also been a popular destination for these types of services.
speedgoose•3h ago
If someone knows a Norwegian datacentre offering colocation, that has no connection to USA, please let me know.
mrweasel•3h ago
I have no experience with them, so not a recommendation, but perhaps https://greenmountain.no?
speedgoose•2h ago
I 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•2h ago
Having 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•5m ago
That'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. 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.)

theMMaI•2h ago
They're owned by an israeli company nowadays fwiw
mrweasel•2h ago
Oh, I missed that.
Calwestjobs•2h ago
They deploy Pegasus from there or what would Israeli company need in there ?
theMMaI•1h ago
Seems mostly to be a real-estate investment but the ownership structure is a bit opaque. Their DCs host some critical infrastructure for banks.
theMMaI•1h ago
There's several that don't have immediate exposure to the US, like Bulk, Telenor, Blix, Orange Business Service (former Basefarm). Most of these are in or around Oslo.
magicalhippo•2h ago
As a Norwegian I would not feel safe hosting such here.

Of the ~10 parties with a chance of a seat at the parlament, absolutely none have any clue what so ever when it comes to IT security matters.

The major parties have multiple times attemted to push egregious laws like collecting all internet metadata in our country, and storing it for years. They argued it wouldn't be a risk because only authorized personel would have access...

Sheer luck has twarted those attempts.

rad_gruchalski•1h ago
There are 5 million people living in Norway and you have 10 parties in the parliament? Talk about divided country.
pastage•1h ago
A continuous spectrum is only divided if it has too few bins.
zukzuk•1h ago
Norwegians seem to me, an outsider, quite cohesive as a society. Much more so than just about any place i’ve spent time in. But they also seem to allow for a fair bit of diversity in certain things, politics being one — but only within certain parameters, so I suspect the differences between the parties are more around specific issues up for debate than big ideological / identity concerns, as they are in the US, for example.
mrweasel•53m ago
Denmark is a little under 6 million people, there are currently 12 parties eligible for election. That not really uncommon, the Netherlands also have a fairly large number of parties.

It seems more crazy to believe that two, three or four parties can represent 80 million or more people. The truth is that many of the parties in countries like Norway and Denmark are all fairly similar. They mostly agree on the basics. Six of the twelve parties in Denmark are, in my mind, variations on Social Democrats. I'm sure many would disagree, but they vary on issues, that in countries like the US, would be considered implementation details or narrow topics.

kubb•42m ago
I assure you forcing everyone into one of two options results in way more division. You can probably imagine why.
petre•3h ago
Lichtenstein is closer and uses the CHF.
sealeck•2h ago
But is an absolute monarchy (e.g. non-independent judiciary).
FirmwareBurner•1h ago
And their military defense is outsourced to Switzerland.
miohtama•3h ago
Sweden, having their legacy in social democracy and more state control, hates privacy

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•2h ago
What 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.

dehrmann•1h ago
> Sweden, having their legacy in social democracy and more state control, hates privacy

Generally, this is because Swedes trust the state.

anal_reactor•42m ago
Hot take but it makes sense to get rid of privacy under certain circumstances. What if we created a political system where you can trust the government to do a good, honest job. Privacy is needed because goals of the government aren't always aligned with goals of the society, but what if that wasn't the case.
hammock•2h ago
What happened to the ideas of offshore data centers and seasteading and pirate radio? Is it time to bring those back (again)?
Calwestjobs•2h ago
only musk can save datacenters from reaches of earths governments.

by transporting every cargo to USA for thorough inspection before flight.

catlikesshrimp•1h ago
Isn'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•1h ago
Is not changing BGP route cheaper than taking down a satanlite ? Sorry, satellite.
JumpCrisscross•22m 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.

devwastaken•2h ago
Mullvad 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•1h ago
Proton isn’t giving up VPN users. It’s giving up mail users. There’s a huge legal difference.
sschueller•3h ago
This 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-vernehm...

j45•1h ago
It’s odd people don’t push for laws to prevent for these kinds of laws to keep bubbling up every few years.
FirmwareBurner•1h ago
Think of the children
bdangubic•1h ago
every law is temporal, until it gets re-written or killed outright
edent•1h ago
The 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•1h ago
This 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.

brnt•54m ago
Constitutions are amended all the time. The French even have a proces for reboots of the Republic.

These are goods things.

puzzledobserver•25m ago
The Indian Supreme Court introduced the Basic Structure Doctrine in 1970, allowing the judiciary to overrule constitutional amendments if they are found to contradict the "basic structure" of the constitution.

It's original purpose, if I understand correctly, was to guarantee that fundamental rights were an essential part of the constitution and couldn't be amended away.

Wikipedia says that multiple countries appear to have adopted the principle: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Uganda.

greyw•54m ago
In Switzerland you can change the constitution with popular votes. That only requires for 50% of the voters to agree and half of the cantons.
AnthonyMouse•51m ago
Then get half the voters to agree to make it two thirds. After you put the other protections in, naturally.
philistine•18m ago
You’re arguing for massive changes to a very unique country with the oldest democracy in Europe. Unless you’re Swiss, or have credentials related to Swiss law, I don’t think you’re arguing anything realistic.
AnthonyMouse•16m ago
Countries can be as unique as they want to be, but they still need a system for preventing authoritarianism. The existing system is fine if it's effective and not fine if it isn't.
timeflex•36m ago
And then you make it so when the tyrants do get back to 51% that they can just ignore the constitution instead. And might as well make sure there are only two major political parties so even though the tyrants ignore the constitution, that the other 49% will stay busy stuffing their pockets with foreign donations.
AnthonyMouse•24m ago
These are independent problems.

To prevent the government from ignoring the constitution, create remedies in each of the other branches of government. The US doesn't make this as strong as it should be. Constitutional challenges in the judiciary get shut down as a result of standing or sovereign immunity when that ought not to happen, and there should be a better mechanism for states to challenge federal constitutional violations.

The two-party system in the US is caused by first past the post voting. Use score voting instead. Not IRV, not some other nonsense, a rated voting system that removes the structural incentive to avoid spoilers by limiting the number of parties.

"The existing system isn't perfect" is why you improve it, not why you give up.

flir•30m ago
That's how you ossify.
AnthonyMouse•21m ago
If preventing the government from abusing the population is ossification then the government should be made entirely out of bones.
Youden•19m ago
I'd argue that this is unnecessary in Switzerland due to the existing referendum system.

After the government passes a new law, opponents have 100 days to collect 50000 signatures. If they manage, the law will not take force until it's approved by a vote by the populace.

AnthonyMouse•7m ago
The way authoritarianism work is they pick some enemy to rally against and convince people that the ends of stopping that evil justify the means of becoming evil. The problem with this is that it can garner 51% support within the population for temporary periods of time, so you need a system that can prevent it even in that environment. This typically means that violations of fundamental rights require significantly more than 51% popular support or require changes in public sentiment to stick for a period of time before they can make foundational changes (e.g. only a third of the US Senate being up for election every two years).
ncr100•2h ago
Who 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•1h ago
Small logical question - How can proton deliver mail to you if it does not save anything ?
LexiMax•44m ago
To 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?
cfn•34m ago
The contents of the emails are encrypted so you have a normal login plus a key to unencrypt your email locally. They save your encrypted email conyents and your login but not the key and they also don't log your access (I'm assuming here from reading the article).
croemer•1h ago
Title needs a dash after Google, otherwise it reads weirdly
mystraline•34m ago
A few months back, I had Proton subscription for a few years.

I didn't realize just how batshit crazy their CEO was, and how potentially unsafe I was wrt to this administration.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/1id5v21/does_pro...

Long story short, the CEO has publicly backed Trump, Vance, and other officials in this new regime.

For starters, they are Swiss nationals; they should be steering clear of advocating for US politicians, let alone fascist adjacent politicians.

How safe is my data for real? If I help someone with trans-affirming health or abortion help, will I be outed by Proton? That's the kind of questions I absolutely must ask after declarations from their CEO.

Or put more plainly, I switched to another VPN provider and killed my subscription after the comments were made public. I simply do not trust this company to shield me and my data as they claim they would. Maybe its overblown, but reputation is a big thing with a 'privacy affiliated systems network'. And their CEO burnt it.

user3939382•27m ago
It’s “batshit crazy” to support a politician the majority of the country voted for?
hnhg•18m ago
Not 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.
jonathanstrange•18m ago
That can't be answered in general, it depends on whom you're talking about. Adolf Hitler had a great election result in November 1933 and Vladimir Putin also appears to be popular. That being said, in this case we're talking about someone from Switzerland supporting a US politician, which seems to be bizarre, though that arguably also depends on the meaning of "support" in the context.
JumpCrisscross•25m 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?

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