Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#41

Post by andreasley »

benevol wrote: post #3

As a reminder, Switzerland has its own surveillance scandal in its past, the so-called "Fichenskandal" [0] during which almost 1 million people were under surveillance (out of approximately 7 million), between 1900 and 1990. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichenskandal (german language)

Documents were collected for up to 700 000 people (about 10% of the population), but saying they were "under surveillance" is stretching it. Basically everyone who was politically "left" was considered a potential threat and random snippets of information about them were collected – sometimes absurdly trivial stuff and quite a lot of it wrong.

In 1994, a digital equivalent was born: A database called "ISIS". In 2010, a review showed that more than 230 000 people and organizations were registered once again. NDB, the federal intelligence service, collected data without checking if it is relevant. After a mandatory cleanup, this database is now said to only contain about 30 000 entities. The outcry was much smaller that time.

Now, my fellow citizens voted to be properly surveilled. And this time, we'll do it right and probably collect everything, including looking at any traffic flowing through Switzerland. That will be easy, since a recently passed law called "BÜPF" forces every swiss provider to retain metadata for six months, make realtime surveillance possible, decrypt data if they helped encrypt it and pay themselves for the necessary surveillance equipment (they will be reimbursed for every surveillance case).

I voted against it, but the writing was on the wall. Well-propagated irrational fear beats common sense. Maybe the checks and balances will be properly implemented this time, but I'm not counting on it.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#42

Post by href »

tobltobs wrote: post #22
js8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

They most certainly do need a court order. See Art. 40 and Art. 41. of the NDG.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#44

Post by bogomipz »

mtgx wrote: post #29

The era of "Swiss privacy" is now officially over. Germany seems to be the last remaining beacon of hope (mainly thanks to its Constitution, its Courts, and a slightly higher privacy vigilance from the German population, not because its government is any better than the rest).

Can you elaborate, what aside from bank accounts what else was part of the era of "Swiss privacy."

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#45

Post by mk89 »

snewk wrote: post #36
pmoriarty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"lmost 1 million people were under surveillance (out of approximately 7 million), between 1900 and 1990." It's probably all of them now -- if not by their own government, then by the US spy agencies, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, the various cell phone providers, credit card providers, stores, cameras, etc. It's very hard not to be under surveillance these days, unless you're willing to completely unplug, move to a re…

> move to a remote area, and become self-sufficient this behavior may even be considered 'radical' enough to warrant more direct surveillance.

Absolutely! Ahah. And even your friends/neighbors, if asked for information about you by some authorities, would say: not sure, they were always nice people, then one day they decided to leave the city; maybe they got brainwashed by one of those crazy guys you know, nowadays you hear a lot about them. Did they do something bad?

:)

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#46

Post by mk89 »

sgift wrote: post #27
DannyBee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 underst…

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.

>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.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#47

Post by l33tbro »

andreasley wrote: post #41
benevol wrote: post #3

As a reminder, Switzerland has its own surveillance scandal in its past, the so-called "Fichenskandal" [0] during which almost 1 million people were under surveillance (out of approximately 7 million), between 1900 and 1990. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichenskandal (german language)

Documents were collected for up to 700 000 people (about 10% of the population), but saying they were "under surveillance" is stretching it. Basically everyone who was politically "left" was considered a potential threat and random snippets of information about them were collected – sometimes absurdly trivial stuff and quite a lot of it wrong. In 1994, a digital equivalent was born: A database called "ISIS". In 2010,…

Thanks for this. My own ignorance had me thinking Switzerland to generally be a more educated and progressive nation than it's neighbouring countries. By educated, I mean thinking more critically about issues like surveillance, terrorism, and immigration. Guessing the "well-propogated irrational fear" comes from mainstream media and politicians?

Also, having an old surveillance database named ISIS definitely got a chuckle from me.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#48

Post by Voukras »

There has been no proof that this actually stems terrorism or criminality. Not only is there absolutely no empiric case put forward, but neither has anyone even bothered to explain how it could in theory stop terrorism. The vast majority of terrorists probably don't communicate over plaintext email about how they're totally going to attack this thing, yo.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#49

Post by nickik »

planetjones wrote: post #13
rasur wrote: post #5

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.…

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?

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.

Post reply on HN