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Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

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Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#81
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,…

"Documents were collected for up to 700 000 people (about 10% of the population)"

Is the 700'000 people the total between 1900 and 1990? In this case the "10% of the population" number is probably wrong.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women vote being allowed in Switzerland meant that men had to agree for it by at least 50%. Some days, I wonder if many of its neighbors would have had women votes as early as they did if they had such a strict condition.

While the swiss men did vote for it in 1971 and allowed women to vote on a federal basis, the men in the canton (state) of "Appenzell Innerrhoden" voted against it until 1990. Then the federal court stepped in and forced them to allow women to vote, too. "Appenzell Innerrhoden" has about 16 000 citizens. Switzerland is small but diverse. The states have significant freedom in making their laws. This usually works wel…

Not to say Appenzell Innerrhoden people can be seen as Amish people of Switzerland (even in if fact they probably have very little in common).

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#83
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).

DE-CIX, the world's largest internet exchange point, has had a (forced) cooperation with BND, the german federal intelligence service, for several years. The BND also cooperates with the NSA every once in a while. Digital privacy is over everywhere.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#84
post #54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

> Also, having an old surveillance database named ISIS definitely got a chuckle from me. I think this one is worse: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUxdvzDWoAARh_y.jpg

Yep, you win.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#85
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

its neighbouring countries.

Re: Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

#86
post #74

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…

People understood fine, they just disagree. They had a public debate, as is the tradition before every referendum, and the assertions and assumptions being presented by both the head of the secret service and the politicians backing it up were incorrect. Technical assumptions were incorrect. The technical capability was misrepresented. One of the main arguments for this initiative was that the secret service would on…

"Technical assumptions were incorrect. The technical capability was misrepresented."

Your response really doesn't say this. It's just a bunch of opinion and says "i wish they had presented additional info i believe matters". That falls squarely within the studies i pasted, which show both that people always think this would change result, and that people are pretty much always wrong when they think this, and that it does not change results.

"One of the main arguments for this initiative was that the secret service would only be allowed to look at the packet traffic of the affected target, but the reality is that in order to capture just that traffic, all packets are captured and filtered out first;"

This is not necessarily true of course. You can, in fact, filter on the fly if you want to. Deep packet inspection at link speed is a thing.

"also, there is no technology in existence to prevent the secret service to packet capturing everything."

In what sense, exactly?

You can make this happen at the level that any such thing would be noticed immediately, and would require incredible numbers of people to conspire. You can make it audited by as many independent people as you want.

If you mean "there are always ways around this if enough people conspire", that is a generally true statement about the world, and people already know this. Again, the fact that you think this matters very heavily, and others do not, does not make everyone else ignorant or misinformed.

"Also asserted was that the secret service has and will have good oversight of all activities. The committee consists of only five people. And these people are all politicians currently in the government. If you just look at checking which TCP/IP packets were captured, that's already way too much work for five politicians in the oversight committee. This was not addressed at all either. "

This is a strong opinion/prediction of yours (along with some casual classism and denigration of "politicians" for no reason), and may or may not turn out to be factually correct. This is not a misrepresentation on anyone's part, and is certainly not falsifiable yet. It sounds like an objective presentation was made of the plan. You disagree with the viability and usefulness of that plan. That, again, is not a misrepresentation or omission. It simply means you have a possible difference of opinion with others as to the viability. I don't even see an argument for what "additional" data was missing here, just that you don't like politicians and think they won't be able to keep up.

"Using encryption was not addressed. The fact that the secret service would be legally allowed to break into people's systems was not addressed in the public debate."

But known and objectively presented from all things i can find. I know you can't believe people would be okay with such a thing, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility that people are indeed okay with such a thing.

"Technical capability and what is possible today were never discussed."

This is an opinion.

"How the suspects would be identified was declared secret, with nobody except the oversight committee of those five politicians being allowed an insight into it."

Where's the misrepresentation or missing data?

"So, I stand with the previous poster that people did not know what we know, and they voted based on incorrect assumptions and misrepresentation or outright omission, whether unintentional or intentional, of technical capability and facts."

I strongly disagree, at least based on what you've presented.

These are not misrepresentations, they are simply "presentations that did not present it from your point of view". That is not misrepresentation, because you are not the source of absolute truth. It's misrepresentation if it wasn't presented objectively false or misleading, not subjectively false or misleading. Pretty much any controversial thing that is voted on that a given set of folks disagree with is considered to have been presented subjectively false or misleading by those people.

You also added "incorrect assumptions". You are basically offering opinions that you think others opinion's are wrong. Certainly you must realize you are not necessarily right? You can't simply say "everyone else's assumptions are wrong, and therefore they are ignorant", when your assumptions are based on opinions about the state of the world.

Past that, IMHO, you've not made an effective case that people were ignorant here.

You've instead made an effective case that the studies i cited are correct, among other things.

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