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Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#371

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

esja wrote: post #8

Quite a few people who voted against this did so purely because they didn’t want private companies controlling the system. If the proposal had been for the government to issue and control the identities, it may well have passed.

I did vote against it, but mostly for other reasons.

The companies (mostly banks and insurances) lobbying for the e-ID have already implemented a similar project called "Swiss-ID" which was supposed to be used across a majority of service providers. From the point of view of the user, it looked and behaved a lot like OAuth.

What I am afraid of is that the e-ID will be implemented in a similar way, and data will be stored centrally. That's a big difference to the classic physical ID we have, because while the government controlled some data centrally (name, year of birth etc), no information about banking or illnesses was ever stored in a central place.

If there was an indication about how the e-ID was going to be implemented, and if there was a reasonable effort to make sure data is being kept isolated (e.g. by issuing a physical tokens and encrypting the data with them) I might have voted yes. But there was no such information, and I expected the worst.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#372

Post by cies »

jeofken wrote: post #370
kodah wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you may still do it when you are 18, just parents should not be allowed to do it to you You can read this in a positive light or a negative light. I know a guy who had that surgery done as an adult and it was incredibly painful and took a while to fully heal. I want to say it was almost a month. You could certainly argue that it's a lifetime of pain if it's done and you don't like it but that's likely a slippery sl…

Don’t you think it hurts a child to cut their genitals? I’m ashamed it’s allowed in my country, and due to socialised health care I must fund it. It’s child abuse.

Exactly my sentiment. Tax paid child abuse. We should implore how this ever got this far, and fix the system to ensure this never happens again. As a result I've come to believe that religious freedom should have well enough protection by freedom of expression and freedom of association; and hence should be removed from constitutions and put into the regular code of law.

Freedom of religion may not constitutionally compete with bodily integrity (nor with freedom of expression (blasphemy)).

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#373

Post by wuschel »

mFixman wrote: post #368
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative. But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good. In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been…

> This means, big project ambitions get cut down to size, and few grand things if any, get done at the federal level. But this is glorious: it is very hard for regulations to become calcified within the state apparatus. And yet, Switzerland's nationalised train network is one of the most extensive and effective in the world. How did that happen?

I will bite, although this moves away from the news that Switzerland votes against the electronic ID system.

> How did that happen?

Two hypothesis:

a) The railroad net in Switzerland is fairly small when compared to Germany.

b) The numbers in the punctuality statistics are skewed. For example, once a train from Germany is late and wants to cross the border to Switzerland (e.g. Freiburg-Basel crossing), it is put on hold and has to wait until it falls into the next swiss train slot, entering Switzerland "on time". In Germany, this would be counted as a delay.

Source: Lived in Switzerland for a while.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#374

Post by nathias »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #275
wombatmobile wrote: post #55

Switzerland has an awesome electoral system [1]. Instead of being ruled by a president or a prime minister who can be polarising, divisive, or selective, Switzerland has an Executive Council. The 7 member Executive Council is composed of the top 7 candidates from each election. The chairperson of the executive council rotates each year, so that the top 4 vote winners each get a turn at being chairperson. This means t…

i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative. But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good. In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been…

This reminds me of how elephants don't suffer from cancer, because of their size their tumors get tumors and die off before doing damage to the animal. The best bureaucracy is not an efficient one, but one so inefficient that it can't do harm.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#375

Post by a_imho »

malthaus wrote: post #7

Really proud of this result; the failsafe once again has done its job against heavy lobbying. There was so much misinformation around mostly due to lack of technical understanding (e.g. "it's a digital passport!") and the (yellow) press heavily pushed for a yes.

In my very own experience in a very different country I found if a mouthpiece tries to tell you what to do or think, as a first approximation it is better to do the exact opposite. People usually don't need to be told to look out for their own interests and thus no one pays for it.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#376

Post by tim333 »

mFixman wrote: post #368
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative. But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good. In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been…

> This means, big project ambitions get cut down to size, and few grand things if any, get done at the federal level. But this is glorious: it is very hard for regulations to become calcified within the state apparatus. And yet, Switzerland's nationalised train network is one of the most extensive and effective in the world. How did that happen?

The rail network was mostly built by private enterprise prior to 1898 when it was nationalised and has been run in a pretty conservative way since.

>While European rail operators such as French SNCF and Spanish Renfe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network.

As a Brit I'd probably prefer that to £100bn on HS2 and god knows what on the proposed Boris Burrow.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#377

Post by chovybizzass »

hocuspocus wrote: post #188
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. In Europe you'll find the likes of Capgemini, Accenture, Cognizant, etc. hovering like flies around government IT projects.

IT services companies that work on government contracts in Switzerland are much smaller. And they're usually pretty competent, especially the few ones that work for the federal government.

oh man i just tried to use our site: https://usajobs.gov

for every single job you have to answer 30+ questions. no getting around it. my friend who is a vet just thinks this is normal. lol

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#378

Post by tim333 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #284
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative. But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good. In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been…

One important thing that was not argued well in my opinion is that the Swiss National Bank pegged its Swiss franc to the euro on Sept. 6, 2011. I lost a lot of money on that day, because I had all my net worth in CHF, as I trusted it to keep its value and not be devalued fast. The good thing that came out from it is that I realized that even Switzerland's central bank cannot be trusted, and moved to Bitcoin. I never…

The central bank's priority is probably stability and the well being of Swiss people using SFR for wages and mortgages rather than maximising the profits of currency speculators. If you want the latter then indeed bitcoin is no doubt a better match.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#379

Post by supergirl »

techsupporter wrote: post #344
supergirl wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the women are not physically forced (or maybe only some are) but instead are “educated” from childhood that this is the way. How would you solve it then?

Massive public education campaign, as is routinely done for many other topics found objectionable by various religions but acceptable in secular society? From birth control to blood transfusions to interest on loans? At minimum, show the non-religious benefits of doing (or not doing) a thing and why it is relevant for the individual. Don’t punish the victim for doing the thing; if someone must be punished, make it th…

> Massive public education campaign

That's only slightly better than getting a fine. If gov would run a ad campaign / school program with "making women wear burka is bad" then the victims would still be the ones to suffer because it's still directed at the way of life as they know it.

Re: Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

#380

Post by tim333 »

wegwerfbenutzer wrote: post #328
apexalpha wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland used to be surrounded by Nazi Germany on pretty much all sides. They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

That is a myth. These defenses you talk about were built partly with cheap material and therefore significantly less effective. This caused a major post-war corruption scandal. Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, because Switzerland was actually more useful as a neutral state for Nazi Germany to exchange gold for commodities, for spying and Switzerland produced militiary equipment for Nazi Germany anyway.

Switzerland has also had a policy of armed neutrality since 1815 or before I think and the armed bit would probably be a headache for anyone invading.
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