Switzerland plans surveillance worse than US šŸ˜±

Lounge Linux lounge
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TL;DR

If the law passes in its current form,

  • Swiss email and VPN providers with just 5,000 users are forced to log IP addresses and retain the data for six months - while data retention in Germany is illegal for email providers.
  • ID or driverā€™s license, maybe a phone number, are required for the registration process of various services - rendering the anonymous usage impossible.
  • Data must be delivered upon request in plain text, meaning providers must be able to decrypt user data on their end (except for end-to-end encrypted messages exchanged between users).

What is more, the law is not introduced by or via the Parliament, but instead the Swiss government, the Federal Council and the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP), want to massively expand internet surveillance by updating the VƜPF - without Parliament having a say. This comes as a shock in a country proud of its direct democracy with regular peopleā€™s decisions on all kinds of laws. However, in 2016 the Swiss actually voted for more surveillance, so direct democracy might not help here.

We at Tuta Mail are fighting legal attempts to undermine encryption on all fronts such as Chat Control, the EU framework ProtectEU, Swedenā€™s attempt to backdoor encryption, and now Switzerlandā€™s update of the VƜPF.

Me caught on a surveillance camera loosing social credit points

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This is why Proton is considering relocating from :switzerland:

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Iā€™ll have to find another DNS provider than quad9, which is a pain.

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I use the Mullvad one as you can also block ads, trackers etc.

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Quad is in Switzerland?

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Thatā€™s where theyā€™re based. They have servers all over the world but all subject to Switzerlandā€™s laws.

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Yeah alot of governments want mass surveillance :face_with_symbols_on_mouth:

Including my home country of Sweden(which Iā€™m not living in atm).

And i hope Proton lives Switzerland to avoid this.

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Does Mullvad have normal dns servers that arenā€™t DOH, as Iā€™m going to be switching my vps dns configuration over to something else and I would prefer to use Mullvad.

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Does anyone know a better alternative for Quad?

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Their setup guide says they use both DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT)

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Thanks I did see that. Iā€™m just using /etc/resolv.conf on my vpses, donā€™t really want to change that.

Does anyone know if this new law in Swizterland will require me to to register an account at Quad to keep using their public dns servers?

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Iā€™m not sure whether Iā€™m more worried about the law itself or the way they intend to impose it, without even going through Parliament. Unfortunately, the world we live in is increasingly moving toward an authoritarian control model, which is essentially a disguised dictatorship.

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Unreal. Wonder where these companies would move too

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For now it has not yet become a law. Itā€™s a proposal.
However it would be wise to have a plan for when you come to that river to find a bridge to cross over.

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Iā€™m actually looking at Adguard dns servers as an alternative.

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I was going to suggest that. :grinning_face:

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Iā€™m now using the mullivad dns adblock servers

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The UK is not really any better, but at least it goes through our parliament, I suppose.

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Both are worrisome.

I guess thatā€™s what they call illeberal democracy or authoritarian democracy.
Call me a pessimist but I wonā€™t be shocked that we will soon-ish see the people in the office change their current uniform of suit and tie with uniform ā€œuniformā€ and start with infamous saluting instead of handshake.

I stop there because I donā€™t want this thread to get political, closed and myself being flagged or GOD forbid banned :zany_face: