
Silent Circle raises $30M, moves to Switzerland - notwhyships
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/silent-circle-raises-usd-30-mln-moves-to-switzerland--1014979
======
dublinben
I wonder how much longer Switzerland can cash in on their national brand for
security and privacy. Their largest banks can't even keep their customers'
accounts safe from foreign tax investigators. Why would I trust the integrity
of my data there?

~~~
antr
I think you are confusing substantiated, well supported,
warrants/subpoenas/etc and tax collaboration agreements, with arbitrary user
requests, gag orders, mass surveillance, etc. The two are at opposite
spectrums.

~~~
dublinben
German tax officials purchased stolen account information[0] in order to
pursue tax cheats. If you think that's acceptable within the rule of law, then
what's wrong with gag orders and mass surveillance?

[0][http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cc1eef78-5928-...](http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cc1eef78-5928-46cf-9012-991d3a255876)

~~~
king_phil
The responsible server administrator who stole the data from the bank has been
sentenced to prison in Switzerland and fled. The second crime was committed by
the German officials, but none of both has anything to do with swiss legal
standards.

------
oleganza
I wonder how much you can trust the software if its developer must choose a
favorable jurisdiction? To my knowledge, developers of Git, PGP, GPG,
Bittorrent, Tor, Bitcoin and Bitmessage live where they want because the
software is designed to have no centralized links to anyone's private data. So
there is no big company to go after.

~~~
JshWright
You realize the developer of PGP and the technical cofounder of Silent Circle
are the same person, right?

Bittorrent isn't really a great example either... How long do you think The
Pirate Bay would last hosted in the US?

~~~
9919
I think the point is that silent circle is secured by policy, not by
technology. The validity of their security assertions only extend as far as
you trust their word.

~~~
rdl
It's hard for anything _but_ policy to protect against denial of service
(legal attacks against the company). Even if you have technical security which
prevents compromise of data, they can shut the business down.

CALEA means you are actually prevented from building/operating some kinds of
privacy tech within the US (PSTN voice without wiretaps for sure, and PSTN-
interconnected VOIP is a gray area; a mobile-focused VPN would be a gray area
too, although not as dark as some.)

~~~
oleganza
I didn't know Tor, Bittorrent and Bitcoin use laws to protect themselves from
DoS.

~~~
rdl
They do in that the organizations involved clearly dissociate themselves from
running critical operational infrastructure, or getting involved with the
potentially-illegal activities enabled by their tools.

If Tor Project ran a large number of Tor nodes directly, they'd be open to
very simple legal attacks.

------
tobiasu
Say hi to PTSS:
[https://www.li.admin.ch/en/index.html](https://www.li.admin.ch/en/index.html)

------
dmix
Interesting choice. This week another "secure" email service
[https://protonmail.ch/](https://protonmail.ch/) launched and their sales
pitch is all about Swiss privacy protection laws. Might be a new trend.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thank you, that looks really good. I have had a consulting business for 15
years and several customers have insisted on all email being encrypted,
sometimes using Apple's email app with encryption enabled and sometimes just
manually using PGP.

For just those customers who cared about protecting their IP, protonmail looks
like it would be easier to use, as long as all parties used it.

~~~
dublinben
Your clients have the right idea, by using only encrypted email to discuss
sensitive information. Anything less would be a step backwards.

------
wyck
There is a good write up here about Swiss privacy laws and how they have their
own, which do not comply with the EU, etc.

[https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/6803/5-best-vpns-for-
switzerlan...](https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/6803/5-best-vpns-for-switzerland/)

Not an promotional link, it just happens to be a decent article with linked
source material.

------
ejain
There are lots of good reasons for moving your headquarters from the Caribbean
to Switzerland, but "strong privacy laws" and "legendary neutrality" are not
among them.

------
ExpiredLink
Their "global headquarters" probably is a post box.

~~~
comrade1
Until now their Swiss office (in the French-speaking part) is just a sales
office. I wouldn't be surprised if they put a finance group there to take
advantage of the low corporate taxes.

I somehow doubt they'll move their programmers there because frankly, not many
non-Swiss companies that size can afford to pay Swiss IT salary rates. Plus,
it's very hard to get work permits in Switzerland right now.

