
Swiss endorse new surveillance powers - benevol
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37465853
======
benevol
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](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichenskandal)
(german language)

~~~
andreasley
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.

~~~
l33tbro
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.

~~~
cJ0th
> 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](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUxdvzDWoAARh_y.jpg)

~~~
l33tbro
Yep, you win.

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rasur
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.

Not pleased.

~~~
DannyBee
"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 understood fine, they just disagree.

~~~
mtgx
> FWIW: This is literally the retort everyone has to anything they disagree
> with that gets approved.

Probably because it's true _in most cases_. Most people don't have a deep
understanding of even a single issue, let alone multiple.

This could have very well been another "Brexit-like" vote in Switzerland,
where people were just scaremongered into voting for the law without
understanding _all_ of the implications.

~~~
rayiner
What factual information do you think is missing from peoples' understanding.
In my experience people assume the government is doing more spying than it is.

~~~
Annatar
See my comment above about which factual information was never discussed, and
which information was misrepresented, and which was omitted.

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benevol
It's Fear-of-Terror-Makes-People-Stupid time [0] all over again. Two thirds of
the population approve this.

[0] [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-
makes-...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-
stupid.html)

~~~
folli
I've voted on the issue, and after some to-and-fro I decided to say yes.

I'm not sure how much of a factor the fear of terror was in the overall voting
population, but for me personally it didn't play a big role.

A short rundown on why I decided to vote yes:

-it's typical Swiss compromise: the added competences are comparatively small (especially compared to the competences of neighboring countries) and a judge needs to approve any actions beforehand. The Swiss judicial system is perceived to work generally quite well and is fair.

-other organizations which are not democratically legitimized (Big corps, such as Google, Apple and foreign intelligence agencies: US, Germany) have much bigger capabilities to perform any such actions in Switzerland than the Swiss government. I'm not really comfortable with Switzerland being a blind spot for its own law enforcement.

-And I think one of the biggest factors: trust in the government: the political system in Switzerland gives the citizen much more power in terms of checks and balances. The "divide" between government, political elite and the people is one of the smallest compared to other European countries. This generally prevents or prohibits any too extreme forms and consequences of any passed laws.

~~~
saiya-jin
thank you for being honest about your opinion and vote. i am not a citizen
albeit living here, but I would agree with you - if strictly following the
current laws (and if anywhere, I would expect Swiss would do it),
government/secret service is basically toothless, and could not gather
anything not publicly known (ie you can't google it, you can't gather it).

Not that I am a big fan of intelligence guys, but they are some sort of
necessary evil when running a country, if there are still checks and proper
oversight in place. And till now it felt like they are way too restricted to
actually do their job. Maybe in 20 years we will curse this vote, who knows

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kyledrake
From the article, it sounds like it is only allowed for specific
individuals/organizations and requires approval from multiple people and a due
process warrant.

Not exactly the NSA-style illegal warrantless dragnet going on elsewhere.

~~~
noxin
It also allows scanning all the border-crossing internet traffic. Which is an
NSA-style dragnet since there is mostly international traffic in a small
country.

------
akhatri_aus
I imagine one of the differences in context is Swiss Citizens don't have an
outright distrust of their government, relatively speaking.

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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.

------
Animats
We need better handling of surveillance after the fact. Now that everyone
knows that massive surveillance is going on, that's no longer a secret. So
most surveillance requests should be be released.

How about declassifying 75% of surveillance requests after 3 years? The
Government gets to pick the 25% that stay secret. That provides lots of info
about who's listening to what, but narrowly targeted ones can be kept secret.
Then, every 3 years, release 75% of the remainder. After a decade or so, only
the really important ones are still secret. This would make it clear who's
spending time listening to what, without disrupting investigations.

A Federal judge just released 200 surveillance requests.[1] They're from 2012,
and even prosecutors didn't claim they still needed to be kept from the
public. Maybe the time for this has come.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/meet-
the-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/meet-the-judge-
who-just-released-200-secret-government-surveillance-
requests/2016/09/23/4ddb1266-7b50-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html)

~~~
FreeFull
Wouldn't this encourage the government to increase surveillance, so they can
always keep all the ones they really care about secret?

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sebiw
A sad day in the history of Switzerland. Especially in times of Snowden and
mass surveillance revelations.

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bogomipz
At least the Swiss citizens have a say in the matter. I don't think the same
can be said of the UK or the US.

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da_n
> It will allow the Federal Intelligence Service and other agencies to put
> suspects under electronic surveillance if authorised by a court, the defence
> ministry and the cabinet.

I think the fact it has to be authorised by three bodies is interesting,
thought it is still unclear if this would just be a rubber stamp process
and/or if these bodies could just approve a dragnet approach if they saw fit.
Other countries like the UK want to legally enact dragnet surveillance of all
citizens without the need for authorisation, I guess the Swiss needed an olive
branch to let them belive there will be oversight of this power.

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BafS
For information, all "cantons" (26) approved this vote. You can see the
details here:
[https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/201609...](https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/20160925/legge-
federale-sulle-attivita-informative.html)

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beedogs
As usual, abject fear is used to sell the public on something that crushes
individual rights and freedoms.

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mtgx
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).

~~~
nickik
Lol. You can bet your ass that the BND is far more active then anything the
Swiss do. They regularly work with forign agencies and do exchanges. They sit
right at the largest network hub in europe. There is also little democratic
insight into the BND, as the public is excluded from all hearings.

~~~
bogomipz
What is the BND?

~~~
myrion
BundesNachrichtenDienst - the German secret service.

Has been spying for the US for a while now and lied to the parliament about
it.

