Svizzera pianifica la sorveglianza peggio di noi

Jaja Bankgeheimnis leckt meine Eier.

Good

Switzerland is a major provider and location of VPNs internationally,

Would have a devastating effect on that business, and on the Swiss reputation for trust and secrecy with clients, that goes back a long time in the banking sector.

It is the Swiss government, not the parliment, that is pushing for this, apparently foolish, action.

The article is misleading and outdated. It’s a revision of a so-called ordinance, that the government has to get feedback on (process called consultation or Vernehmlassung) but doesn’t have to pass through parliament.

That process ended mid May and was widely reported on. Rarely has a proposed changes been so universally rejected by all stakeholders involved (most if not all parties, cantons, associations, etc.). You can read through the 830 pages of reactions here: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/dl/proj/2022/21/cons_1/doc_8/fr/pdf-a/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-dl-proj-2022-21-cons_1-doc_8-fr-pdf-a.pdf.

The government now has to review all of them and compile the results and then decide if the want to go further with this, make changes or drop it completely. It would be highly surprising if it went through nonetheless, with likely intervention by the parliament. But yes, disappointing that it was proposed in the first place.

EDIT: for extra context, quite a few cantons approve the changes in principle because they believe the currently available tools to be outdated. The ability to decrypt end-to-end encrypted communications and other measures are only part of the changes proposed. Some cantons do explicitly point out that these provisions are an issue (VD, GE for instance).

Racism is mostly bad

Stop pretending as if the change is set in stone! NOTHING is happening overnight.

There is so much misinformation thrown around here on reddit.

Here is what currently is happening:

1. The adjustment order for the “VÜPF” and “VD-ÜPF” (monitoring of postal and telecommunications traffic) everyone is talking about at the moment is basically a draft. It is shitty, but it is a DRAFT.
2. Until a few weeks ago, interested people and organisations have been able to voice their inputs and concerns to the responsible state department. The department now needs to analyse this and consider these concerns, voiced by organisations like e.g. Proton / Threema.
3. Then the updated draft will be considered for implementation. While they can start with the implementation without going through congress, this implementation will need approx. 2 years of time to actually be implemented.
4. **Here comes the big “However”:** When the implementation process starts and there are still big concerns, we as the Swiss population have the option via “Volksinitiative” (people’s initiative) to stop this law adjusment via a national vote. Threema already announced that they would spearhead this initiative. It needs 100k signatures to get an initiative to become a national vote. For something important like this it is usually rather simple to collect 100k signatures.
5. There will be a national vote. **As per current standing all political parties from left through right are against this adjustment**. It has very little chance of success to be actually implemented once it gets to the vote.

I hope this clarifies some of the concerns, I think it is always important to have the full picture instead of immediately panicking.

Why is the US the metric here? Plenty of other countries are worse on this.