Swiss endorse new surveillance powers
bbc.com
bbc.com
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichenskandal (german language)
It's probably all of them now -- if not by their own government, then by the US spy agencies, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, the various cell phone providers, credit card providers, stores, cameras, etc.
It's very hard not to be under surveillance these days, unless you're willing to completely unplug, move to a remote area, and become self-sufficient.
this behavior may even be considered 'radical' enough to warrant more direct surveillance.
:)
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.
Also, having an old surveillance database named ISIS definitely got a chuckle from me.
I think this one is worse:
Switzerland is actually much more conservative than its european neighbours. For example, they were the last country to give women the right to vote in Europe.
Switzerland is small but diverse. The states have significant freedom in making their laws. This usually works well, but sometimes leads to situations like this.
Note that from a US point of view, there is also a fundamental difference in Switzerland: most citizens there trust that the government can be stopped by a simple popular initiative if it oversteps its bounds. In Switzerland, a petition with enough signatures triggers an official referendum, that if accepted becomes a law. No veto possible by government officials.
So yes, I am too very suspicious of governmental surveillance, but in Switzerland it may be less out of fear and more because they are pretty confident they can stop a government that goes over the top
Is the 700'000 people the total between 1900 and 1990? In this case the "10% of the population" number is probably wrong.
Not pleased.
Art. 38 basically says that the Nachrichtendienst can intercept data, unless sender and receiver are Swiss (those are indeed defined broadly). Paragraph 2 of Art. 38 basically excludes all swiss-to-swiss cable-communication for the remainder of the text.
Art. 39 then says there needs to be a court order (though there are emergency provisions).
It is my understanding of those laws that a Swiss to Swiss sender/receiver connection may never be intercepted, while all other connections may be intercepted by following Art. 40. and 41.
Exactly. The systems we create are now about to become too complex for us to understand (the climax probably being the arrival of "AI"). But understanding the systems we live in is the basis for democracy. Are these the signs that democracy will only have been a transitional solution? And if so, what comes after democracy?
It seems the case for individual, case-by-case basis is pretty clear (though there seems to be an issue with false positives)
2.) The swiss "intelligence service" isn't famous for his intelligence. They should first do their homework on counterintelligence before anything else. Else they will just be used as a Proxy for foreign intelligence services.
Quite honstly, in my apparment their is nothing of interest to be found. However, my hole live is on my phone, my computer and my servers.
I would infact argue that these should have stronger protection. How anybody who supports democracy and the rule of law can agree with things like that, is quite frankly beyond me.
My point is shouldn't the burden be on providing evidence for why they are good? Why do we need them? Why are they sensible? What was wrong before that this will fix? What can go wrong that will be prevented?
Phrasing an opinion like this, to me, raises more questions than it answers.
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.
exactly!which is why, however you put it, with parliaments or with referendums, or with any other kind of "democratic" tool, the basis of democracy is information. When people/media have advantages in something, they will be biased, making democracy actually an oligarchy. If I was Swiss, I would try to understand who is selling me this information. Who is behind this wanted "misinformation"? Most of the time it boils down to people having interests in certain companies. Can it be that, let's say, that most newspapers are "getting convinced" by authorities? Just saying, of course.
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.
As far as i'm aware, research studies basically show that providing more facts one way or the other only makes people's convictions stronger. It doesn't change their minds that often. It's actually incredibly hard to change people's minds.
Now, you are free to argue this is completely irrational, and i'd 100% agree. But it does mean that people know what you know and understand what you understand and still disagree. Whether that makes sense to do so or not.
See, e.g., http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/37/11/2098/ and pretty much every study since.
Another example: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n10/full/nclimate1...
"Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest"
Like I said, i'd strongly argue comprehension is not the problem. Until people realize that is the case, and stop just dismissing anyone who disagrees as ignorant, nothing will change.
Or maybe you are wrong about the brexit vote too?
Thanks for this. I couldn't agree more. The way political discourse works at the moment is worrying. America is in the spotlight for this, but it happens in europe too. Entrenched camps diagnosing each other with all kinds of mental deficiencies without discussing the actual topic at hand.
They had a public debate, as is the tradition before every referendum, and the assertions and assumptions being presented by both the head of the secret service and the politicians backing it up were incorrect. Technical assumptions were incorrect. The technical capability was misrepresented.
One of the main arguments for this initiative was that the secret service would only be allowed to look at the packet traffic of the affected target, but the reality is that in order to capture just that traffic, all packets are captured and filtered out first; also, there is no technology in existence to prevent the secret service to packet capturing everything.
This, however, was never stated or addressed in the public debate.
Also asserted was that the secret service has and will have good oversight of all activities. The committee consists of only five people. And these people are all politicians currently in the government. If you just look at checking which TCP/IP packets were captured, that's already way too much work for five politicians in the oversight committee. This was not addressed at all either.
Using encryption was not addressed. The fact that the secret service would be legally allowed to break into people's systems was not addressed in the public debate. Most of the debate revolved around whether the government spying on its citizens is correct in principle.
Technical capability and what is possible today were never discussed.
How the suspects would be identified was declared secret, with nobody except the oversight committee of those five politicians being allowed an insight into it.
So, I stand with the previous poster that people did not know what we know, and they voted based on incorrect assumptions and misrepresentation or outright omission, whether unintentional or intentional, of technical capability and facts.
Benjamin Franklin's quote seems very appropriate in this case:
those who would trade liberty for little personal safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Your response really doesn't say this. It's just a bunch of opinion and says "i wish they had presented additional info i believe matters". That falls squarely within the studies i pasted, which show both that people always think this would change result, and that people are pretty much always wrong when they think this, and that it does not change results.
"One of the main arguments for this initiative was that the secret service would only be allowed to look at the packet traffic of the affected target, but the reality is that in order to capture just that traffic, all packets are captured and filtered out first;"
This is not necessarily true of course. You can, in fact, filter on the fly if you want to. Deep packet inspection at link speed is a thing.
"also, there is no technology in existence to prevent the secret service to packet capturing everything."
In what sense, exactly?
You can make this happen at the level that any such thing would be noticed immediately, and would require incredible numbers of people to conspire. You can make it audited by as many independent people as you want.
If you mean "there are always ways around this if enough people conspire", that is a generally true statement about the world, and people already know this. Again, the fact that you think this matters very heavily, and others do not, does not make everyone else ignorant or misinformed.
"Also asserted was that the secret service has and will have good oversight of all activities. The committee consists of only five people. And these people are all politicians currently in the government. If you just look at checking which TCP/IP packets were captured, that's already way too much work for five politicians in the oversight committee. This was not addressed at all either. "
This is a strong opinion/prediction of yours (along with some casual classism and denigration of "politicians" for no reason), and may or may not turn out to be factually correct. This is not a misrepresentation on anyone's part, and is certainly not falsifiable yet. It sounds like an objective presentation was made of the plan. You disagree with the viability and usefulness of that plan. That, again, is not a misrepresentation or omission. It simply means you have a possible difference of opinion with others as to the viability. I don't even see an argument for what "additional" data was missing here, just that you don't like politicians and think they won't be able to keep up.
"Using encryption was not addressed. The fact that the secret service would be legally allowed to break into people's systems was not addressed in the public debate."
But known and objectively presented from all things i can find. I know you can't believe people would be okay with such a thing, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility that people are indeed okay with such a thing.
"Technical capability and what is possible today were never discussed."
This is an opinion.
"How the suspects would be identified was declared secret, with nobody except the oversight committee of those five politicians being allowed an insight into it."
Where's the misrepresentation or missing data?
"So, I stand with the previous poster that people did not know what we know, and they voted based on incorrect assumptions and misrepresentation or outright omission, whether unintentional or intentional, of technical capability and facts."
I strongly disagree, at least based on what you've presented.
These are not misrepresentations, they are simply "presentations that did not present it from your point of view". That is not misrepresentation, because you are not the source of absolute truth. It's misrepresentation if it wasn't presented objectively false or misleading, not subjectively false or misleading. Pretty much any controversial thing that is voted on that a given set of folks disagree with is considered to have been presented subjectively false or misleading by those people.
You also added "incorrect assumptions". You are basically offering opinions that you think others opinion's are wrong. Certainly you must realize you are not necessarily right? You can't simply say "everyone else's assumptions are wrong, and therefore they are ignorant", when your assumptions are based on opinions about the state of the world.
Past that, IMHO, you've not made an effective case that people were ignorant here.
You've instead made an effective case that the studies i cited are correct, among other things.
Im actually by now for a randomly selected secret service jury. People who get selected by the dice, have the right to move freely within the secret service and the right to watch anything going on anytime. If the outside find something disagreeable, it can present the jury a case and the jury will investigate (if necessary) and judge. It is replaced after a term.
Clearly governments bureaucrats ascending to power, can not be entrusted to control the most powerful tool they reach this way.
It's a subtle difference.
[0] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-...
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.
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
Not exactly the NSA-style illegal warrantless dragnet going on elsewhere.
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-...
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.
Has been spying for the US for a while now and lied to the parliament about it.