Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0x7f800000 | Hacker News Reader

Steve Gibson specifically recommends TunnelBear because they submitted themselves to a public security audit.

https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/tunnelbear_public_security_a...

Other than TunnelBear, ProtonVPN is run by the ProtonMail folks and is based out of Switzerland, so they would respond to any foreign subpoena with a polite "fuck off."

View on HN

> based out of Switzerland

Switzerland is no longer the bastion of privacy it once was. In fact, it's been nine years since every single Swiss Bank rolled over on their customers to placate the IRS. And it's only been downhill from there since.

I'm really okay with this. Taxes are the price we pay for civilisation and people dodging them are stealing from you.

Surveillance of money, and surveillance of speech, association, location, etc. are not the same, and one does not justify the other.

I believe they were saying that they were OK with the Swiss banks giving info to the IRS about tax dodgers. Which I'm ok with too. I'm not ok with random web traffic being disclosed to authorities.

Switzerland and the United States are not the same country. That the United States can steamroll the sovereignty of independent nations like this is not very good. Diversity and competition among jurisdictions is important.

True. There used to be a way to open up anonymous bank accounts in Switzerland where anyone with the account #/access code could withdraw/deposit cash, but no more. Unless I'm mistaken, Switzerland also has its own version of KYC laws.

p.s. I pay all my taxes and take all the deductions I can.

Indeed. They're still outside of the 5/9 eyes, the EU, and have cantankerous judges. However the actual laws are no-longer that privacy preserving.

Iceland seems to be the best country for that. However, there are few services, little competition, and high costs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com