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Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

I've been using libreoffice since +10 years exclusively. Despite using protonmail myself if you look at it critically through a FOSS (libre) perspective it's one of the worst email platforms around which mainly benefits from the (incorrect) assumption that hosting in Switzerland is somehow safer than hosting anywhere else. They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US.

And it's not that the founders chose a Swiss structure because they were themselves Swiss. Even the product were hypothetically bug-free and fully FOSS ... the marketing (with its mountains in the background and "Secure Email Based in Switzerland" tagline) plays to the sentiment that a Swiss jurisdiction makes Protonmail a safer bet than other location is itself "snakeoil" ... if I think about this for too long I might even wonder about their much more relevant claims regarding security & actual code implementation.

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I just couldn't agree more with it. It's a trend now, people think that hosting in Switzerland somehow more secure than anywhere else due to their data protection laws. Which is not always true, and what you really get(from experience) pretty awful customer support in comparison to other hosting providers or co-lo services.

Switzerland is NOT a more secure location for data hosting / processing than many other countries.

Switzerland's data protection laws are way behind the GDPR. Switzerland is struggling to adapt its data protection laws to keep its adequacy status with the EU. It has still not signed Convention 108.

Switzerland's surveillance system is growing and growing. The latest revision of the relevant law was targeted at services like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN (Federal Act on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications). Switzerland's federal secret service has got almost unlimited power without any meaningful control and is known as a close partner of the US (thanks to Snowden leaks). Every communication in Switzerland is under mass surveillance 24/7, the metadata is stored for at least six months (civil security authorities) or longer (secret services). Switzerland's armed forces work in close cooperation with NATO.

I am actually wondering whether Proton is a honeypot.

Actually, almost everything you wrote is untrue. If you actually read the text of the Federal Act on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications (which is publicly available in French and German), you will see that instead of targeting ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, the legislation actually does the opposite, and explicitly exempts all but the largest telcos.

You don't have to take our word for this, it's actually in the text of the law.

Also, if you read the actual text of the US/Switzerland MLAT (mutual lateral assistance treaty), or the text of the Swiss Data Protection Act, you will see that "unlimited power without any meaningful control" is also patently untrue, and there are many layers of control and an explicit need to satisfy the requirements of Swiss privacy laws, even on cases originating from the US.

"They will happily comply with any court order even (or especially) from the US."

Isn't it more true of e.g., German-based companies and less true of Swiss-based ones?

there is no difference afaik. the only difference is in perception which stems from the historical promise of banking secrecy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-secrecy/era-of-bank...

I think, there is because Switzerland is not in the NATO and generally can't be that easily convinced to comply with anything.

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