Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

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DyslexicAtheist

The recently discussed Quantum Terra AG has its HQ in CH even only 3 out of the claimed 80 people are based in CH. It seems companies think that the location-reputation will rub off on the product. Also ProtonMail is another company which until today benefits from having a letter-box presence so they can profit from the "data-center inside the Swiss mountain meme".

Security made in <foo> is always a PR stunt. Deutsche Telecom, 1&1 and others tried it by pouring huge sums into an "Email made in Germany" campaign that only benefited a particular consulting company. It utterly failed because their geo-fencing idea was technically unenforcable.

CH is more dangerous because the same idiotic ideas brought to Switzerland will often take off. Most EU security companies I know would not easily consider CH as a great location unless it has something to do with business strategy: 1) tax, 2) location of a holding company see #1, or 3) sell into the CH market.

On the other hand many non EU based security start-up CEO's often talk about it as it had some security benefit. But as you say this is a huge lie since data protection has nothing to do with banking secrecy and even when the latter is in question a New Mexico LLC is a much more secretive vehicle than a Swiss GmbH/Srl

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Mail_made_in_Germany

[1] https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/d...

> Security made in <foo> is always a PR stunt.

I mean to a degree. There's other talk about some countries wanting to require backdoors in end to end encryption products. If you're in a country that doesn't have that and offer an E2E product, i mean yeah, that can be a selling point. And you should probably point out that your regulated in a country that doesn't require backdoors.

But in this case, the laws in Switzerland are frankly just... shit between the mandatory data retention (BÜPF) and DNS censorship under the guise of preventing gambling (Glücksspielgesetz). Yeah, it's a negative for me if my DNS is regulated here.

It seems like perhaps you haven't actually looked at what the announcement was about?

The entire point of the relocation was that the laws you're discussing were found not to apply.

https://www.quad9.net/privacy/compliance-and-applicable-law/

Thanks, I don't see a link to that from the submitted Press release. I don't think it's fair to ask me if I haven't actually looked when I did in fact read the press release.

No, I did not spend extra time to click around, because I simply didn't care that much.

In any case I'm glad this doesn't fall under these shit laws (yet).

ProtonMail doesn't even know what the Swiss Flag looks like: https://twitter.com/sschueller/status/1309429286655479808 took them for ever to "fix" it (The flag might show the correct cross now but it should be square!).

As a Swiss, I never got the insistence on the square thingie... A lot of Swiss flags that people fly on their poles aren't a square either, and nobody cares. Actually, I'd prefer it if it weren't square, it always gives me this odd-one-out impression in lists of flags

Next time you feel that way just look at Nepal. By far the most unique country flag.

Emoji packs often take artistic license with the ideas they are trying to represent, including flags. It is fairly rare for flag emojis to be vexillologicaly accurate. For example, the Twitter emoji for the US flag is missing 32 stars, and the corners should not be rounded. I doubt ProtonMail made their own emoji pack anyway.

Corporations have been known to hire out for content, from time to time, when communicating via emoji limits their range of expression.

Protonmail do not have a letter-box presence in CH... They have real employees there. That's quite a misinformed comment. (I said that knowing multiple ex colleague working there in CH).

I was unaware they had any meaningful presence. according to their PR/marketing they do stress since now a few years that they're a globally distributed workforce which happens to be HQ'ed in CH. Looking at their LinkedIn this seems to be correct.

I also have ex-colleagues working there... in Switzerland.

> Security made in <foo> is always a PR stunt

That's a very big generalization. Citizen's rights vary wildly across countries, both in theory and in practice.

The fact that they call it "Security made in <foo>" is what justifies the generalization. If their security was any good, they'd be explaining how and why (and how they plan to remain incapable of backdooring it), not invoking cognitive biases of innocence-by-association.

In what was was today's announcement not exactly what you're saying it should have been? It explained exactly how and why the data isn't being collected, no?

Poor phrasing, I suppose - I was using the generic "they" (changed from generic "you", actually) - I wasn't making any claims about whether the current announcement was a "Security made in <foo>" claim, just that all such such claims are (at best) PR stunts.

Google has the main-hub for Europe located in Zurich, EFL and ETH are one of the best University's, it's not a big secret where zoepfli und broetli where developed.

>CH is more dangerous because

Well opposed to germany we don't have a Staatstroyaner (i hope), and we don't force company's to break encryption -> tutanota

> Well opposed to germany we don't have a Staatstroyaner (i hope), and we don't force company's to break encryption -> tutanota

We do have gov malware, it was also legalized with BÜPF.

I've talked to a mail admin from one of the companies involved in "Email made in Germany" once about it, and his reply was basically that of course it was marketing, and of course the techs had the idea to enable TLS in the drawer for years.

But at their scaling, enabling TLS means a lot of additional compute power, and due to that marketing campaign they now finally got the budget to install the additional hardware and enable it. Before, there was no business value that justified to spend that much more to get an - to the outside observer - unchanged product.

Banking secrecy in Switzerland is not different today than the one in France or Germany.

I heavily doubt that. Could you receive 25k plus from an unknown source without rising a red flag somewhere in germany? Could you withdraw these 25k on the same day without questions asked? Could you essentially hide the money from taxes and everything on your personal bank account?

I am not sure I understand your point.

What I was saying is that bank secrecy in Switzerland, today, is the same as in, say, France or Germany. It means that in any of these countries the operations you mention would raise red flags immediately (in France for instance a bank must inform Tracfin about any cash transaction above 10k per month, and any other that they see as suspicious (including wire transfers, typically any above 10K that is not typical gets flagged)).

In other words, Swiss banking is not anymore the one described in movies where you could come with 1M€ in cash, open an anonymous account and be done.

Even in the past it was not that simple, but it was at least possible.

EDIT : there are also many misunderstandings regarding how some accounts work. The most typical one is the "compte à numéro", a type of account where the owner is identified with a number, instead of their name. It is seen as a way to make your account anonymous but this is not the case. The bank has the mapping of the number <-> name and they have the obligation te release it like for any other account. The difference is that this information not known outside the bank. You get account statements for the name 7636536536 and not "John Brown", same for wire transfers. It is just to protect the privacy of the account owner, not to make it anonymous.

> In other words, Swiss banking is not anymore the one described in movies where you could come with 1M€ in cash, open an anonymous account and be done.

what you say reflects what I've read in the past few years on offshore tax crimes[0][1]. the OECD white/black/grey-list regulations are in reality a way to shift power from existing jurisdictions to US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...

I cannot stop thinking that the US have become a real global bully.

They are using their financial power to force other nations their way, or to apply extraterritorial jurisdiction.

For that they are using either the fact that there are foreign companies that do business on the US ground and they will be punished if their country does not follow the US decisions (EU presence in Iran is an example), or they will block their USD transactions.

The EU is to weak to be a counterweight, China is probably the real competitor. All in all, I prefer to be under US rules than China, but this is still infuriating.

Exactly my point. National wire transfers around 10k would bother no bank around here. And international ones nether. There are no exact threesholds but receiving 100k over 3 months or so would rise no eyebrow. And no tax agency would ever know. I dont know the exacts in the EU however its not that.

Also yeah that movie thing is and was obviously wrong. But for locals there is a secrecy that you dont get anywhere nearby

Yes this is indeed true for Swiss citizens (or companies incorporated in Switzerland).

But not for the EU citizens/companies with accounts in Switzerland, and several other countries in the world (including Singapore - another ex money heaven).

Switzerland also gets to do stuff the EU way or the highway. They're just not part of the EEA because they don't want uncontrolled immigration.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2020/07/21/the-choice-britain...

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