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Comment by fefe23 | Hacker News Reader

I love the Swiss, I really do, but their reputation has been in tatters since the Crypto AG fiasco. Crypto AG basically sold backdoored crypto hardware to foreign governments, at the behest of CIA and BND (German foreign intelligence agency). It recently came to light that the Swiss knew and let it happen.

In fact, the Swiss government also bought machines from them, on a wink wink nudge nudge sort of understanding that they would get the non-compromised ones.

Now this company could still be excellent, but that would not be because it is Swiss. I have no reason to distrust their claims.

However I would like to point out that they give you censored DNS data, with supposed malware sites being removed. Be aware of this when you use them. Their web site is very up front about it.

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"I love the Swiss, I really do, but their reputation has been in tatters since the Crypto AG fiasco."

Crypto AG is certainly an awful event but this seems like an impossible standard to hold a nation of millions to. Which country doesn't have some equivalent scandal?

I agree that wasn't a good way to put it but it might not be entirely irrelevent to mention Crypto AG considering Quad9 is sponsored by the Manhattan DA and City of London Police.

https://www.manhattanda.org/our-work/signature-projects/glob...

Quad9 is not sponsored by either the Manhattan DA nor the City of London Police. Both are users of Quad9, neither is a sponsor of Quad9.

Global Cyber Alliance is at least listed as a founding organization:

https://quad9.net/about/sponsors/

When you are that closely connected to US and UK government, don't be surprised whan people don't trust you.

A) You just moved the goalpost.

B) That's a straw-man, as we have not asked for anyone's trust; quite the opposite.

C) We serve the public, everyone. Is your argument that the US and UK governments are excluded from the definition of the whole? Or that because they, like everyone else, are members of the set of the whole, that this somehow reflects upon us?

A scandal of selling backdoored crypto to foreign governments?

To be honest, I can't think of a single one.

Oh wait, the NSA backdoored that random number generator. So, uh, ... I can think of two countries that had a scandal like that.

You could pin this Crypto AG thing on the BND, too, so that implicated Germany. From that angle I can think of three countries.

What others did you have in mind?

To answer your question: How about Iceland? Norway? Nigeria? Peru?

With that kind of logic every single country is a fail. Which is also a valid viewpoint, as they can be one-eyed amongst the blind.

Its not perfect place, but by huge margin the most free society by quite a few criteria. I've come here 11 years ago just to make quick buck and move back, then I've seen first hand how actually society works here and decided to settle here and raise my kids here. I've traveled quite a bit all around the world, and no other place compares. For somebody who can literally spin the globe and move anywhere, that's quite a recommendation if I may say so.

We give you malware blocking if you want malware blocking, and we give you malware if you want malware. It's completely up to each user which way they want it. Somewhat over 99% of users prefer the malware blocking; a few want the malware. How would you prefer it to be?

> I love the Swiss, I really do, but their reputation has been in tatters since the Crypto AG fiasco.

I can think of a few mid-20th century events that caused some more significant reputational hits.

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