Swiss spy chief exits after reports of row over CIA-linked firm

Switzerland's laws are the foundation of ProtonMail: https://protonmail.com/blog/switzerland/

ProtonMail must comply with Swiss law, regardless of what people think, and as Switzerland progressively becomes surveillance state it will have to comply more: https://www.securityweek.com/protonmail-accused-voluntarily-...

This post on Reddit sums up, fairly well, what I usually hear from privacy interested users of ProtonMail: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/49u8vy/protonma...

For some more direct points: https://privacy-watchdog.io/truth-about-protonmail/

While it may not be immediately obvious, if you follow each of these points they connect back to compliance in some way.

> Suspected

AFAIK in those circles "suspected" creates a "case", and this one was quite big given the suspect (the US) and the period (before the fall of the USSR).

> as early as 1986

AFAIK in those circles 1986 is, from now, "very old".

The audit also found that the "collaboration was in principle in accordance with the law in force." https://web.archive.org/web/20201111085259/https://www.parla... And, notably, that the "fact that this collaboration could have been concealed from the Federal Council for so long also highlights shortcomings in the management and supervision exercised by the latter." "Therefore, the Federal Council bears part of the responsibility that the company Crypto AG has exported 'vulnerable' encryption devices for years."

Switzerland has a somewhat unique structure where the presidency rotates yearly among a seven member Federal Council. I can easily believe that some highly sensitive, long-term intelligence matters (particularly operational matters) were effectively and complicitly shared with the president (not to mention the entire council) only on a need-to-know basis.

The audit report also notes that the intelligence cooperation was, at least initially, to the benefit of Switzerland. IOW, that at inception it would have been not particularly contentious and thus (if my above hypothesis about complicit need-to-know status is correct), arguably something that the intelligence department would have thought within its license.

I would expect the President to always be aware of a close relationship with a foreign intelligence agency and the potential for a situation like Crypto AG, but wouldn't be surprised in this context if such specifics were left unstated. You can see a somewhat similar dynamic in the U.S., where for legitimate reasons the Attorney General is sometimes given license to keep many often explosive matters confidential. The reasons are different, but on the other hand the Swiss Federal Council has unique characteristics from an intelligence perspective. Certainly in both cases it would be typically be understood that the President still controls policy by their selection of and delegation to department officials. Which is what the audit report seems to be getting at--that the Federal Council may have been delegating too much, hypocritical in its astonishment.

In general, though, I agree that government agents are given too much benefit of a doubt. See, e.g., qualified immunity. We all live under the thumb of the law. Rightly so. Some amount of anxiety and fear are a natural consequence, and we don't normally consider that fact alone excessively burdensome--at least, not when we're talking about other people, especially people with whom we don't identify.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underhanded_C_Contest