Swiss Justice Minister Decides That ISPs Should Have To Retain Data Despite No Legal Basis
from the well-that's-one-way-to-do-things dept
There are big debates in both the US and Europe about the reasonableness and legality of requiring massive data retention by ISPs. However in Switzerland, the Justice Minister, Simonetta Sommaruga, has decided to dispense with all of that and has just told ISPs they have to start retaining all sorts of data even if there's no direct reason for it (link is a Google translation from the original French). Apparently various companies are now protesting this, but it takes a special sort of out of touch politician to simply declare such a thing without realizing the widespread legal debates in other countries about the legality and usefulness of this very thing...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: data retention, law enforcement, privacy, simonetta sommaruga, switzerland
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The big problem is, however, that Simonetta Somarunga didn't asked for the stakeholder's opinion and review (ISP, consumer protection societies, experts...) and that that the decision will not be voted by the population, as normally done when modifying the law because it was passed as an ordinance. In facts, the modification was only an update of the ordinance, which already had some dispositions for post and telephone.
The furtive manner of passing this ordinance and the fact that it is not easily fought by consumers and ISP had raised some protests.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Surely "all data" cannot be logged, so I assume that you are talking about traffic data. It would be interesting to see this aspect being compared to the EU data retention directive.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
In Switzerland, an ordinance is a law written by the Federal Council, in areas where it is competent to do so (because of federal laws or constitutional). This generally rules of application (execution) of federal laws. (Wikipedia [fr])
In contrast with the law, the ordinance does not require a vote from the population in order to be implemented.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Legal basis, HA! We don't need no stinking legal basis.
Switzerland is not the bastion of freedom that particularly Americans think: headquarters of international banking, those secret accounts enable much skullduggery around the world besides artificially inflate the touted Swiss prosperity, and the political climate is close to a rigid German model. There's a myth that the Nazis passed it by because every Swiss has an automatic rifle, but in fact, Switzerland was USEFUL to Nazis as destination for stolen gold, and it's still HIGHLY useful to globalists and spy agencies as a way to invisibly transfer bribes.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The 20th century is so yesterday
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Legal basis, HA! We don't need no stinking legal basis.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Good girl
The last few years, Switzerland has been trying hard to be the good girl in the gang: economy, financial activities, policing and of course military cooperation, to name the essential ones, are all domains in which integration with EU-US aka. NATO has been on the agenda. A month ago or so, this has even stretched to Switzerland obeying Israel's injunction to stop visitors to Palestina from flying. So we shouldn't be all too surprised if this pattern now extends to so-called security.
If the growing political/free speech censorship we are witnessing on the European internet – under all kinds of pretexts: copyright infringement or the specious interpretation of diffamation laws – now extends to Switzerland, it might be interesting to watch what will happen with those activists and bloggers (Beppe Grillo is one name that stands out) who either are hosted or have declared their intention to be hosted on Swiss servers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Legal basis, HA! We don't need no stinking legal basis.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]