Direct Democracy: Successful Petition Gives Swiss Citizens Chance To Vote Against New Surveillance Law
from the time-to-watch-Switzerland dept
A common lament these days is that people have no real political power. Yes, elections take place, but after that, politicians just seem to do what they want, with little concern for what the public really thinks about the laws that they push through, as many stories here on Techdirt indicate. In particular, there is generally no mechanism to cancel a new law except by waiting for the next elections, and voting for a party that might repeal it. Often that's not an option, which means the public has no way to stop harmful legislation from going into effect.
Most assume that's just the way things are, but the example of Switzerland shows that's not the case. Citizens there have a number of options if they want to influence politicians directly. For example, when new laws are passed, they can collect signatures in support of a formal referendum on the measure:
if 50,000 signatures are collected from Swiss voters or eight cantons [Swiss states] demand a referendum within 100 days, then a popular vote is held.
That's precisely what has been done in reaction to a new surveillance law that was passed last September, as this post from the Swiss email company, ProtonMail, explains:
the Swiss parliament passed a new surveillance law known as the Nachrichtendienstgesetzt (NDG) or la Loi sur le renseignement (Lrens). The law would have severely curtained privacy rights in Switzerland. Due to our use of end-to-end encryption, the ProtonMail secure email service would not be negatively impacted by the new law. However, we strongly believe in protecting privacy rights, so together with other opposition groups, we decided to mount a challenge against the new law. Due to Switzerland's unique system of direct democracy, any law can be challenged by collecting 50,000 signatures within a period of 3 months after the passage of the law.
That's a pretty amazing result, not least because signatures had to be physical ones on pieces of paper, which then had to be verified before they could be counted towards the threshold figure of 50,000. In the end, over 70,000 signatures were sent in, 64,500 were processed, and 55,000 were certified. The success of this exercise in direct democracy contrasts painfully with how things are proceeding elsewhere around the world. In too many countries, new surveillance laws are being rushed through with little scrutiny from politicians, and no input from the public.
Today, we are happy to announce that this effort has succeeded and this afternoon at 13:30h, the referendum will be officially presented to the Swiss government in Bern. This means at the next election, the Swiss surveillance law will be put to a public vote by the entire country, and for once, the people and not politicians will decide the future of privacy in Switzerland.
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Filed Under: democracy, direct democracy, public vote, surveillance, switzerland
