Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Swiss version of the german "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"

The swiss federal police forces, the department for telecommunications surveillance, has invented new lawmaking. Based on the swiss law of telecommunications, they sent a "Vernehmlassung" to all internet providers in switzerland. "Vernehmlassung" is the discussion about a new law. Its usually a public process where the parliament asks the public if this new intended law is a good idea and what modifications should be made.

This time it was however different. The "Vernemlassung" was about rules which should follow the law. However those "rules" are self made rules by the police which go far and beyond what the law says. It invents interfaces which all internet providers must have so the police can send wiretap orders automated etc. Those orders which by law have to be authorized by a judge, however dont carry the information about which judge has ordered it. So the internet provider is by far not able to verify if this is legal or not. Also it imposes massive costs to the burden of the internet providers which he can not recover. So small ISP's can't complete this and have to go out of business. Furthermore those undemocratic rules have been declared confidential (how can you have a public discussion on something confidential??), are put into force on 1. August and passed through the "Vernemlassung" within 3 weeks at vacation time so nobody takes notice.

We have thus decided to stand up and break the confidentiality and publish our full answer so everybody can see for himself what power the police is trying to achieve.

The full answer is published on http://www.fink.org/ejpd-antwort.pdf

Other related posts:

http://www.woz.ch/artikel/2009/nr29/schweiz/18143.html
http://www.inside-it.ch/frontend/insideit?&site=ii&_d=_article&news.id=18419
http://blog.internet-briefing.ch/2009/07/22/vorratsdatenspeicherung_schweiz/
http://www.ayom.com/topic-30668.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bericht-Schweiz-plant-Echtzeit-Ueberwachung-des-Internetverkehrs-von-Verdaechtigen--/meldung/142082
http://www.statewatch.org/EUFBISW.HTM
http://www.cablemodem.ch/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8463

1 comment:

Rambling Sid Rumpo said...

Thank you! Thank you, thank you! - you make me proud to be swiss (since 1998)

Brilliant job and I am very interested to hear what happens next - please keep us updated

Cheers K