Slashdot Mirror
Can Switzerland Become a Safe Haven For the World's Data? (dailydot.com)
An anonymous reader shares an interesting article on Daily Dot which lists a number of reasons why Switzerland should be deemed as the nation for storing all of your data. The article reads: As United States and European Union regulators debate a sweeping new data-privacy agreement, Switzerland is presenting itself as a viable neutral location for storing the world's data thanks to strict privacy laws and ideal infrastructure. The Swiss constitution guarantees data privacy under Article 13. The country's laws protecting privacy are similar to those enacted by the E.U. Swiss data protections are also, in some cases, much stricter than those of the E.U., according to Nicola Benz, attorney at Swiss law firm Froriep. And since Switzerland is not part of the E.U., data stored there remains outside the reach of the union's authorities. [...] The country's tight privacy laws could make the small nation more attractive to privacy-focused start-ups. And it already has that momentum. After the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden 2013 revelations about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance activities, Switzerland witnessed something of a boom in its data-center business. Phil Zimmermann, creator of the popular PGP encryption protocol and founder of Silent Circle, even left the U.S. for Switzerland last year, citing the overreach of American authorities. Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss-based encrypted email service Protonmail, said that the country has robust processes in how it carries out data requests from authorities. Data requests have to go through a court like in most countries, said Yen, but "the person that's having their data requested needs to be notified eventually about the request happening and there's an opportunity to fight it in an open court. This is quite different than the U.S., where things can go through a so-called FISA court."
Everyone has been hiding money and information there for years. Everyone from the Nazi's to the Russians to FIFA.
The Swiss didn't seem to have any issue turning over Jewish gold and bank accounts during their Nazi alliance. How sure can we be a "friendly state" doesn't secretly get the data anyway? The Swiss bankers didn't get rich by simply holding assets, they go with whatever the highest bidder wants.
Good encryption is the only way to keep your data safe, in Switzerland or elsewhere.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The Swiss dropped their pants a while back for the U.S. I.R.S. I'm pretty sure the NSA can use that precedent.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
there is no guarantee. Even if they say so (they can lie), even if they pass a low (then can remove or change the law later).
Neuromancer for the win; we now just need an orbiting, privately funded space station.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
You do realize Sweden and Switzerland are two different countries.
I blame the Swedish Chef for all of that.
He was high on Swedish cheese.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Swiss do have a FISA-like court and a robust intelligence capability. But, unlike the U.S. FISA court, which is spelled out in open legislation, the Swiss do not make public their system. In other words, it's worse, because the intelligence agencies have broader and less-scrutinized authorities, but only less advertised. If a foreigner hosts data on a Swiss system and Swiss intelligence wants access to it, then they have means of targeting that system, and are not accountable to their courts for those methods.
I'm not so sure. The Swiss also had strong protections and privacy laws regarding bank accounts but look what happened to those when the IRS wanted the data on US citizens.
"Under the new treaty, U.S. authorities will be able to ask the Swiss to disclose names of U.S. taxpayers at a bank who exhibit certain "behavioral patterns" indicating tax evasion under U.S. law, such as trying to conceal the ownership of the account through a trust. The U.S. also will be able to request information even from small cantonal banks that, unlike UBS and Credit Suisse Group, don't do business in the U.S." WSJ 05 March 2012
I'm still waiting for Mitt Romney to explain how his IRA account can have $100M in it when legal contribution limits is ~$200,000 over 40 years.
I'm sure the Swizz will create an awesome bunch of rules explaining in precise detail how they will promise to maintain your data private.
Execution, however, is a different matter as it is not the swiss who have built our operating systems and neither is it likely they could even do it in a secure way.
So it's a non-starter.
Your right!
All it takes is an unwavering belief that the organs of state security do not see themselves as clear-thinking Defenders of the Faith, and have not placed themselves and their actions above the orders and rules of mere elected officials.
Seriously? Are you sure? That's the place where they wear wooden shoes, right?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Next question?
So for example if you have data servers in 8 countries, you encrypt and break your data up into 5 chunks. Create 3 additional parity chunks, and store one chunk in each country. To access the original data, you need to pull data from 5 of the 8 servers (the 3 parity chunks allow you to access your data even if access to your servers in up to 3 of those countries goes down).
Any individual country's government can hack, install backdoors on, or confiscate your servers in that country, and it won't help them read your data. In order to get a readable copy of your data, they need to pull the data from at least 5 of your servers in different countries, and have your decryption key. There's no need to pick a single country and hope that it is/remains neutral and friendly to your data.
Actually, ProtonMail sucks a lot. It's "security" is based on two passwords: one for login, one for decrypting the mailbox.
1. Both of the passwords were sent to their server upon registration. I have no guarantees that they were not stored in clear text.
2. I have no guarantees that the mailbox is even encrypted.
3. Even if the mailbox is encrypted and they haven't stored its password, a totalitarian government may force them to install a man-in-the-middle and have my messages the moment I access them (i.e. send the password).
4. No PKI. No interoperability with PGP/MIME or S/MIME. Totally proprietary. If I send an e-mail message to a non-ProtonMail address I must somehow communicate a password for it as well. How? Not ProtonMail's problem.
In short, ProtonMail provides something that is not an end-to-end e-mail encryption and thus not useful at all. You can do much better by using even GMail (via SMTP and IMAP/POP3) with ThunderBird and Enigmail (a PGP/MIME extension). Google will only ever see the encrypted messages. Only using a desktop client guarantees that your private key will never be sent to a man-in-the-middle (e.g. GMail, ProtonMail).
The Swiss dropped their pants a while back for the U.S. I.R.S.
Not to mention them buzzing the Russian Speaker's jet last fall; their "neutrality" is likely anything but.
Maybe not Switzerland, but the trend since the Snowden revelations has been to move data back to Europe from the US. European companies have been dropping hosting and networking companies In the America and it's estimated Cisco has lost around 30 billion in sales. Who knows how much hosting companies like Amazon have lost. So, European companies and subsidiaries are moving their data back to their home countries. There hasn't been a Snowden-level event yet in the countries to force the companies to think about moving their data to Switzerland. I work with multinationals in Europe and I've seen first-hand companies moving their hosting back to Europe but I haven't seen companies moving to Europe yet, other than Swiss companies.
Yep, i believe that's where they speak three languages; um... I think French, German and this...
Well, those banks usually also had a presence in the US so they could use that to pressure them. Anyone with more than 2 brain cells won't put a legal presence of such a data-protecting company in the US or EU.
So you're saying they are very vulnerable to a social engineering attack?
I keep my odd-numbered bits in Switzerland, and the even-numbered ones in the Cayman Islands. Can't be too careful these days.
Have you read my blog lately?
You must be kidding. AWS and Azure revenue is going through the roof. Ciscos revenue is at an all time high.
> Zimbabwe starts with an S? Put down the Swiss cheese bong, man...
Yes, as long as Sweden and Switzerland are the same, Zimbabwe is written with an 'S' ;-)
Heh, yeah I loved the irony of that one too!
Switzerland has enabled crime for many decades with the supposed privacy laws. The stash of Nazi wealth in Switzerland and a refusal to help return property stolen from the Jews leaps to mind as well as enabling tax evasion for US citizens. So just how can we have privacy and still prevent financial crimes as well as terrorist activities? Perhaps a partial solution would be to allow businesses far less privacy than we allow the public.
I'm sure we'll have a new treaty where the swiss will report any internet user exhibiting certain behavioral patterns on swiss servers to the USA. Funny how most of the governments of earth lube up their bungholes and bend and spread it for the U.S. of A-holes.
To be fair, a lot of constitutions across a lot of countries "guarantee" their citizens many things.
The problem is that the government-of-the-day chooses to interpret the constitution however it wishes.
And it's our fault for not holding them accountable.
I was asked by the ex-CEO of Mega (not Dotcom) for suggestions for non-hostile data centres about a 18 month ago. :)
We'd met casually and he was talking about the risks of raids, neutrality etc and was soliciting ideas.
I suggested Iceland for a number of good reasons.
1) Geo-physical location. Right in the middle of the atlantic at the mid-point between Europe and N.America. Good latency to either continent.
2) Political neutrality. Iceland jails bankers and politicians. Not whistle blowers and has been a Wikileaks save haven.
3) Abundance, even surplus, of renewable energy. Cooling isn't a problem either
Because...bacon.
You are confusing swiss banks with "the swiss". These days, swiss banks are international corporations.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are confusing storing money in bank account that us managed by a bank and storing data in a data-center most decidedly not managed by a bank. Here is a hint: The bank operates internationally and hence is subject to pressure in the US, for example.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Depends on what you have arranged with them for this situation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's not a country. It's a provice: Zeeland. That is right next to Australia, so Australia is next to that country. Yep, checks out.
(My head hurts)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Oh John, you sure screwed up that one. Your stunning geographical confusion casts doubt on your ability to accurately judge the situation.
This idea is similar to "Stormy Clouds", with the addition that on an information-theoretical basis, maximal distance separation codes can provide more entropy that traditional symmetric encryption: [paper] [presentation]
Most data-center operators in Switzerland do _not_ operate internationally.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think Mars is better
Casteism