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Swiss ISPs Must Archive E-mail For 6 Months 56

Posted by timothy from the new-meaning-for-swiss-account dept.
the_danielsan writes: "I first thought this (this ain't yellow press) would be a joke, but apparently swiss ISPs are now enforced to monitor all outgoing mails up to a period of 6 month - at their own cost! sunrise, a larger ISP, speaks of 50,000 to 100,000 CHF (that's about 31,405 to 62,810 USD according to my currency calculator) to update their systems. heise Newsticker has the same story running (both German). I can't believe this." For non-German readers, babelfish does a decent job with these articles.
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Swiss ISPs Must Archive E-mail For 6 Months More

Swiss ISPs Must Archive E-mail For 6 Months

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  • FP? (Score:1)

    by jakobk ( 553240 )
    WTF? I mean, is this really possible? I'm quite shocked by the devaluation of democratic rights around the world.
  • The spectrum of government goes from free and chaotic to secure and restricted. You trade structure for freedom -- the two aren't compatible.

    In the US, though we're fond if whining about our government, we tend to be more on the free and chaotic side of the spectrum. Not all the way, of course, but at least on that side.

    Europeans have been so accustomed to the idea of trading freedom for security, though, that they willingly allow these things to happen. It's just another day in the life for them.

    Our country may not be as good as it could be, but thank God we're not socialists.

    • I'm with you brother! I'd like to add that if the Swiss had the right to have a gun in their house, then they wouldn't be suffering under the tyranny of e-mail storage. Thank God we've got our guns here in the US of A.

      (do I REALLY need to mention that this is sarchasm?)
    • Ahem, Carnivore, Echelon, DMCA, facial recognition cameras... the U.S. has been pioneering a heck of a lot more of surveilance on the public than a lot of these European countries, why do you think terrorists hang out and do their planning in Europe and Canada before heading to the U.S?

      Hey, if socialism is so restrictive of freedom, how come I can smoke a joint in the Netherlands but not in the U.S?
    • In one of the early Federalist papers, this is discussed quite thoroughly. In essence, it is the historical need for standing armies and fortified borders, and the concommitant need to take away the rights of the people who lived in those border areas, that over time accustomed the Europeans to being deprived of liberties to the point where they don't realize that they are so deprived.

      • Of course the fact that Switzerland may be the most Libertarian state on the face of the planet is not known by any of you.

        Hell, they go beyond allowing anybody to buy a machine gun: by law, most households are required to have a government issued machine gun. This, of course, is part of why no one picks on Switzerland.

        • the other part is... what does Switzerland have that anyone wants... I mean really...

          • Re:Curse of Socialism (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Zarquon ( 1778 )
            Money.. chocolate.. information on who owns what money.. Chocolate.. Some great skiing in the Alps.. Chocolate.. Getting rid of it's reputation as pretty much the only European nation to actually pull off being neutral for the last century.. Chocolate.
    • > Our country may not be as good as it could be, but thank God we're not socialists.

      Norman Thomas, For many years the U.S. Socialist Presidential candidate proclaimed: "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of "liberalism" they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

      Norman Thomas and Gus Hall, the U.S. Communist Party candidate, both quit American politics, agreeing that the Republican and Democratic parties by 1970 had adopted every plank of the Communist/Socialist Party and they no longer had an alternative party platform on which to run.

  • Just the headers. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jakobk ( 553240 ) <jakob@ko s o w ski.net> on Monday May 13, 2002 @02:53PM (#3511437) Homepage
    Well, they do not want to archive the contents, just the header data.
    • aka, traffic analysis. the same that could be done at the post office if they wanted to.

    • Redefine "e-mail" (Score:2, Insightful)

      by madburn ( 35976 )
      This move seems similar in goal to Carnivore, except it shifts the burden to the poor ISPs who have to pay the costs. I question the chain of custody issues with any "evidence", although I'm ignorant of the Swiss legal system.

      Reading the articles there doesn't seem to be enough detail on what e-mail is, so I will assume it's rfc822-style traffic. The obvious way to avoid this law would then be to not use that kind of message traffic. What an opportunity for one or more of the Swiss ISPs to change the landscape of network messaging.

      It's time for the existing email infrastructure to wither and die since it's been overrun by spamming and virus delivery.
    • it still sux badly
    • Ah. And this is exactly the same as a lot of governments do with every other communications medium already. The U.S. phone companies keeps call records detailing whos calling whom, for how long and when; the post office could (not sure if they do or not) keep records of recipients and return addresses. In other words, this is no more invasive than what we deal with in the offline world already.
  • I think you'll find that the Swiss tend to be
    very supportive all the silly laws the government
    passes. My favorite is that you must turn your
    car off if you are sitting at a light for longer
    than 30 seconds or so. They're not as fond of their
    personal freedoms as we are in the states.
    • So do their traffic light come with timers?
    • The Swiss supporting silly laws is true (like no work on weekends!) but not necessarily unique. It also depends upon what the 'total' in "total information awareness" mean to you:
      http://www.darpa.mil/iao/
      There is some neat (but scary) techno stuff in there. If you or I did it--it would be called "stalking". ; )

      In case any Europeans get snooty over the above, this should humble them some:
      http://www.statewatch.org/news/2002/may/05s urv.htm

      Anyone think that the /. YRO section is getting a little dated? I think that YouHaveNoRO (YHNRO!) might be more apt now. Mebbe Larry was right all along?

      Cheers, All!
      -b
    • Here in Zürich, where I live, at 5pm in the afternoon I sit in the same traffic jams that I would be sitting in in any city in the world. No one switches off their engines at the traffic lights anymore. That way a waste of time anway and impossible to enforce.
  • not read the article but what defines an ISP and at what level would the capture be?

    I mean I don't use my ISP's mailserver directly as a relay I use my own SMTP server, do I become my own ISP? Or will my upstream provider be required to scan all of my port 25 ourgoing traffic too?
    • As these laws come to pass, I forsee
      programs which will use different ports to
      send out email to an external emailer....

      Perhaps encrypted to the emailer on a random port,
      to be unencrypted there or by the recipient


  • Just pass the charges for implementing the system and for storing the data onto the users with a full explanation that they are paying to be in compliance with the legal provision.

    They're the voters - let them taste a little of their government in action, let them feedback as they deem fit if they find the added "value" of this measure insufficient relative to its costing them.

    Representative government in action!

    • That only works for monopolies or oligopolies like phone companies (pass on a corporate tax as a $2 "universal service charge" and blame it on the FCC, for example).

      The first ISP to start doing this would hemmorage customers, unless it could get the others to go along--which we all know is illegal.

  • They *are* going to use this to track down and execute spammers, right? Oh please, oh please!

    If you send something unencrypted via e-mail you should expect it to have about the same privacy as a post card. If you're shocked that a government entity is tracking your e-mail then you are very naive.
  • How do you define email?

    'Electronic comunication system where messages are stored for later transmition to one or more recipiants'

    Thats the best I can come up with, unforutnately it covers many more things than email, and doesn't
    cover the case when email is a direct peer to peer operation.

  • In the UK we dream of only 6months retention, a UK ISP must keep a copy of the Network Traffic they carry for a period of not less than 7 years, just incase of investigation. Failure to do so is a criminal offense.

    The Home Office seems to be dilligently ignorant of the fact that is actually impossible in practice to comply with this law and the directors of every UK ISP are breaking the law.

    http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ripa/ripact.htm
    • Yeah, I really couldn't believe the whole RIP thing in the UK - especially as it happened so close to home(Ireland) with virtually no comment from the general media.
      So the UK not only demands ISPs to provide the ablitiy to intercept and store any private e-mails, it also makes it illegal to withold your encryption keys, even providing for jail time and fines if you 'lose' your key and can't prove that the loss is genuine. At the same time the power of enforcement is altered significantly and a minister or local authority, among others, can issue a warrent to police to seize your encryption keys.
      While the RIP was being passed in Britain, in Ireland the legality of electronic signatures, the privacy of encryption key etc... were being legislated for. Also e-mails are not intercepted/stored.


      This link [wired.com] has the - now very old - story regarding the differences between Ireland and Britain.

      Given the relative closeness of the two countries, that the people (mostly) speak the same language, watch the same tv, read the same books etc... it's amazing how different we are. It would be interesting to find out how different other EU countries are with respect to encryption/stored e-mails etc.



      8)
  • The swiss political system provides for initiatives with referendums which are legally binding. Anyone can start one and it gets voted on if there are more than 100 000 votes (Switzerland is small). What that means is that all you need to do is start an initiative and collect signatures. If it gets through you do your best to inform the public that their privacy is in danger (there is always a rundown of the initiatives sent to voters but many don't bother to read them). If people are worried enough, out the window, the law goes. End of story.

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