Comment by sschueller a day ago
This law change died in the "Vernehmlassung" which is early in the process. It's dead with opposition from all sides of the political spectrum. It had no chance.
https://www.inside-it.ch/vupf-revision-faellt-in-der-vernehm...
There is no precedent here. There are politicians advocating for this kind of stuff everywhere, that doesn't indicate the likelihood of a law like this passing.
Anyone can suggest a law. The stage this one failed in is explicitly meant to gauge if there would be any reasonable support to get it passed. The answer was a resounding No.
Even if it proceeded, it would have quite likely lead to a popular referendum due to Switzerland's system of direct democracy. I'd say not many places in the world have as strong defenses against laws like this as Switzerland.
Of course, it doesn't mean that it's not important to highlight when such ideas do crop up, and especially naming and shaming who/where they come from. I'm glad Proton et al. spoke out.
It’s odd people don’t push for laws to prevent for these kinds of laws to keep bubbling up every few years.
The law can't bind future lawmakers. That's a common feature of every legal system.
Any legal system can pass a law saying "we revoke this previous law".
This is what constitutions are for. When you have the support, you install a constitutional protection that says the government can't do this. Repealing the protection requires the same super-majority needed to pass it, so changing the law isn't just a matter of the tyrants needing to get back to 51% from 49%, they have to get from 33% to 67%.
Then you layer these protections against multiple levels of government so they'd all have to be repealed together by separate legislatures before the government is allowed to do it, discouraging the attempt.
Hah, I was going to say that sounded needlessly heavy handed.
Then I checked what the Netherlands does and found that changing the constitution doesn’t merely require you to get a majority, it also requires you to survive at least one election and keep that (super)majority before you can even begin.
I'd argue that this is unnecessary in Switzerland due to the existing referendum system.
After the government passes a new law, opponents have 100 days to collect 50000 signatures. If they manage, the law will not take force until it's approved by a vote by the populace.
Constitutions can still be ignored, at least temporarily, by incumbent governments, as evidenced most recently by some actions of the current US administration.
Also, the sort of majority needed to enact a constitution change to install a protection in the first place, can be very difficult to attain.
In Switzerland you can change the constitution with popular votes. That only requires for 50% of the voters to agree and half of the cantons.
And then you make it so when the tyrants do get back to 51% that they can just ignore the constitution instead. And might as well make sure there are only two major political parties so even though the tyrants ignore the constitution, that the other 49% will stay busy stuffing their pockets with foreign donations.
If preventing the government from abusing the population is ossification then the government should be made entirely out of bones.
In the USA we have amendments to the constitution, which take considerable political effort to change. These amendments can restrict the types of laws that may be passed.
This system works because the changes are not just recorded in the paper of some lawbook, but in the minds of the people.
This is not true in practice. Inertia and international law / agreements bind future lawmakers. If one government joins the EU, the next still has to follow EU law even if EU law changes.
This was my understanding, which is why I was so surprised to read of Trump's edict preventing state-level AI laws for ten years.
Either the people living in the country at the time rule (directly or through representatives), or its not a democracy, but (if they are ruled by the people, or their representatives, of the past) a thanatocracy.
> It’s odd people don’t push for laws to prevent for these kinds of laws to keep bubbling up every few years.
People don't have a lot of money and a revolving door with the government, like the lobby industry has. As long as corruption is legalized, in the form of lobby, regular people will find it very hard to influence the government.
Proton being about as brave as putting an apple on one's head and a blindfold on....in front of an infant with the parts of a Glock in front of them and no ammunition
What a bunch of performative nonsense on their behalf.
Even if the revision is 'dead' now, the precedent is set: the Swiss government’s willingness to consider gutting core privacy protections rewrites the risk calculation for every privacy-focused provider headquartered there.
If you architect your infrastructure around non-retention, even a temporarily defeated law signals it’s time to future-proof elsewhere.