Swiss data protection officers have warned public bodies not to use cloud services from industry hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, due to a lack of true end-to-end encryption.
This comes as many SaaS vendors, especially those falling under the US Cloud Act, could be required to hand over data to US authorities, even if it’s stored in Switzerland.
What’s happening in Switzerland? Flipping and flopping for the past year. I welcome this latest news, and the similar news yesterday, hopefully it is infectious to the rest of Europe but it completely contradicts things that have been proposed for the last few months, then the sudden change. I wonder did Trump push too hard:
May 14 2025 - Proposed Swiss surveillance law ‘identical to Russia’
June 13 2025 - “A war against online anonymity” – why Switzerland wants to change its surveillance law and what’s at stake
September 11 2025 - Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
November 15 2025 - Switzerland plans surveillance worse than US
November 27 2025 - Switzerland: Data Protection Officers Recommend Broad Cloud Ban for Authorities
…
We have a lot of different political and government bodies. Like the “checks and balances” the US had. So when you read “Switzerland wants to…” it could be:
I probably forgot a few and misspelt a lot but you get the idea. And all of them are different elected or appointed persons, with their own opinions.
“Hey, you can’t mass surveil our people, that’s our job!”
In fairness a government should be the only entity surveilling people in its own borders under most any circumstances.
I’m pretty opposed to most any kind of surveillance outside of warranted due process, and I don’t think that any domestic surveillance needs privacy for longer than it takes to do an investigation and prosecution.
It’s when governments are allowed to do things in secret and outside of the law that the whole concept of the law is undermined.
They want to spy on their people and protect their corporate interests.