[dublinben]

I wonder how much longer Switzerland can cash in on their national brand for security and privacy. Their largest banks can't even keep their customers' accounts safe from foreign tax investigators. Why would I trust the integrity of my data there?

[anologwintermut]

Hopefully zero, since there's a history of Swiss companies knowingly backdooring products.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Back-doored_machines

[antr]

I think you are confusing substantiated, well supported, warrants/subpoenas/etc and tax collaboration agreements, with arbitrary user requests, gag orders, mass surveillance, etc. The two are at opposite spectrums.

[jre]

I'm not sure we have such a clean historical record in that area. There was a huge scandal in the 80s about massive surveillance of people on the left of the political spectrum : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal

[m_mueller]

The big difference there was: It ended quite a few political careers when it came out, including federal minister Kopp's (since we have no real president that's actually the highest political chair). Switzerland has checks and balances in place that make it very risky for politicians to act contra the people's interests. In the US I can see no such outfall even after all the dirty business has come out - it all seems to be legal.

[JoshTriplett]

When implementing technology intended to provide user privacy, both fall under "attack on user privacy", and should be treated as such. Either the service has access to user data, in which case it can be arbitrarily compromised for reasons of varying "legitimacy", or the service does not have access to user data, in which case the legitimacy of the request is irrelevant.

[jaredklewis]

Unless the courts ask you to modify your software to access the user data next time they login (iirc, this was the case with bit mail).

[JoshTriplett]

That's a strong argument against creating services where JavaScript code served by the server has access to user data.

[jaredklewis]

So don't, but then when the government wants some user you have, they'll ask you to modify the code so the JS does access their data and send it back to you. Comply or shutdown.

My understanding is that in the bit mail case, the government didn't just ask for data. They also asked for code to be modified. So really, any technical solution done by coding, well, the government can just ask you to un-code it.

[JoshTriplett]

There's a big difference between a warrant to provide user data you trivially have access to and a demand to modify your code to intercept user data when it previously did not have that capability. I'd love to see a court case over the latter, considering that a request to insert a backdoor would require a coder to risk their entire career to comply with.

(Leaving aside that any such request would necessarily have to be a "secret warrant", which is dubious to begin with. And leaving aside mechanisms like warrant canaries, signed binaries, and Open Source clients, all of which would provide additional avenues for both detection and legal challenge.)

[malchow]

Antr, you gesture to "substantiated, well supported, warrants/subpoenas/etc" but fail to ask the more relevant question. Private banking enterprises within Switzerland have provided tax haven services for U.S. and European capital for many years, beginning in the post-WWI period when tax competition was minimal. The 1920s and 1930s were halcyon days for global capital fleeing the warring nations. Switzerland had a lightweight and liberal government, and banks had an appetite for alien capital when few others did.

Quoting Farquet 2012:

In a subordinate position before the war, notably with regard to the competition of France and Germany, Swiss bankers took advantage of the new international context to affirm themselves as figures of substance in the financial world at the beginning of the 1920s. Although, for example, the cumulative balance sheets of the major Swiss banks represented only 26% of those of their French counterparts in 1913, they subsequently amounted to 73% in 1929.

The Swiss financial centre was particularly renowned in the sector of cross-border wealth management. In fact, foreign capital flowed en masse towards the Swiss haven in the interwar years. According to a [League of Nations] report, owing to the importance of foreign assets, in 1929, Switzerland possessed by far the highest per capita total of bank deposits in the world. The lack of a reliable balance of payments, as much as the absence of the legal obligation for Swiss banks to publish details regarding their accounts, nevertheless prevent an exact estimate of the total amount of imported capital. Banking balance sheets indicate a general trend, but are inadequate sources.

A committee of experts working on Swiss history during World War II who, exceptionally, had access to the in-house archives of the banks, showed that holdings of securities, generally in off-balance-sheet bank custody accounts, represented, in the two biggest Swiss banks in 1931, more than three times their balance-sheet.

[http://www.ehes.org/EHES_No27.pdf]

End quotation.

Needless to say, the confiscatory tax rates in the U.S. during the late 50s and 60s made going after Swiss accounts attractive. But the Swiss were having none of it.

So are the two situations you mention genuinely at opposite spectrums? Or is Switzerland's special brand the product of a persistently muscular political consensus that, after more than fifty years, may now be flagging? And if the latter is the case, then the OP asks a fair question.

[Crito]

Who do you differentiate "substantiated, well supported" warrants from those that are not?

Do you accept all warrants from the US? All warrants from Russia? All warrants from Syria or Iran?

[dublinben]

German tax officials purchased stolen account information[0] in order to pursue tax cheats. If you think that's acceptable within the rule of law, then what's wrong with gag orders and mass surveillance?

[0]http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cc1eef78-5928-...

[king_phil]

The responsible server administrator who stole the data from the bank has been sentenced to prison in Switzerland and fled. The second crime was committed by the German officials, but none of both has anything to do with swiss legal standards.

[antr]

No, I wasn't referring to that very case, but how OECD countries signed and agreement with Switzerland to avoid tax evasion. Just Google OECD-Swiss tax treaty. Your outlier is not the norm.

[nodata]

Scale?

[Zigurd]

Parallel construction

[Spearchucker]

These days we seem to live by degrees rather than absolutes - I trust the Swiss more than I do the Americans.

[ExpiredLink]

> Their largest banks can't even keep their customers' accounts safe from foreign tax investigators.

Your knowledge is outdated. The US and (to a lesser extent) the EU forced the Swiss banks to hand over all relevant data. All. Moreover, they have to pay a stiff fine ( http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/credit-suisse-set-to-... ). Remember Switzerland is a small country and not member of the EU. They have no choice but to conform.

[dublinben]

>Your knowledge is outdated.

In what way? I'm aware of the Credit Suisse conviction from this week. That case just reinforces my point that Swiss banks are unable to keep their customers' accounts safe from foreign tax officials.