The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption.

The proposal, which is not subject to parliamentary approval, has alarmed privacy and digital-freedoms advocates worldwide because of how it will destroy anonymity online, including for people located outside of Switzerland.

A large number of virtual private network (VPN) companies and other privacy-preserving firms are headquartered in the country because it has historically had liberal digital privacy laws alongside its famously discreet banking ecosystem.

Proton, which offers secure and end-to-end encrypted email along with an ultra-private VPN and cloud storage, announced on July 23 that it is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland due to the proposed law.

The company is investing more than €100 million in the European Union, the announcement said, and plans to help develop a “sovereign EuroStack for the future of our home continent.” Switzerland is not a member of the EU.

Proton said the decision was prompted by the Swiss government’s attempt to “introduce mass surveillance.”

Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen told Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) that the suggested regulation would be illegal in the EU and United States.

“The only country in Europe with a roughly equivalent law is Russia,” Yen said.

[…]

Internet users would no longer be able to register for a service with just an email address or anonymously and would instead have to provide their passport, drivers license or another official ID to subscribe, said Chloé Berthélémy, senior policy adviser at European Digital Rights (eDRI), an association of civil and human rights organizations from across Europe.

The regulation also includes a mass data retention obligation requiring that service providers keep users’ email addresses, phone numbers and names along with IP addresses and device port numbers for six months, Berthélémy said. Port numbers are unique identifiers that send data to a specific application or service on a computer.

All authorities would need to do to obtain the data, Berthélémy said, is make a simple request that would circumvent existing legal control mechanisms such as court orders.

“The right to anonymity is supporting a very wide range of communities and individuals who are seeking safety online,” Berthélémy said.

“In a world where we have increasing attacks from governments on specific minority groups, on human rights defenders, journalists, any kind of watchdogs and anyone who holds those in power accountable, it’s very crucial that we … preserve our privacy online in order to do those very crucial missions.”

Source: Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance | The Record from Recorded Future News

The company behind the Proton Mail email service, Proton, describes itself as a “neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom.”

But last month, Proton disabled email accounts belonging to journalists reporting on security breaches of various South Korean government computer systems following a complaint by an unspecified cybersecurity agency. After a public outcry, and multiple weeks, the journalists’ accounts were eventually reinstated — but the reporters and editors involved still want answers on how and why Proton decided to shut down the accounts in the first place.

Martin Shelton, deputy director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, highlighted that numerous newsrooms use Proton’s services as alternatives to something like Gmail “specifically to avoid situations like this,” pointing out that “While it’s good to see that Proton is reconsidering account suspensions, journalists are among the users who need these and similar tools most.” Newsrooms like The Intercept, the Boston Globe, and the Tampa Bay Times all rely on Proton Mail for emailed tip submissions.

Shelton noted that perhaps Proton should “prioritize responding to journalists about account suspensions privately, rather than when they go viral.”

On Reddit, Proton’s official account stated that “Proton did not knowingly block journalists’ email accounts” and that the “situation has unfortunately been blown out of proportion.” Proton did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

The two journalists whose accounts were disabled were working on an article published in the August issue of the long-running hacker zine Phrack. The story described how a sophisticated hacking operation — what’s known in cybersecurity parlance as an APT, or advanced persistent threat — had wormed its way into a number of South Korean computer networks, including those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military Defense Counterintelligence Command, or DCC.

The journalists, who published their story under the names Saber and cyb0rg, describe the hack as being consistent with the work of Kimsuky, a notorious North Korean state-backed APT sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023.

As they pieced the story together, emails viewed by The Intercept show that the authors followed cybersecurity best practices and conducted what’s known as responsible disclosure: notifying affected parties that a vulnerability has been discovered in their systems prior to publicizing the incident.

Saber and cyb0rg created a dedicated Proton Mail account to coordinate the responsible disclosures, then proceeded to notify the impacted parties, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the DCC, and also notified South Korean cybersecurity organizations like the Korea Internet and Security Agency, and KrCERT/CC, the state-sponsored Computer Emergency Response Team. According to emails viewed by The Intercept, KrCERT wrote back to the authors, thanking them for their disclosure.

A note on cybersecurity jargon: CERTs are agencies consisting of cybersecurity experts specializing in dealing with and responding to security incidents. CERTs exist in over 70 countries — with some countries having multiple CERTs each specializing in a particular field such as the financial sector — and may be government-sponsored or private organizations. They adhere to a set of formal technical standards, such as being expected to react to reported cybersecurity threats and security incidents. A high-profile example of a CERT agency in the U.S. is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, which has recently been gutted by the Trump administration.

A week after the print issue of Phrack came out, and a few days before the digital version was released, Saber and cyb0rg found that the Proton account they had set up for the responsible disclosure notifications had been suspended. A day later, Saber discovered that his personal Proton Mail account had also been suspended. Phrack posted a timeline of the account suspensions at the top of the published article, and later highlighted the timeline in a viral social media post. Both accounts were suspended owing to an unspecified “potential policy violation,” according to screenshots of account login attempts reviewed by The Intercept.

The suspension notice instructed the authors to fill out Proton’s abuse appeals form if they believed the suspension was in error. Saber did so, and received a reply from a member of Proton Mail’s Abuse Team who went by the name Dante.

In an email viewed by The Intercept, Dante told Saber that their account “has been disabled as a result of a direct connection to an account that was taken down due to violations of our terms and conditions while being used in a malicious manner.” Dante also provided a link to Proton’s terms of service, going on to state, “We have clearly indicated that any account used for unauthorized activities, will be sanctioned accordingly.” The response concluded by stating, “We consider that allowing access to your account will cause further damage to our service, therefore we will keep the account suspended.”

On August 22, a Phrack editors reached out to Proton, writing that no hacked data was passed through the suspended email accounts, and asked if the account suspension incident could be deescalated. After receiving no response from Proton, the editor sent a follow-up email on September 6. Proton once again did not reply to the email.

On September 9, the official Phrack X account made a post asking Proton’s official account asking why Proton was “cancelling journalists and ghosting us,” adding: “need help calibrating your moral compass?” The post quickly went viral, garnering over 150,000 views.

Proton’s official account replied the following day, stating that Proton had been “alerted by a CERT that certain accounts were being misused by hackers in violation of Proton’s Terms of Service. This led to a cluster of accounts being disabled. Our team is now reviewing these cases individually to determine if any can be restored.” Proton then stated that they “stand with journalists” but “cannot see the content of accounts and therefore cannot always know when anti-abuse measures may inadvertently affect legitimate activism.”

Proton did not publicly specify which CERT had alerted them, and didn’t answer The Intercept’s request for the name of the specific CERT which had sent the alert. KrCERT also did not reply to The Intercept’s question about whether they were the CERT that had sent the alert to Proton.

Later in the day, Proton’s founder and CEO Andy Yen posted on X that the two accounts had been reinstated. Neither Yen nor Proton explained why the accounts had been reinstated, whether they had been found to not violate the terms of service after all, why had they been suspended in the first place, or why a member of the Proton Abuse Team reiterated that the accounts had violated the terms of service during Saber’s appeals process.

Phrack noted that the account suspensions created a “real impact to the author. The author was unable to answer media requests about the article.” The co-authors, Phrack pointed out, were also in the midst of the responsible disclosure process and working together with the various affected South Korean organizations to help fix their systems. “All this was denied and ruined by Proton,” Phrack stated.

Phrack editors said that the incident leaves them “concerned what this means to other whistleblowers or journalists. The community needs assurance that Proton does not disable accounts unless Proton has a court order or the crime (or ToS violation) is apparent.”

Source: Proton Mail Suspended Journalist Accounts at Request of Cybersecurity Agency

If Proton can’t view the content of accounts, how did Proton verify some random CERTs claims to make the decision to close the accounts? And how did Proton review to see if they could be restored? Is it Proton policy to decide that people are guilty before proven innocent? This attitude justifies people blowing up about this incident – because it shows how vulnerable they are to random whims of Proton instead of any kind of transparent diligent process.

Please follow this link to the questionnaire and help save our future – otherwise total surveillance like never seen before will strip you of every privacy and later fundamental rights you have as a EU citizen

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Information

The previous data retention law was declared illegal in 2014 by CJEU (EU’s highest court) for being mass surveillance and violating human rights.

Since most EU states refused to follow the court order and the EU commission refused to enforce it, CJEU recently caved in to political pressure and changed their stance on mass surveillance, making it legal.

And that instantly spawned this data retention law that is more far fetching than the original, that was deemed illegal. Here you can read the entire plan that EU is following. Briefly:

they want to sanction unlicensed messaging apps, hosting services and websites that don’t spy on users (and impose criminal penalties)

mandatory data retention, all your online activity must be tied to your identity

end of privacy friendly VPN’s and other services

cooperate with hardware manufacturers to ensure lawful access by design (backdoors for phones and computers)

prison for everybody who doesn’t comply

If you don’t know what the best options for some questions are, privacy wise, check out this answering guide by Edri(european digital rights organization)

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1neecov/we_beat_chat_control_but_the_fight_isnt_over/

A new report suggests that the UK’s age verification measures may be having unforeseen knock-on effects on web traffic, with the real winners being sites that flout the law entirely.

[…]

Sure, there are ways around this if you’d rather not feed your personal data to a platform’s third-party age verification vendor. However, sites are seeing more significant consequences beyond just locking you out of your DMs. For a start, The Washington post reports web traffic to pornography sites implementing age verification has taken a totally predictable hit—but those flouting the new age check requirements have seen traffic as much as triple compared to the same time last year.

The Washington Post looked at the 90 most visited porn sites based on UK visitor data from Similarweb. Of the 90 total sites, 14 hadn’t yet deployed ‘scan your face’ age checks. The publication found that while traffic from British IP addresses to sites requiring age verification had cratered, the 14 sites without age checks “have been rewarded with a flood of traffic” from UK-based users.

It’s worth noting that VPN usage might distort the the location data of users. Still, such a surge of traffic likely brings with it a surge in income in the form of ad-revenue. Ofcom, the UK’s government-approved regulatory communications office overseeing everything from TV to the internet, may have something to say about that though. Meanwhile, sites that comply with the rules are not only losing out on ad-revenue, but are also expected to pay for the legally required age verification services on top.

[…]

Alright, stop snickering about the mental image of someone perusing porn sites professionally, and let me tell you why this is important. You may have already read that while a lot of Brits support the age verification measures broadly speaking, a sizable portion feels they’ve been implemented poorly. Indeed, a lot of the aforementioned sites that complied with the law also criticised it by linking to a petition seeking its repeal. The UK government has responded to this petition by saying it has “no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act” despite, at time of writing, over 500,000 signatures urging it to do just that.

[…]

Source: Age verification legislation is tanking traffic to sites that comply, and rewarding those that don’t | PC Gamer

Of course age verification isn’t just hitting porn sites. It is also hitting LGBTQ+ sites, public health forums, conflict reporting and global journalism and more.

And there is no way to do Age Verification privately.

While some American officials continue to attack strong encryption as an enabler of child abuse and other crimes, a key European court has upheld it as fundamental to the basic right to privacy.

[…]

While some American officials continue to attack strong encryption as an enabler of child abuse and other crimes, a key European court has upheld it as fundamental to the basic right to privacy.

[…]

In the Russian case, the users relied on Telegram’s optional “secret chat” functions, which are also end-to-end encrypted. Telegram had refused to break into chats of a handful of users, telling a Moscow court that it would have to install a back door that would work against everyone. It lost in Russian courts but did not comply, leaving it subject to a ban that has yet to be enforced.

The European court backed the Russian users, finding that law enforcement having such blanket access “impairs the very essence of the right to respect for private life” and therefore would violate Article 8 of the European Convention, which enshrines the right to privacy except when it conflicts with laws established “in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country.”

The court praised end-to-end encryption generally, noting that it “appears to help citizens and businesses to defend themselves against abuses of information technologies, such as hacking, identity and personal data theft, fraud and the improper disclosure of confidential information.”

In addition to prior cases, the judges cited work by the U.N. human rights commissioner, who came out strongly against encryption bans in 2022, saying that “the impact of most encryption restrictions on the right to privacy and associated rights are disproportionate, often affecting not only the targeted individuals but the general population.”

High Commissioner Volker Türk said he welcomed the ruling, which he promoted during a recent visit to tech companies in Silicon Valley. Türk told The Washington Post that“encryption is a key enabler of privacy and security online and is essential for safeguarding rights, including the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly, security, health and nondiscrimination.”

[…]

Even as the fight over encryption continues in Europe, police officials there have talked about overriding end-to-end encryption to collect evidence of crimes other than child sexual abuse — or any crime at all, according to an investigative report by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, a consortium of journalists in Southern and Eastern Europe.

“All data is useful and should be passed on to law enforcement, there should be no filtering … because even an innocent image might contain information that could at some point be useful to law enforcement,” an unnamed Europol police official said in 2022 meeting minutes released under a freedom of information request by the consortium.

Source: E.U. Court of Human Rights backs encryption as basic to privacy rights – The Washington Post

An ‘unnamed’ Europol police official is peak irony in this context.

Remember to leave your feedback where you can, in this case: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14680-Impact-assessment-on-retention-of-data-by-service-providers-for-criminal-proceedings-/public-consultation_en

The EU wants to save all your data, or as much as possible for as long as possible. To insult the victims of crime, they say that they want to do this to fight crime. How do you feel about the EU being turned into a surveillance society? Leave your voice in the link below.

Source: Data retention by service providers for criminal proceedings – impact assessment

“The Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Andrej Plenkovic, at yesterday’s press conference, accused the opposition of upheld the proposal of a regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on the establishment of rules for the prevention and combating sexual abuse of children COM (2022) 209, which is (unpopularly referred to as ‘chat control’ because, in the case of the adoption of the proposal in its integral form, it would allow the bodies of criminal prosecution to be subject to the legal prosecution of the private communication of all citizens.

[…]

On June 17, the Bosnian MP, as well as colleagues from the SDP, HDZ and the vast majority of other European MPs supported the Proposal for Amendments to the Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography from 2011. Although both legislative documents were adopted within the same package of EU strategies for a more effective fight against child abuse and have a similar name, two documents are intrinsically different – one is the regulation, the other directive, they have different rapporteurs and entered the procedure for as many as two years apart.”

‘We’ve already spoken about it’

“The basic difference, however, is that the proposal to amend the Directive does not contain any mention of ‘chat control’, i.e. the mass surveillance of citizens. MP Bosnian, as well as colleagues from the party We Can! They strongly oppose the proposal for a regulation that supports the monitoring of the content of private conversations of all citizens and which will only be voted on in the European Parliament. Such a proposal directly violates Article 7. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the ruling “Schrems I” (paragraph 94), and the same position was confirmed by the Legal Service of the Council of the EU.

In the previous European Parliament, the Greens resisted mass surveillance, focusing on monitoring suspicious users – the security services must first identify suspicious users and then monitor them, not the other way around. People who abuse the internet to commit criminal acts must be recognized and isolated by the numerous services for whom it is a job, but not in a way of mass, but focused surveillance of individuals.

We all have the right to privacy, because privacy must remain a secure space for our human identity. Finally, the representative of Bosanac invites Prime Minister Plenković to oppose this harmful proposal at the European Council and protect the right to privacy of Croatian citizens,” Gordan Bosanca’s office said in a statement.

Source: Bosnian accuses Plenkovic of lying: ‘I urge him to counter that proposal’

Parliamentary questions are being asked as well

A review conducted under the Danish Presidency examining the proposal for a regulation on combatting online child sexual abuse material – dubbed the ‘Chat Control’ or CSAM regulation – has raised new, grave concerns about the respect of fundamental rights in the EU.

As it stands, the proposal envisages mass scanning of private communications, including encrypted conversations, raising serious issues of compliance with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by threatening to undermine the data security of citizens, businesses and institutions. A mandatory weakening of end-to-end encryption would create security gaps open to exploitation by cybercriminals, rival states and terrorist organisations, and would also harm the competitiveness of our digital economy.

At the same time, the proposed technical approach is based on automated content analysis tools which produce high rates of false positives, creating the risk that innocent users could be wrongly incriminated, while the effectiveness of this approach in protecting children has not been proven. Parliament and the Council have repeatedly rejected mass surveillance.

• 1.Considering the mandatory scanning of all private communications, is the proposed regulation compatible with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights?

• 2.How will it ensure that child protection is achieved through targeted measures that are proven to be effective, without violating the fundamental rights of all citizens?

• 3.How does it intend to prevent the negative impact on cybersecurity and economic competitiveness caused by weakening encryption?

Source: Proposed Chat Control law presents new blow for privacy

• Google will soon verify the identities of developers who distribute Android apps outside the Play Store.
• Developers must submit their information to a new Android Developer Console, increasing their accountability for their apps.
• Rolling out in phases from September 2026, these new verification requirements are aimed at protecting users from malware by making it harder for malicious developers to remain anonymous.

 

Most Android users acquire apps from the Google Play Store, but a small number of users download apps from outside of it, a process known as sideloading. There are some nifty tools that aren’t available on the Play Store because their developers don’t want to deal with Google’s approval or verification requirements. This is understandable for hobbyist developers who simply want to share something cool or useful without the burden of shedding their anonymity or committing to user support.

[…]

Today, Google announced it is introducing a new “developer verification requirement” for all apps installed on Android devices, regardless of source. The company wants to verify the identity of all developers who distribute apps on Android, even if those apps aren’t on the Play Store. According to Google, this adds a “crucial layer of accountability to the ecosystem” and is designed to “protect users from malware and financial fraud.” Only users with “certified” Android devices — meaning those that ship with the Play Store, Play Services, and other Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps — will block apps from unverified developers from being installed.

Google says it will only verify the identity of developers, not check the contents of their apps or their origin. However, it’s worth noting that Google Play Protect, the malware scanning service integrated into the Play Store, already scans all installed apps regardless of where they came from. Thus, the new requirement doesn’t prevent malicious apps from reaching users, but it does make it harder for their developers to remain anonymous. Google likens this new requirement to ID checks at the airport, which verify the identity of travelers but not whether they’re carrying anything dangerous.

[…]

Source: Google wants to make sideloading Android apps safer by verifying developers’ identities – Android Authority

So the new requirement doesn’t make things any safer, but gives Google a whole load of new personal data for no good reason other than that they want it. I guess it’s becoming more and more time to de-Google.

Australia’s University of Melbourne last year used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors.

The University used Wi-Fi to identify students who participated in July 2024 sit-in protest. As described in a report [PDF] into the matter by the state of Victoria’s Office of the Information Commissioner, the University directed protestors to leave the building they occupied and warned those who remained could be suspended, disciplined, or reported to police.

The report says 22 chose to remain, and that the University used CCTV and WiFi location data to identify them.

The Information Commissioner found that use of CCTV to identify protestors did not breach privacy, but felt using Wi-Fi location data did because the University’s policies lacked detail.

“Given that individuals would not have been aware of why their Wi-Fi location data was collected and how it may be used, they could not exercise an informed choice as to whether to use the Wi-Fi network during the sit-in, and be aware of the possible consequences for doing so,” the report found.

As the investigation into use of location data unfolded, the University changed its policies regarding use of location data. The Office of the Information Commissioner therefore decided not to issue a formal compliance notice, and will monitor the University to ensure it complies with its undertakings.

Source: Australian uni used Wi-Fi location data to ID protestors • The Register

[…] Identity‑proofing creates a privacy bottleneck. Somewhere, an identity provider must verify you. Even if it later mints an unlinkable token, that provider is the weak link—and in regulated systems it will not be allowed to “just delete” your information. As Bellovin puts it:

Regulation implies the ability for governments to audit the regulated entities’ behavior. That in turn implies that logs must be kept. It is likely that such logs would include user names, addresses, ages, and forms of credentials presented.

Then there’s the issue of fraud and duplication of credentials. Accepting multiple credential types increases coverage and increases abuse; people can and do hold multiple valid IDs:

The fact that multiple forms of ID are acceptable… exacerbates the fraud issue…This makes it impossible to prevent a single person from obtaining multiple primary credentials, including ones for use by underage individuals.

Cost and access will absolutely chill speech. Identity providers are expensive. If users pay, you’ve built a wealth test for lawful speech. If sites pay, the costs roll downhill (fees, ads, data‑for‑access) and coverage narrows to the cheapest providers who may also be more susceptible to breaches:

Operating an IDP is likely to be expensive… If web sites shoulder the cost, they will have to recover it from their users. That would imply higher access charges, more ads (with their own privacy challenges), or both.

Sharing credentials drives mission creep, which will create dangers with the technology. If a token proves only “over 18,” people will share it (parents to kids, friends to friends). To deter that, providers tie tokens to identities/devices or bundle more attributes—making them more linkable and more revocable:

If the only use of the primary credential is obtaining age-verifying subcredentials, this isn’t much of a deterrent—many people simply won’t care…That, however, creates pressure for mission creep… , including opening bank accounts, employment verification, and vaccination certificates; however, this is also a major point of social control, since it is possible to revoke a primary credential and with it all derived subcredentials.

The end result, then is you’re not just attacking privacy again, but you’re creating a tool for authoritarian pressure:

Those who are disfavored by authoritarian governments may lose access not just to pornography, but to social media and all of these other services.

He also grounds it in lived reality, with a case study that shows who gets locked out first:

Consider a hypothetical person “Chris”, a non-driving senior citizen living with an adult child in a rural area of the U.S… Apart from the expense— quite possibly non-trivial for a poor family—Chris must persuade their child to then drive them 80 kilometers or more to a motor vehicles office…

There is also the social aspect. Imagine the embarrassment to all of an older parent having to explain to their child that they wish to view pornography.

None of this is an attack on the math. It’s a reminder that deployment reality ruins the cryptographic ideal. There’s more in the paper, but you get the idea

[…]

Source: Privacy‑Preserving Age Verification Falls Apart On Contact With Reality | Techdirt