Why is Session based in Switzerland?

While Session itself is a decentralised, global ecosystem, its steward is based in Switzerland. Switzerland was chosen as a home jurisdiction for its legal protections regarding personal privacy, world-class cybersecurity and computer science industry, and sophisticated regulation relating to decentralised technologies.

Switzerland’s long history of remaining politically neutral and constitutional right to privacy make it an excellent base for contributing to privacy software. Swiss companies are not allowed to share information with foreign law enforcement, and they cannot be compelled to engage in bulk surveillance.

These Swiss protections strongly reflect the core principles and mission of Session itself, making Switzerland a suitable jurisdiction for its steward, the Session Technology Foundation.

It sounds like they're not aware of existing and planned surveillance, which has already led Proton to move out of Switzerland due to security and privacy concerns. tuta src

In 2016, Swiss Parliament updated its data retention law BÜPF to enforce data retention for all communication data (post, email, phone, text messages, ip addresses). In 2018, the revision of the VÜPF translated this into administrative obligations for ISPs, email providers, and others, with exceptions in regard to the size of the provider and whether they were classified as telecommunications service providers or communications services.

The proposed update to Switzerland’s Ordinance on the Surveillance of Postal and Telecommunications Traffic (VÜPF: Verordnung über die Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs) represents a significant expansion of state surveillance powers, worse than the surveillance powers of the USA.

Legal and data protection experts also criticize that the update of the VÜPF conflicts with the Data Protection Act (e.g. the Act’s data minimization principle) and may violate constitutional rights such as the right to privacy.

What is more, the law is not introduced by or via the Parliament, but instead the Swiss government, the Federal Council and the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP), want to massively expand internet surveillance by updating the VÜPF - without Parliament having a say. This comes as a shock in a country proud of its direct democracy with regular people’s decisions on all kinds of laws. However, in 2016 the Swiss actually voted for more surveillance, so direct democracy might not help here.