Proton Begins Shifting Infrastructure Outside of Switzerland Ahead of Surveillance Legislation

Proton has begun relocating infrastructure outside Switzerland ahead of proposed surveillance legislation requiring VPNs and messaging services with over 5,000 users to identify customers and retain data for six months.

The company's AI chatbot Lumo became the first product hosted on German servers rather than Swiss infrastructure. CEO Andy Yen confirmed the decision and a spokesperson told TechRadar that the company isn't fully exiting Switzerland.

In a blog post about the launch of Lumo last month, Proton's Head of Anti-Abuse and Account Security, Eamonn Maguire, explained that the company had decided to invest outside Switzerland for fear of the looming legal changes. He wrote: "Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance -- proposals that have been outlawed in the EU -- Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move."

The proposed amendments to Switzerland's Ordinance on the Surveillance of Correspondence by Post and Telecommunications would also mandate decryption capabilities for providers holding encryption keys. Proton is developing additional facilities in Norway.

Nowhere is safe

[gabrieltss]

How long before the EU implements mass surveillance? This is how governments control you. It's only a matter of time before the EU does it....

Re:

[cascadingstylesheet]

How long before the EU implements mass surveillance? This is how governments control you. It's only a matter of time before the EU does it....

But, but, they are shifting to multiple EU countries! Genius!

Re: Nowhere is safe

[defago]

Simple fact checking: Norway is actually not part of EU. It does have many agreements with EU in the same way that Switzerland does.

Re:

[PPH]

Just move the data to wherever they are storing the Epstein files.

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Trump's house?

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's quite conceivable that North Korea will become the world's data haven.

They just need to want the money more than they want to look inside the box.

Making a tamper-proof server has been done. It's destructive and nonservicable but sometimes you don't care about hardware cost.

With good key management this can be reduced to a tiny chip to go poof.

No non-nuclear nations need apply.

SeaLand

[sconeu]

Does Sealand even exist anymore?

Re:

[srmalloy]

Their website [sealandgov.org] still has their store up, and there is an article from May 2025 about their ocean cleanup efforts funded by the sale of e-citizenship and 'titles', as well as other products.

Re: SeaLand

[ArmoredDragon]

A lot of people have been selling that stuff even though they have nothing to do with sealand. It's just novelty junk.

Re: SeaLand

[Midnight_Falcon]

I am a Baron of Sealand and received my letters patent around 20 years ago, for the low low price of 50 something dollars. In order for Sealand to be secure, my fellow nobles and I must beseech the King to provide for Sealand's defence, as in its current state it may be conquered by a dozen people on a powerboat, making, it less favorable for a confidential data center than let's say Iceland.

Re:

[noshellswill]

Your  short   post deserves a "5" for speaking the plain truth.  England and German ( fear of Nazis ) have no free-speech rights. Only  hyper-sensitive SJWs  will vote it a zero (0) ! There goes my karma again ...

Re: Germany?? Not a good idea

[toutankh]

Either that or your karma is suffering from that font you use, right?

Re:

[jonwil]

Could a "data haven" (as described in the excellent book Cryptonomicon) actually be built in the real world?

Does this Policy Work?

[walkerp1]

The impact of these laws is far larger than a single VPN vendor. Switzerland has long been regarded as a neutral, safe place for data flow, but that reputation has taken some hits from the Proton mail fail and the attacks on bank privacy and now these new laws. I suppose the largest danger here is that Switzerland gets passed up as an AI hub in favor of less repressive governments, in terms of data privacy.

So, financially it's a bust. Surely there is some compensatory social value? But I can't really credit that. It's just too easy to add another encryption layer for sensitive information flow for the really bad guys with the incentive to do so. At this point, you're just compromising regular citizens, catching some low-level criminals, and harming your economy. What am I missing? If anything, it pays to remember that people are generally stupid and that politics are a force multiplier in that respect.

The time

[Djdatlondon]

is fast approching going read-only on the net. It will destroy sites, But it will protect you. And you is what matters. Fuck these tech pricks. Think for yourself not what they want you to think.

Re: The time

[organgtool]

I stopped posting on the internet years ago.

--
Sent from my iPhone

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

People in favor of this legislation IMO are misguided.

The people who not only are for this, but express that support by smearing opponents instead of arguing should be shot.

Time to federate.

[serafean]

Geeks assemble, spin up an email server, an XMPP server, get your friends on it, and keep the user count under 1000.

you have the knowledge, use it!

Also fight these laws. But that'll be harder.

Overreacting?

[Anamon]

Maybe Proton knows more from behind the scenes than I do, but there doesn't seem to be anything new about a proposed "mass surveillance law" in Switzerland than the small blip that made headlines a few months ago (the blog post also just links to a news article from April).

Some politician(s) proposed such a law back then, but it was killed in one of the earliest stages such proposals have to go through. It actually went very miserably, failing to show even a faint chance of finding a majority. I read up on

Re: Overreacting?

[Anamon]

I wanted to add the conclusion that I think the article probably should've mentioned: the surveillance law in question is already dead and never even made it to a vote.