Top all-time · #4861
Steiger Legal
Company blog · steigerlegal.chpoliticsbusiness
Steiger Legal is the company blog at steigerlegal.ch, writing about politics and business. Since 2014, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Martin Steiger's Swiss legal blog as a source on surveillance, data retention and encryption, especially ProtonMail's transparency reports and Swiss surveillance law.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Anwaltskanzlei für Recht im digitalen Raum: Datenschutzrecht, Immaterialgüterrecht, IT-Recht und Medienrecht für Privatpersonen, Organisationen und Unternehmen
Most-linked posts?
- ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance?6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-05-29
- ProtonMail: Nutzerdaten für die USA dank Rechtshilfe und guter Zusammenarbeit2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-03
What Hacker News says?
That special political system is well on its way to restricting Internet access: https://steigerlegal.ch/2018/06/10/netzsperren-schweiz-zensu...
Comment linking /2018/06/10/netzsperren-schweiz-zensur/
on “European Parliament approves copyright reform”Submitted ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance? as a story · 304 points
HN discussionIt looks like multiple people consulted lawyers because of the implied legal threat. OP isn't the only one who took this somewhat seriously. Attorney: "is this Princeton privacy study email that one of my clients received legitimate?" https://twitter.com/jdigiacomo/status/1470756584435249152 "Wow. I actually contacted my attorney over this email inquiry to see if I actually needed to respond and if so, how." https:/…
Comment linking /2021/12/16/datenschutz-gefaelschte-anfragen-dsgvo/
on “I was part of a human subject research study without my consent”Submitted ProtonMail: Nutzerdaten für die USA dank Rechtshilfe und guter Zusammenarbeit as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe blacklist is currently empty, the first set of blocks will go online in Autumn 2019: https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/07/01/schweiz-netzsperren-gelds...
Comment linking /2019/07/01/schweiz-netzsperren-geldspielgesetz/
on “Apple reveals App Store takedown demands by governments”Submitted Ban of Bitcoin ATMs in Switzerland as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou 'forgot' to copy the full addendum. It reads as follows: 'Public prosecutor Walder of the Competence Center Cybercrime contacted me, saying he had been misquoted. He claims that had not divulged at the above-mentioned event that ProtonMail voluntarily releases real-time data. He had merely described ProtonMail as a potential provider of derived communication services (PDCS). I was live-tweeting the event, includ…
Comment linking /2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/
on “ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance?”Submitted How "German" is Langdock under American control? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt is a myth that swiss-based providers are in any way safer/more anonymous than others. See here for a recent article (in German): https://steigerlegal.ch/2021/08/02/protonmail-daten-usa/
Comment linking /2021/08/02/protonmail-daten-usa/
on “‘Extraordinary’ hacking powers pass Australian Parliament”Submitted ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn other news, Proton VPN and probably email are also subject to surveillance by the Swiss Federal Intelligence Agency NDB, including decryption of VPN traffic and data retention for up to 6 months. Switzerland is no save haven for your communication needs. https://steigerlegal.ch/2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine... (German)
Comment linking /2025/03/29/proton-ueberwachung-keine-auskunft/
on “Infomaniak comes out in support of controversial Swiss encryption law”Oh I think there was a misunderstanding here! I never intended to say FastMail was worse than Google. FastMail (IMO) is still a better choice for lots of reasons. As for ProtonMail: Yes, I've been a ProtonMail customer for about half a year now. However I'm really dissatisfied on a number of ends: <opinion> - the bridge is a bad solution and it doesn't work well - the bridge doesn't exist on Android, tying me into t…
Comment linking /2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/
on “De-Googling My Life”Founders with US affiliation/physicist creating crypto products [1], faulty claims how the relevant Swiss law (BÜPF) applies to them [2], doing crypto in JavaScript on the client side, etc. To me, this smells like Crypto AG [3][4]. [1] https://proton.me/about/team [2] https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/07/27/protonmail-transparenzber... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operatio…
Comment linking /2019/07/27/protonmail-transparenzbericht-buepf/
on “End-to-End Encrypted Cloud Storage in the Wild: A Broken Ecosystem”Why was this comment dead? From this article ( https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surv... ) it appears to be true: >In its transparency report, ProtonMail explicitly mentions the possibility of real-time surveillance („ProtonMail may also be obligated to monitor the IP addresses which are being used to access the ProtonMail accounts which are engaged in criminal activities“). ProtonMail even men…
Comment linking /2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/
on “Response to false statements on surveillance made by Martin Steiger”Martin Steiger also responded. Addendum 2 in his blog article [1]: Tonight, on 29 May 2019, ProtonMail responded to this article with a blog post entitled „Response to false statements on surveillance made by Martin Steiger“. (This article was published on 23 May 2019 and not „earlier today“ as claimed by ProtonMail.) ProtonMail claims that this article is „factually incorrect“ and states first and foremost that it…
Comment linking /2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/
on “Response to false statements on surveillance made by Martin Steiger”In switzerland .. ..it is legal to track anyone with a gps tracker on a car. https://steigerlegal.ch/2018/02/02/gps-tracker-urteil/ ..it is legal for cellphone provider to sell customer position data. Swisscom for sure does it. You have to op-out by yourself.
Comment linking /2018/02/02/gps-tracker-urteil/
on “Verizon, AT&T and Sprint to Limit Sales of Cellphone Location Data”https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surv...
Comment linking /2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/
on “ProtonMail v3.16”Notes: Title is taken from the text, as clearer than the translated article title. Link is to a translation of the original German in https://steigerlegal.ch/2021/08/02/protonmail-daten-usa/
Comment linking /2021/08/02/protonmail-daten-usa/
on “ProtonMail “secure email service” delivers user data to security authorities”
