OXFORD, England-More than a million mobile phone users in Switzerland are under surveillance.
Swisscom secretly is storing historical data that can track the movements of its subscribers’ mobile terminals.
These revelations of wireless snooping were made earlier this year by the Swiss Sunday newspaper Sonntags Zeitung. They caused quite a stir, being quoted widely in the world’s press with reports that the Swiss were outraged. A huge row was inevitable, said the press.
The solid citizens of Switzerland seem to have reacted rather more calmly, carrying on with life in their usual efficient and thorough fashion. The predicted row has yet to materialize.
Switzerland stands out clearly on maps of Europe these days. It is portrayed as a little white island surrounded by a sea of blue. It is in the middle of a continent whose nations are almost all either current or aspiring members of the European Union. But unlike its neighbors, Switzerland has decided to remain outside the union.
The decision was made through a referendum, of course. Almost every decision in Switzerland is the subject of a referendum; it’s the Swiss national sport. But the outcome of that particular referendum was never in doubt.
No one seriously expected Switzerland to join the European Union. Joining would effectively destroy the unique character of the Swiss banking industry, a mainstay of the country’s economy. Switzerland owes its considerable prosperity to its ability to look after other people’s money.
In a discrete fashion.
I lived and worked in Switzerland during the early 1970s. It was a turbulent time in the world-a period when airlines regularly were subjected to terrorist hijackings and bomb threats. My friends advised me to fly Swissair, Switzerland’s national carrier. Terrorist organizations almost certainly hold their money in Switzerland, they argued. Terrorists are hardly likely to embarrass their delightfully discrete bank managers.
The reasoning may have been flawed, but the advice was certainly sound. Swissair was never targeted by terrorists.
More recently, the Swiss banking system has come under attack. The current Nazi gold controversy asserts that some banks were perhaps rather too discrete in handling funds of Holocaust victims.
Nevertheless, discretion still rules today in the Swiss banking system. Bank accounts come with the choice of two interest rates. Choosing the lower rate guarantees that account details will not be disclosed to any third party, particularly not the tax authorities, unless ordered by the courts.
The courts only would issue such an order in the most extreme circumstances; the right to privacy is taken seriously in Switzerland. It needs to be. The Swiss authorities are exceptionally thorough in monitoring the activities of their citizens; they have raised the process of information gathering and control to a fine art.
These attitudes may appear contradictory, but the system seems to work. The result is a prosperous although rather unadventurous society. One that is somewhat bureaucratic but extremely orderly and innately law-abiding. There are plenty of laws to abide by. If it’s not forbidden, then it’s compulsory, say the cynics.
So the revelation that Swisscom stores data from its nationwide network of 3,000 base stations did not really surprise anyone. It certainly did not surprise anyone in the cellular industry. All cellular operators retain such data for network performance and monitoring purposes. There is nothing sinister in the fact that base stations record the location of mobile terminals. That’s the essence of cellular. It’s how the system works.
All cellular operators have the capability to use these data to track the historical movement of mobile terminals and, by implication, their owners. Some already have built such capability into products that could have commercial applications for fleet and work force management amongst their corporate clients.
But Swisscom is not making tracking data available on a commercial basis. It only will release information on the movement of mobile terminals following a court order, which is regarded as perfectly acceptable by the majority of Swiss citizens. They are comfortable with situations where comprehensive data exist, but access to the data is controlled by an individual’s right to privacy. After all, that’s just how their country works.
And the country does work. Runs like clockwork, in fact, as befits a nation of erstwhile watchmakers. Even the trains run on time.
Or at least they used to. The current scandal in Switzerland is not the activities of Swisscom, but the revelation that a significant percentage of trains are now arriving late. A familiar situation in most countries, of course, but completely unacceptable in Switzerland.
Some trains run very late. On a few isolated occasions they even have been reported more than four minutes overdue. Could herald the end of civilization as the Swiss know it.
