>Switzerland isn't special, they're in the NATO sphere of influence and (behind the scene) can't say no to big brother.

As you can read the owner was the CIA and the BND [1] and NOT FIS. BUT:

>>According to a Swiss parliamentary investigation, "Swiss intelligence service were aware of and benefited from the Zug-based firm Crypto AG’s involvement in the US-led spying".

[1]The company was secretly purchased for US $5.75 million and jointly owned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1970 until about 1993.

Yeah, let’s not forget https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-12-06/swi...

I’m not under any illusion that there’s any “Swiss exceptionalism” when it comes to privacy.

Proton lost my trust when every time you open their webmail they shove PLEASE UPGRADE TO A BETTER PLAN in your face or YOU CAN NOW HAVE PROTON VPN AND PROTON DRIVE FOR $9 PER MONTH if you have the free plan.

It's a very sketchy behavior for a company that says they care about your privacy.

I wouldn't be too surprised if any other "sphere" also has its Swiss front to sell neutral tech that totally doesn't support the mothership.

Switzerland is relatively consistent in offering equal treatment, so maybe it'll eventually turn out that some outlet or another is controlled and manipulated in sinister ways by China, India, or maybe the Vatican or Bhutan.

Finding a Vatican conspiracy would be quite interesting

> I have a Proton account by the way, but I'm not under the illusion that my emails are safe from 3 letter agencies.

Absolutely correct.

Nor are they safe from the Swiss government either.

You're not even safe from the French police, let alone the NSA

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-addre...

This case in fact proves that we provide privacy by default, as it shows that no legal request can bypass the encryprion we provide. The email content (including attachments, calendars, files on Proton Drive and items on Proton Pass) stored encrypted on our servers remains inaccessible to us due to zero-access architecture we use ( https://proton.me/blog/zero-access-encryption ), and therefore, we are not able to share it with any third-parties in an unencrypted form.

We understand your concerns, however there is no comparison between Crypto AG and us. Our encryption occurs client-side, our cryptographic code is open source ( https://proton.me/community/open-source ), and our tech can and has been independently verified. More about this here: https://proton.me/blog/is-protonmail-trustworthy

Client side encryption can be weakened (by a well placed "bug" for example) as to render it irrelevant.

Our infrastructure is set up in a way that makes it very difficult to target specific users with custom builds.