Proton is beginning to shift its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland, fearing a fresh bout of government snooping baked into the country’s updated surveillance laws.
The company has confirmed that Lumo, its newly launched AI chatbot positioned as a privacy-friendly ChatGPT rival, is the first to move. Servers for the product are now being housed in Germany, with Norway also in the frame for future operations. This comes amid serious grumbling about amendments to the country’s existing surveillance ordinance, which would force VPNs and messaging apps to identify users and store their data for up to six months.
Proton has been vocal about its opposition since May. In a statement roton’s head of anti-abuse and account security Eamonn Maguire said: “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."
Well, fuck. “You can keep your Nazi gold to yourself, but we need your LLM interactions.”
I don’t think it’s a “shift” so much as an expansion at this point. Although I feel it’s a waste of resources with the EU’s “chat control” coming around for the 3040398th time. Soon I fear it won’t be legal to be private anywhere.
Hear me out: floating datacenters in international waters. lmao
Sealand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
Not in international waters though
Bringing piracy back to its roots
How is it not a shift? It would be an expansion if they were increasing their overall coverage by region in addition to Switzerland, but they’re actually moving their infrastructure out of Switzerland, and not hosting it there after the switch is completed, (other than what I’d assume would be things like a VPN endpoint for those who want it, or any services for Swiss customers that want data to remain entirely within Switzerland) because this law would put them under too much scrutiny.
They even state at the very bottom of this blog post about their new AI features that “Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland”
Sadly though, I agree with you on the chat control part. I don’t think they’ll easily be able to escape this no matter where they go. Any still standing bastions of privacy seem to be falling right before our eyes.
I guess I’ll be a criminal then.