NDG Referendum

Current status: On September 25, the people of Switzerland have voted on the NDG. With a majority of 65.5% of votes, the law was accepted.

The referendum against the NDG was successful with 56‘055 valid signatures collected. The people of Switzerland will be asked to vote on the law on September 25, 2016.

On September 25, 2015, the national council accepted the Nachrichtendienstgesetz (or NDG for short). To prevent the law from going into action, we had to to collect the signatures necessary for a Referendum to happen. On a national scale, the signature collecting was organized via nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch. The Chaostreff Bern was supporting the campaign on a local level.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask the mailing list or to email us directly at choasbern [at] chaostreff (dot) ch.

Table of contents

Campaign for votes against the NDG

A number of organizations with focus on Internet technology, and technology-centered politics have come together to oppose the new NDG. These are: Chaos Computer Club Schweiz, Digitale Gesellschaft Schweiz and the Pirate Party Switzerland. They are supported by a number of NGOs: Amnesty International Switzerland, Greenpeace Switzerland, grundrechte.ch and Internet Society Switzerland Chapter.

Collecting signatures in Bern

To coordinate the collecting of signatures in Bern we created a list for each week where interested people could enlist themselves for each day that they wanted to collect signatures on. There used to be a table below containing links to all these lists.

Links

Table of coordination lists

The referendum is over. No more dates for collecting signatures are scheduled.

Pointers for going into action

On the mailing list and at our meetings, we collected some ideas and suggestions for an effective approach to collecting signatures. Here's a short summary:

  • We have to collect 50'000 (fifty-thousand) signatures within 100 days
  • The time range to do so starts on Tuesday, 2015-10-06 and ends on 2016-01-14
  • Sheets to collect signatures are available on nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch
    • Each sheet should contain signatures from people coming from one town only
  • Pages like nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch and schnueffelstaat.ch have lists of arguments against the law. Try to memorize about three of them
  • If you collect votes in public places, it's advisable to be in groups of two or three people
  • When collecting votes in larger groups or if you put down a stand, please check the guidelines of the municipality first
    • Information specific to the city of Bern can be found here here
  • To collect votes on private ground or in non-public places (company compounds, university campuses, ...), an approval is usually required
  • Focus on places where you can meet large quantities of people in a short period of time
    • Also consider what group of people you want to address
    • Technical universities are probably a good place to go
    • Bern has a whole number of universities
  • Digiges has a good collection of links on the topics of NDG and BÜPF
  • If you are looking for someone to go collect signatures with or have any other questions, don't hesitate to contact our mailing list, or to visit us at our weekly meetings
  • Good luck!

Background information

The NDG will grant a lot of power to the national security agency NDB, especially when it comes to surveillance privileges. The methods permitted by the law, recording internet traffic and the use of trojan horses to name just two, are against the principles of the Chaostreff Bern and the CCC-CH. Even more, they violate the very principles of a constitutional state. It must not be that an otherwise transparent and democratic society is financing an organisation that operates in secret and without any real control.

To effectively oppose the law, the Digitale Gesellschaft, the Chaos Computer Club Switzerland, the Swiss Pirate Party and grundrechte.ch have collaboratively founded nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch - a platform to coordinate the collecting of signatures.

The above table was created using a script.