BÜPF Referendum

Update: The BÜPF referendum has failed[PDF]] with 41'335 valid signatures handed in. The people of Switzerland will not get to vote on the revised law. Since the referendum is over, no more signatures can be collected.

On March 18, 2016, the national council accepted the revised BÜPF which is short for "Bundesgesetz zur Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs". This is the law that regulates surveillance of communication channels, both on- and offline. The new, revised version of the law though features a whole list of points that restrict the basic rights and freedoms of the people of Switzerland. To prevent the law from going into action, all we can do now, is to collect the necessary votes for a Referendum to happen - and that's exactly what we're going to do. On a national scale, the signature collecting is organized via buepf.ch and the Chaostreff Bern is supporting the campaign.

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

Collecting signatures in Bern

To coordinate the collecting of signatures in Bern we created a list for each week where you could enlist for each day that you want to collect signatures on. The table below contained links to all these lists.

Once you found people who want to go collect signatures on the same day as you, you could arrange the details with them. If you didn't know them or didn't have their contact details, you could just ask on the mailing list.

BÜPF Bern Mailingliste

The Referendum committee provided a mailing list dedicated to the coordination of collecting signatures in the region around Bern. People could use it to find other people to go collect signatures with, to coordinate on dates and places or to organize larger drives. It was possible to subscribe to the list online.

Similar mailing lists were available for most regions of Switzerland. Go check it out.

Links

If you are looking for information on the law or the political process, have a look at these links:

Table of coordination lists

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

Pointers for going into action

  • We have to collect 50'000 (fifty-thousand) signatures within 100 days
  • The 50'000 signatures also need to be checked at the appropriate municipalities within the 100 days
  • This is a lot of work which is coordinated and run from the Hackerspace in Zurich
  • So make sure you send in the sheets as soon as possible, even if the sheet is incomplete!
  • The time range to do so starts on Tuesday, 2016-03-29 and ends on 2016-07-07
  • Sheets to collect signatures will be available on nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch starting on 2016-03-29
    • Each sheet should contain signatures from people coming from one town only
    • Ask people to please write down their information carefully. Unreadable information is disgardet and the signatures becomes worthless
  • Pages like buepf.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
    • A good location to collect signatures is in front of voting bueros, where most people are generally interested in politics
    • Here is a list of voting bueros in Bern
    • Next votes in Bern take place on Sunday, 2016-04-03 and Thursday, 2016-06-05
    • The voting bueros are usually open on Thursdays and Fridays before the voting day
  • 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

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

The above table was created using a script.