Helping migrations

Once a customer has made a decision to switch to Kolab that customer may need a lot of assistance for a smooth transition. Kolab Systems knows that and thus offers complete migration support to customers.

“We help customers in the planning of the entire deployment – from planning of the migration to testing and actual migration. We train their admins so that they can have their own staff run the new system. In short, we offer the entire realm of services or support that a customer may need,” says Greve.

Kolab is the answer to the NSA, GCHQ spying program

A recently highlighted important reason for switching or moving to Kolab is the privacy and assurance that it offers. Kolab, in every true sense, is a far better solution than the one offered by companies like Lavabit and Silent Circle due to its open source base. As Bruce Schneier and Caspar Bowden have highlighted, the chance of subversion of technology is lowest in Open Source.

People like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald used services like these, but when the US pushed these service providers they had only two options – either to comply with the order or shut down. These companies chose the latter option as the US law even prohibits such companies from challenging such draconian orders or going public about them. But in either case the loss is their user. Either the provider will comply with the government and lie to its customers that their privacy is intact or shut down and break the communication.

In either case it’s a lose lose situation.

Free World!

When comparing MyKolab as the hosted platform to any of the above the simple truth is that no US or UK based company can offer such a solution without complying with the government order and lying to their customers that their data is secure. The governments will come after them sooner or later.

Let’s go back and see why those two US-based providers chose to shut down their services. Lavabit founder has made abundantly clear why they shut down their services, but the reason why their competitor chose the same fate is even more worrisome.

Greve opines, “They shut down because they realized that they would be next. Lavabit had the time to shut down when they got the letter from NSA. Lavabit founders realized that there was no way of stopping the NSA from getting their data. So they shut down before NSA reached their server, which was the best option. The NSA did not expect this, I am sure, and consequently took no steps to prevent this from happening. So when Silent Circle saw this they understood that next time the NSA might not send a letter first and give them the choice of shutting down their systems. So they chose to shut down preemptively.”

US has become a very hostile place for privacy

Greve expresses his concern, “What happened to Lavabit was really unsettling. Especially that Ladar Levinson couldn’t even talk about some of what was going on to his lawyer, let alone telling the public. We ought to realize that if he did comply with the order from the NSA none of us would have ever learned about such a request. That makes it a guessing game. Have the other providers truly not been approached by the NSA, or have they complied. It’s deeply disturbing that ultimately we cannot know for certain given the state of legislation in the United States, but apparently also in countries such as Germany.”

That’s where Kolab enters the picture

“We find ourselves in a unique position. Based out of Switzerland which together with Iceland is one of two most free countries in the world in terms of these kinds of surveillance and control of state. So as a technology provider from Switzerland we can’t be compelled to provide any kind of backdoor or special access to the NSA and that’s why we have carefully avoided to be legally affiliated to the United States or other Five Eyes countries,” explains Greve.

Swiss protection

Greve says that “privacy is not something you should apologize for or hide; privacy should be the default. Switzerland is one of the few places in the world that actually allows privacy and protects it. Unlike the US, there is no warrant less access. Here you always have to have a Swiss judge to approve, according to Swiss law, that this request is legitimate and it doesn’t violates the Swiss law. The law states clearly that the crime must be severe, evidence must be concrete and the chance of prosecuting it without getting access must be small for a judge to approve this kind of request. And that decision is always made transparent in anonymized form.”

There was a huge spying scandal in Switzerland back in 80s-90s. After that they dismantled the entire secret service and now there is no one left except for some 50 people who have absolutely no mandate on doing anything inside Switzerland. Now there is a very tightly controlled government body now which can only request access when a judge tells them to do and everything is recorded for transparency. As anywhere, there are political forces trying to weaken that protection for privacy, but the political debate is ongoing.

“So privacy is extremely valuable and strong here. If you run a server in Switzerland you have a big advantage – the lawful interception request from the government will come for an actual crime under Swiss law. And then we get to decide to comply or not with that order because we always apply a four eyes principle before agreeing to provide data to the authorities,” Greve says.

Even when access is requested there is a big difference between the US and Switzerland. If, as mentioned above, there is a request for data based on concrete evidence for crime, then Kolab would have to comply too. “…but even where we have to comply we can at least talk about it because unlike in the US here there is no law that compels you to eternal silence. All the US tech providers are virtually compelled by the law to lie, which is insane.”

Switzerland as a refugee camp

Greve admits that, “It’s an unbearable situation for society in my opinion.” It’s not healthy when users can’t find privacy in their own country and have to go abroad.

“When we set up this service it wasn’t something we were expecting. We thought people would be more concerned about commercial spying through the ‘you’re our product’ providers such as Google, Apple or Microsoft. But now we find ourselves with many users who are concerned about their own government. And there is a lot of interest in this kind of service. And it’s precisely the Swiss basis that makes it a sustainable choice.”