Why? What if they're working for a drug manufacturer trying to find a cure for cancer when they discover that one of the other drugs their employer creates is killing people, but that's being covered up because money. Should those people stop trying to cure cancer or just keep quiet about unnecessary deaths?
What happens if your job is to be a watch dog for oil rigs to make sure they're not polluting local waters or covering up spills? Some rough looking men tell you that you should forget some of what you saw in your last inspection? Should these types of jobs not exist?
What happens if you're just out for a walk late at night because you have insomnia? You just happen to see the chief of police up to some less than ideal actions at 3 in the morning in the park. How would changing your job even help in this scenario?
Sometimes people need to communicate something that could be a problem for their personal safety. And the rest of us as a society dearly need them to do it. And personally, I would like them to be able to do it while also costing them as little as possible. Because otherwise people tend to be quiet about things that should be known by all.
Some people try to make the world a better place. Your message is personal freedoms matters more than my beliefs. That is not true for everyone. Many will turn in their own mother to save themselves others will put their lives on the line to save your mother.
That's the fair point among the objections here, re: HK, because you've identified a state actor doing arguably a wrong thing, but would such a state actor be able to satisfy Swiss law to compel the email vendor here to act?
The other objections are about whistleblowing on private parties, discrimination or in one case a corrupt petty politician/magistrate. None of them would generate a safety concern to someone protected by Swiss law.
Seriously, the folks working the privacy angle on this story need to distinguish themselves from gangsters and organized crime syndicates. One person doing the wrong thing is bad; an organization doing it is a serious public concern and everywhere and always will generate a public response.
If you substituted Substack or a public-facing communication medium I'd be more sympathetic to the outrage at an email vendor complying with Swiss law. Here, however, we're talking about discovery of the identity behind private communications of an undetermined nature in compliance with the law of a mature Western democracy. Sorry folks, you've sometimes got to work within the democratic system to achieve your goals.
It's not like corruption and organise crime doesn't exist in Western countries or governments. For example, the Maltese
journalist Daphne Caruana was killed after reporting on government corruption in Malta, an EU member state.
You really live in a marvelous world, where your communications reflect on your safety only due to career choices and not, let's say, gender, religious, political, or ethnicity related problems.
