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Swiss vote on insurance company spies
GENEVA, Nov 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The thought of a stranger filming you
while you sit on your balcony or work in your garden is likely unsettling to
most.
But imagine if the snoop is a private detective hired by your insurance
company to investigate whether you are a welfare cheat.
That scenario has divided opinion ahead of a Sunday referendum in
Switzerland, part of the country’s direct democracy system, where voters will
decide on legal amendments establishing the type of surveillance insurance
companies can use.
A revised law passed by the government in March gives insurers broad leeway
to spy on potential fraudsters.
It appears set for approval with nearly 60 percent support, according to a
survey conducted this month by the GFS Bern polling and research group.
But critics of the legislation who secured the signatures needed to force
Sunday’s vote say the measures do not prohibit serious, unjustified invasions
of privacy.
– European rights court –
Swiss insurers had for years conducted surveillance of people suspected of
lodging bogus claims.
But that stopped following a 2016 ruling at the European Court of Human
Rights.
In a 6-1 decision, the Strasbourg court agreed with a Swiss plaintiff who
claimed her insurance company’s spying breached privacy rights.
The plaintiff, Savjeta Vukota-Bojic, was struck by a motorcycle in 1995. A
decade later, her insurer requested that she undergo fresh medical
examinations to assess if she still deserved full benefits.
When she refused, her insurer hired detectives to watch her before cutting
her benefits by 90 percent.
Swiss courts said the spying was legal, but the European court disagreed
and specifically criticised Bern for being “insufficiently precise” about the
type of surveillance permitted.
– Public vs private spaces –
Proponents insist the revised law is necessary to control fraud and in turn
keep insurance costs low.
“Honest recipients of insurance benefits have no reason to worry. Their
insurance benefits remain untouched. They are not monitored,” Mauro Tuena,
lawmaker for the rightwing Swiss People’s Party, wrote in an op-ed for public
broadcaster SRF.
But Silvia Schenker, a lawmaker with the centre-left Social Democratic
Party, argued the amendments were hastily written under pressure from
insurance industry lobbyists and lacked “legal clarity.”
Also writing for SRF, she stressed that the law does not expressly prohibit
companies from recording people in private spaces.
“Lawmakers chose this wording deliberately,” she argued. “If they wanted to
limit the space where surveillance is possible, they would have done this.”
The law allows companies or their detectives to record and film people in
public places and in private settings visible from a public place, like a
balcony.
Firms do not need official approval to conduct surveillance, but only
require “concrete indications” of false claims.
Schenker agreed on the importance of curbing fraud, but warned that
companies have repeatedly in the past unjustly spied on people with valid
insurance claims.
“If parliament wants to permit the surveillance of insured individuals, it
must define the limits and requirements clearly and unambiguously,” she said.
– Supreme law –
Another measure on Sunday’s ballot envisions a Switzerland where the
insurance espionage debate might never have emerged, because the European
rights court rulings would not supercede decisions by Swiss judges.
The “Swiss Law First” proposal, backed by rightwing groups, calls for
domestic law to be placed above international law.
Recent polling suggests the measure will be rejected, with the government
opposed and surveys indicating voters are concerned about reputational damage
to Switzerland.
President Alain Berset called it “a dangerous experiment.”
It “not only hurts Switzerland’s reputation, it also causes concrete
problems, especially for the Swiss economy,” Berset said.
“Switzerland has over 600 economic agreements that allow us to export to
other countries,” said Oliver Steimann, of the business lobby group
economiesuisse, who is against the proposal.
If those deals are threatened because Switzerland rebukes international
law, “it would threaten the country’s success as an exporting nation,” he
told AFP.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0935 hrs