Privacy

Who is responsible

The party responsible for processing your data is Christian Fürst, Tannenweg 12, 6410 Goldau. We answer questions about data protection at fuerscht@gmail.com.

If you only read

When you open a page, our hosting provider processes the usual details of every request: IP address, time, requested address and browser identifier. We need these server logs for operation and troubleshooting; they are deleted after 30 days.

We measure how many people read which pages with Google Analytics (see ‘Usage statistics with Google Analytics’). schwur.ch does not use any advertising services. schwur.ch serves its fonts itself; your browser does not request them from any third party.

Search and interfaces

schwur.ch does not store or analyse what you type into the search. Because the search page carries your search terms in its address (/en/search?q=…), they appear, like every address requested, in the hosting provider's server logs and are deleted with them after 30 days. Suggestions while typing and the search API are treated the same way.

So that no one can overload the search, the server counts how often an IP address searches within the current minute. This number exists only in working memory, is not written anywhere and is forgotten after one minute. For searches made on the search page, our web server passes your IP address to our API for this purpose.

Through the MCP server (schwur.ch/mcp), AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT can search schwur.ch if their users set this up. The requests then come from the provider's servers, not from you; schwur.ch receives only the search terms and the page asked for, does not store them and does not learn who is asking. What you write to your assistant is governed by its provider's privacy policy.

Cookies

schwur.ch itself sets only one cookie, ‘schwur_session’. It is created as soon as you open a page with a discussion or a form for signing in or for your account. It protects the forms against forged requests, keeps you signed in and, if you write without an account, recognises you as the person who wrote your posts. It is technically necessary and contains no advertising identifier.

If you do not sign in, it expires when you close your browser. After you sign in, it expires no later than 14 days after your last visit, and immediately when you sign out.

The next section describes the cookies of Google Analytics.

Usage statistics with Google Analytics

To see which pages are read and how visitors find schwur.ch, we use Google Analytics, a service of Google (for Switzerland and the EU: Google Ireland Limited). When you open a page, your browser loads a script from Google for this purpose and sends Google the page opened without the part after the ‘?’ (so without search terms), its title, the page you came from, details of your browser, operating system, device, screen and language, and your IP address. Google derives an approximate location from the IP address and, according to Google, does not store it.

For this, Google Analytics sets the cookies ‘_ga’ and ‘_ga_…’. They contain a random identifier by which Google recognises your browser on later visits, and they expire after two years. We have switched off Google Signals and the use for personalised advertising. We see only aggregated figures, never individual people, and do not link the statistics to your account.

Google also processes this data in the USA (see ‘Where the data is stored’).

You can prevent the measurement: block Google’s cookies or scripts from googletagmanager.com in your browser, use a tracking blocker or Google’s browser add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout). schwur.ch then works as before. Google’s privacy policy applies in addition.

If you have an account

For your account we store:

• your email address and, if you provide it, your name
• your password only as an irreversible hash (scrypt), never the password itself
• if you sign in with Google, your Google ID
• when you confirmed your address and when you last signed in
• failed sign-in attempts; after five failed attempts we temporarily lock the account
• the language in which we write to you, and your role, for example whether you work in the editorial team
• when and by whom your account was approved

We store links for confirming your address and for resetting your password only as a hash. They are valid for 24 hours and one hour respectively, and only once.

If you work in the editorial team, we log your changes with your account and the time, so that it remains traceable who changed what.

The operator approves new accounts by hand. To do so, the operator sees in a list of all accounts your email address, your name and display name, how you sign in, when you created the account and last signed in, and how many posts you have written. For every new account, the operator receives an email with the address and name. Until your account is approved, you see what one sees without an account. We log approvals and blocks with the time.

When you take part in a discussion

What you write in a discussion is public: your post, your display name or, without an account, the name you choose, marked ‘Guest’, the date and time, and the language you state. We never show your email address or your name.

We also store which account wrote the post and who marked it helpful; only the number is shown. To slow down spam, we count your posts of the last hour.

If you write without an account, we place a random identifier in your cookie and store only a checksum of it with the post. This is how we recognise that you may edit or delete the post, and only for as long as your browser keeps this session. To slow down spam and abuse without an account, we count per connection how often posts were written and checked in the last hour. For this we do not store your IP address but a key that we derive from it with a secret value; the key changes every day and the address cannot be calculated back from it. We delete it after 24 hours.

Before your post appears, our checking agent checks it for personal attacks. For this we send its text, the language, the title of the proposal or news item and, for replies, the post being answered to swissagents, a service we operate ourselves; it assesses the post with Claude, a language model by Anthropic in the USA. Anthropic does not use these inputs to train its models and deletes them within 30 days, unless its automated abuse detection flags a request (then up to two years) or the law requires otherwise. The transfer to the USA is based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the addendum for Switzerland. We store the result, the categories and a checksum of your text, never the text of a rejected draft; checks after which nothing appeared are deleted after 90 days. If you think the check was wrong, you can say why; a person will then look at it. We keep your draft for this only if you agree, and delete it after 90 days.

Twenty AI agents of schwur.ch, the “counter-voices”, also take part in the discussions. They are called “Gegenstimme …”. They deliberately contradict the position of a post, a proposal or a news item, briefly and in Swiss German dialect, and in doing so also reply to your posts. For that we send the title of the proposal or news item and the visible posts of the thread – with display names or guest names, without account IDs and without e-mail addresses – to swissagents, the service we run ourselves; it writes the reply with Claude by Anthropic in the USA, as with the checking of posts. At most twenty such posts a week, never between 11 pm and 8 am, at most three per thread; each goes through the same check as a human post.

If you delete a post, we remove its text and, for a post written without an account, also the name from the database; a placeholder with the date remains so that replies keep their place. If you propose a source, we store its address until the editors have decided or you delete the post. If you have your account deleted, we also delete the text of your posts.

Opinions from podcasts

Under “News”, schwur.ch shows opinions from podcasts whose publishers have agreed. An AI service condenses them from the transcript the publisher provides: swissagents, which we operate ourselves, with Claude by Anthropic in the USA, as for the check of posts. No data about visitors to schwur.ch is sent for this.

Where an opinion names a report or a study, the Redaktor searches the web for the original source, and for names schwur.ch has no entry for yet, for their official identifier; it uses Anthropic’s web search in the USA for this. schwur.ch fetches the documents found itself, keeps a copy as evidence and links the original at its publisher. Where an opinion names a former member of the Federal Assembly, we add them with their seats in the councils only, as parlament.ch publishes them.

For ballot proposals the appraiser (Gutachter), another AI agent of schwur.ch, writes objections and arguments from the supporters' and the opponents' view. For this we send the proposal's title and description, its impacts with the evidence they cite and excerpts of the official texts to swissagents, the service we run ourselves; it writes the answer with Claude by Anthropic in the USA. For the sources it names it searches the web (Anthropic, USA). No personal data is involved; your posts and your account are never sent.

Details of members of the councils

For the members of the Federal Assembly, schwur.ch shows contact details that are public:

• email addresses, telephone numbers, websites and addresses that the member released for publication with the Parliamentary Services, taken from their open data
• social media accounts and websites listed for the member on Wikidata
• social media accounts that the member’s own website links to. For this, schwur.ch fetches the home page, as far as the website’s robots.txt allows it, and takes over only accounts that bear the member’s name.
• social media accounts that the member does not state anywhere themselves, where the editors have checked with evidence that they are the member’s, for instance on their party’s page. The evidence is shown with the detail; we record who decided and when.

Every detail states where it comes from and when we retrieved it. If the member changes or removes a detail at the source, schwur.ch follows with the next retrieval. We keep earlier retrievals as a record; only the newest one is shown.

Of the accounts on X, Bluesky, Mastodon and YouTube listed here, a service we run ourselves retrieves the public posts, so that schwur.ch can show the members’ statements. A member can object to this with a message to fuerscht@gmail.com, for one account or for all; the account then stays linked but is no longer read.

New public posts of these accounts are screened by an AI agent, the “Chronist”. For this we send their text, their links and the image descriptions the network provides, who wrote them, when and on which network, and a list of the entries on schwur.ch to swissagents, a service we operate ourselves; it assesses the posts with Claude, a language model by Anthropic in the USA. Anthropic does not use these inputs to train its models and deletes them within 30 days, unless its automated abuse detection flags a request (then up to two years) or the law requires otherwise. The transfer to the USA is based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the addendum for Switzerland, as for the check of posts in the discussions (see “When you take part in a discussion”). No data about visitors to schwur.ch is sent for this.

Only a post that concerns an entry on schwur.ch, such as a proposal, a person, a body or a news item, becomes a statement. The statement renders the gist of what the member wrote, names them and links to the original. schwur.ch does not store the text of the posts, only their link, date and time, language and a checksum of the text. If the member deletes the original, we withdraw the statement as soon as the daily check notices; if they change the original, the editors look at the statement again.

If a statement does not render the member correctly, they can request a correction at fuerscht@gmail.com; every statement has a link for this, as for the objection to reading.

If a member does not want a detail shown here, a message to fuerscht@gmail.com is enough; we will no longer show it.

From a member’s ballots on the proposals of schwur.ch, schwur.ch forms one figure: the share of ballots on their group’s line, final votes weighing more. The sum is shown with the figure, every ballot against the line is linked. schwur.ch keeps no ranking.

People & network

Under «Confederation», «People & network», schwur.ch shows which public functions and disclosed ties people around the Confederation have. The details come only from official publications:

• the open data of the Parliamentary Services: members of the councils, committees, parliamentary groups, parties and the register of interests
• the Federal Council’s pages on admin.ch
• the register of parliamentary intergroups
• the lists of people with access to the Parliament Building
• the political-funding disclosures published by the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO)
• the Federal Chancellery's Staatskalender (the heads of the administrative units)
• the websites of the Federal Supreme Court, the Federal Criminal Court, the Federal Administrative Court and the Federal Patent Court
• the Federal Chancellery's directory of governing bodies (LINDAS) and the annual reports of the Confederation's enterprises

Since 18.09.2026 we also show the people at the head of the federal administration, the judges of the federal courts, and the boards and executive boards of the Confederation's enterprises and institutions: with function, office, court or enterprise and term as the source gives them, and for full-time judges the party where the court states it. We take no dates of birth, places of origin, CVs, employers, addresses, contact details or photos; from these sources we therefore keep only an extract of the details taken as evidence. A function that has ended is no longer shown four years after its end.

For political funding we show reported donations with their amount, date, recipient and source, and totals per donor organisation and year. We link natural persons only to public officeholders already present, after the editors have checked their identity and recorded a reason. Unassigned personal names do not appear in funding relations. We retain the unchanged official exports as evidence.

We show people with an access badge only with their name, category and function as the list gives them, under the member who issued the badge. They have no page of their own and cannot be searched for. Guests without a function or organisation are only counted. From the register of intergroups we take the organisation that runs the secretariat, never names, telephone numbers or addresses.

Only signed-in users see the declarations in the register of interests and the access badges; without signing in, a notice stands in their place. This also applies to the network and its exports.

Every detail names its source and when it was retrieved; we keep the retrieved documents as a record. When a detail ends at the source, we record that. Anyone who is in the network only through an access badge is shown nowhere two years after their last detail ended.

If a detail is wrong, or you want to know what we have stored about you, write to fuerscht@gmail.com. We record every correction with its reason and no longer show the detail afterwards.

Signing in with Google

If you choose ‘Continue with Google’, you sign in with Google. Google then sends us your Google ID, your email address as verified by Google and your name. We request nothing more. We do not store a profile picture that Google sends along; we have no access to any other data in your Google account.

Google’s privacy policy also applies to signing in with Google.

Emails

We only write to you when you trigger it: to confirm your address, to reset your password and when the operator activates your account. If you order it, we also send you the e-mail “Gegen die Linie” on sitting days (see below). We do not send advertising.

Zavu (Zavu Labs Inc., USA) delivers these emails for us, through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon Web Services, USA). For this, Zavu receives your email address and the subject and text of the email, and automatically checks the text for abuse before sending it. The sender shown is notifications@agilentics.com, an address we use for several of our services; the subject starts with “[schwur.ch]”. We do not have it measured whether you open an email or click a link in it. Zavu stops delivering to an address that rejects an email or reports it as spam. We delete the content of an email on our side as soon as Zavu has accepted it, at the latest after 24 hours; according to Zavu, it keeps the content for 90 days. The same applies to the email the operator receives about each new account. On the transfer to the USA, see “Where the data is stored”.

The e-mail “Gegen die Linie”

You can order the e-mail “Gegen die Linie” without an account. For this we store your e-mail address, the canton if you choose one, and when you ordered and confirmed it. We first send you an e-mail with a confirmation link; only once you click it do you receive the e-mail on every sitting day of Parliament at 22:30. If you do not confirm, we delete the address after seven days.

To slow down abuse of the form, we count per connection how often it was sent in the last hour, in the same way as for posts without an account: with a key derived from your IP address that changes every day, not with the address itself, deleted after 24 hours.

Every e-mail contains a link to unsubscribe. If you unsubscribe, we delete your e-mail address and the canton. We keep the e-mails sent as a record of what was sent and when; they do not contain your address. The e-mail is delivered like all our e-mails, see “Emails”.

Where the data is stored

schwur.ch runs on a server of Infomaniak Network SA in Switzerland. The database, the stored sources and the server logs are located there. Encrypted backups of them are kept at Google Cloud (Google LLC) in the Zurich region; only we hold the key. Until the move of 21 October 2026 is wound up, by the end of November 2026 at the latest, a frozen copy of the former database also remains at Google in the USA. Google also processes the Google Analytics data in the USA, among other places.

Google LLC is certified under the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Since 15 September 2024, the Federal Council has recognised that companies certified in this way provide an adequate level of data protection. This also applies to Amazon Web Services, through which our emails are sent. Zavu Labs Inc., which delivers them, is not certified in this way; the transfer to Zavu is based on the EU standard contractual clauses.

How long we store data

Account data until you have your account deleted. Server logs for 30 days, the keys used to slow down spam on posts without an account for 24 hours. Google keeps the Google Analytics data for two months. Links for confirmation and for resetting can no longer be used once they have expired.

Your rights

You can ask at any time what we store about you, have incorrect details corrected and have your account deleted. To do so, write to fuerscht@gmail.com; we reply within 30 days. When deleting your account, we remove your email address, your name and your sign-in details.

If you do not agree with our reply, you can contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

Changes

If we change what we store, we update this page beforehand. The date below shows when it was last updated.