Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Interesting topic for debate: I understand that at the moment there's very little regulation regarding the monitoring, recording or photography of invalidity or accident claimants (I remember reading about a claimant who was photographed inside his home, by use of telephoto lenses). Since I heard just a bit on SRF2 last night, on the way home, I sat down today to read the text of the initiative (which by the way sounds quite different in English than in German). I quote:

English:
German:
But in any case, on the surface, it seems to just want to limit the means and venues where a claimant can be put under surveillance. On the other hand, it may be a legitimisation of a total breach of privacy. I know the devil is in the details, but they are notorious for the absence in the text of the initiative vote. Link (in German) to the Abstimmungstext.

How do you folks feel about it? What is important to add to this?

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

The devil is in the surveillance.
If this initiative is voted YES, the insurances will be able to decide, of their own accord, to appoint detectives who will have far more rights to observe someone more invasivley than even the police now currently have.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

That's literally what my colleague sitting next to me said when we spoke about it a few minutes before I created the thread. But I was under the impression that they already do today, and insurers can easily hire investigators and observe them in any shape or form.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Some very interesting differences between the German and the English.

As the law protects the privacy of the house and only allows surveillance in public areas I don't have a problem with it. Particularly as I know one case for certain where someone is defrauding the insurance.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

AFAIK they did but it got stopped by the courts.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

I'm all for checking, including surveilling, where useful and appropriate. But not at a private profit-maximising company's whim, the final "Ok" belongs in a judge's hands.

If the company does indeed have substantiated reason to suspect fraud they should be given the option to get a court ruling allowing them the surveillance. But not without control. How can a private company be given more options than the police!

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Couldn't agree more. But in the text the initiative states:

Which I guess nobody needs an initiative for. You probably need the law to make the recordings admissible in a court.

So my original question still stands. If the initiative wants to allow companies to record individuals in public spaces (which you can do without any special permission)...what's the whole point of the initiative? To formalise the process, limit their "invasiveness" and make the gathered documentation admissible? Or is it a legitimisation of a breach of privacy in the hands of firms?

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Actually it's not a private company maximising profit. This is about Socialversicherung - about people drawing STATE benefits (whether federal, cantonal or local community).

This would cover mainly people claiming to be disabled or sick but are not (which is the case I referred to above) or people claiming social insurance/ALV but working for example. Basically people defrauding those of us that pay tax.

Edit - also the powers are considerably lower than the police. There's a nice little chart in the explanatory booklet.
https://www.admin.ch/dam/gov/de/Doku...ber%202018.pdf

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Yeah, but it also includes accident insurance.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

I believe the point of the initiative is to permit surveillance under certain limited conditions when there is sufficient cause. The courts basically took away this ability observing that Swiss law did not allow it (neither did Swiss law outlaw it).

It provides some legal rights to the person being watched, for example, by requiring that they be told of the surveillance after the fact.

I think it’s a good balance. There are less than honest people out there and agencies do need legal certainty to do their job. On the other hand people should not be harassed should their curtain twitching neighbours believe they are cheating, when they are not.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Well for many people that's SUVA which is government (I know not us). I'm not sure if only SUVA have the power anyway - would need to burrow into the overall law to find out which I'm not going to do.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Private investigators today don't have any more rights than you or I. In other words, there are clear limits to what they can do and how they can go about finding things out.

OTOH, it's not clear to me what additional rights the new law would give them.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Nope. You are not allowed to make pictures or make sound recordings of me, even if I am at a public space. In fact we have very strict laws about this here, remember the rules google has to follow here!

The initiative is trying to give insurances (and no, not only IV) rights, nobody but the police/court has. And should have.

An other thing is that the desired law is far too general/wishi washi.
And would you believe, when this was - once again - pointed out, the moderator of Rundschau last night said: "But we have the word of Mr. Berset that the things you mention will never happen" :eek: (Mr. Berset is this year's Federal President for those who don't know).
Since when do we make laws based on promises of politicians, politicians who will be back in line of THE seven before this law is even implemented and totally out of the Bundesrat - or even politics - within a few years?!
Will we call him regularly and ask him "so how was this meant to be handled" / "but you said ..... "? ROFL.

Insurances are welcome to investigate on fraud. The official, existing, legal way. I'd even say, the have a responsibility to do so in case of doubt.
The official, existing, legal way. Oh, I said that already. :msnsarcastic:

Not to mention the abuse the other way around. How often will an insurance hire one private investigator if he returns several times with "no results", meaning confirming the insuree's entitlement?

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

I have a bad feeling about this.

I have friends who grew up under communism and learn from an early age to always be looking over their shoulder. If the same person appeared to be behind you a little too often or the same car following yours a little too often you mght assume the worst. The resulst are distrust between people which in extreme cases might even lead to vigilante violence against somebody who is inoocent but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time once too often.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

I didn't know that. So this is an attempt at legitimising invasions of privacy that other laws DO protect. I wonder why the Bundesrat is recommending a YES vote. :rolleyes:

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

The thing about disabilities resulting from health issues, (be they illnesses or accidents, and even congenital defects), is that only very few of them are fixed and unchangable.

The person who cannot see anything at all is completely blind, and that is so at all times, day and night, and it affects everything he or she does. The same is true for a person whose spine injury is irreparrable, such that a wheelchair is essential. There is no doubt about the gap between their conditions and full health.

The very great majority of health issues, however, are less absolute. They are not visible to the untrained eye, and sometimes not even to the trained one. This is either because the symptoms don't show on the outside, (like diabetes, bulimia, early-stage multiple sclerosis or HIV-infection), or because it is in the nature of the illness that the symptoms and the ways in which they restrict a person's ability to work and to cope with everyday life fluctuate, (like rheumatism, many mental illnesses, pain, and cardiac conditions).

The sum of the symptoms can be sufficient to make working to earn one's living impossible, yet on a very good day the person might well have some residual skills.

The very intrusive nature of spying on someone, and the psychological stress that can bring, can worsen the person's disability. I know someone who suffers from paranoia, but it comes and goes in waves, and she was doing quite well until this issue came up to vote. Now she turns up her collar, wears a hat, takes a circuitous route between A and B, and closes all her curtains. The notion that it might soon be legal for someone to follow her and film her is very destabilising and destructive to her health.

Even without such a psychiatric disorder, it is a burdensome stress on any ill person to know that he or she could potentially be abandoned to minute scrutiny as soon as they stepped out of their home, and this by a person who is not trained in understanding the outworkings of his/her diseases.

Add to that cultural variations, (like a "stiff upper lip", for example, or the fear of losing face if one is not seen to be working diligiently, or the abhorrence of pity), and there is a good chance that at least some of the objects of observation will be doing their level best to hide their diminished abilities

The potential for misinterpretation is scary.

Another perfidious aspect lies in this variableness of the symptoms. The detective will not see all the many failed attempts a person makes, on the bad days when they don't even leave thier homes. Those people will be under observation on the better days, which in itself already slants the data.

In addition, since the benefits paid out to ill people are often (though admittedly not always) insufficient, sometimes drastically so, the very people who would need a cleaner, a helper along the way, or a driver, don't have those. They have to make much more effort, in areas in which they ought to have help, to stretch themselves beyond what is good for them.

This leads to the paradoxical situation that an ill person who cannot walk far, and can ordinarily carry only very small weights, but needs to eat nevertheless, might be snapped by the detective's camera, just when he's using up his full day's worth of energy and pain-tolerance, and politely smiling all the while, to buy a bag of groceries and get them home. The detective's recordings will, however, not include the patient's "before" nor the "after-effects" of that enormous work.

If this initiative goes through, it will damage people. Since the data collected by these detectives cannot possibly give the full picture, it is likely that some people's benefits will be cut on the basis of the skewed observations.

And that kind of thing will end up clogging the social insurance Courts even more than they already are. The waiting time in canton Zurich, just to get a fully prepared case heard, is already around 1 to 2 years. During that time, the stress on the patient can cause their condition to deteriorate.

As I see it, this spy initiative is just one more amongst an array of measures designed, with guile and malice aforethought, to push the people who need to draw social benefits over the edge. Costs are saved by the Social Security insurance, each time the procedures suceed in driving the insured person to do one of the following:

• simply become more and more ill until they are forced to enter an institution (depleting any assets the person had, and thereafter very expensive for the municipality, but potentially much cheaper for the social security insurances than if the person had stayed at home and been given the benefits they needed, and almost certainly cheaper for the medical insurance)
• capitulate and withdraw their claim on benefits (cheaper for the state because then the relatives, if any, end up supporting the ill person)
• emigrate (much cheaper for the social security than if the insured person continued to live in Switzerland)
• commit suicide or die from the effects of not having their basic needs met (the cheapest and best option for the insurances).

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

This is why we have referenda here. Because we often don't understand why the Bundesrat is recommending something. :)

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

The Bundesrat is recommending a YES vote because they are in favour of reducing the overall amount of claims made for insured Social Security benefits.

They have already done this effectively in several other steps which, in various ways, have made the process of claiming the insured benefits more and more complex, tedious and stressful for the insured persons and their doctors.

By doing so, they have reduced the number of people who dare to claim at all, or at least who manage to sustain the rigours of the procedure long enough to be given their insured benefits, and they further reduce the amount of the payouts by awarding too few and making it ever harder to claim the amount which corresponds to the benefits actually insured.

If this law is passed, it would be another brick in the wall. As such, an excellently cleansing financial plan, as long as one doesn't take regard of the human suffering in which it will result.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Its becoming more and more a DDR country.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

The logic behind this is pretty clear if you read the explanatory document. Basically in the time from 2010 to 2016 they investigated about 150 IV and about a dozen SUVA cases. About half to two thirds were found to be fraudulent.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Like I say. DDR mentality! Why dont they go after those who are REALLY stealing from the people.Because they are sitting in the Government!

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Why not go after both? Those defrauding social security are also stealing from us.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

They go after the weak and socially underpriveleged. Thats Switzerland. Soon they will have ears in every house!

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

The point in this discussion/ballot is not whether fraud should be vetted and punished or not.
The point is by whom.
And investigating fraud is the job of the government agencies (police, court) in this country and not by any Tom, Dick and Harry.

Any Tom, Dick and Harry is free to demand an investigation by the official channels any time though.

If only people would not simply fall for punch-lines and actually study in detail what they are asked to decide about.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Yes vote looking very likely

https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/abst...zialdetektiven

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

From what I hear in conversations on this topic, many people don't seem to grasp the consequences of granting the state such wide-spread powers.

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

And the results were not unexpected: 64.7% for YES, with an attendance rate of 47,5% of voters. Only Jura and Geneva were against it, in particular in bigger cities:

https://i.imgur.com/QdTfBvv.jpg

Re: Initiative: statutory basis for monitoring claimants
 

Indeed. I had to think very long and hard before I voted on this one. There are just too many fraudsters - the system is over-stretched, and must concentrate on those who really need assistance.