Slashdot Mirror
Sweden's Watergate
An anonymous reader writes, "Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party's internal network has been illegally accessed several hundred times over a period of several months. Party treasurer Tommy Ohlstroem describes the incident as "wide-scale and systematic." Computer security company Sentor's investigation has revealed intrusions originating from computers belonging to Sweden's Liberal Party, and with the upcoming election in only two weeks many commentators are already describing this as Sweden's Watergate (Swedish only). An employee of the Young Liberals has admitted to unauthorized access, but a series of mysterious coincidences in the form of exceptionally well timed public announcements by the Liberal Party suggests the involvement of more than one person."
Seriously, this is not that big of a deal. Not that many people in Sweden cares. One of the major newspaper did a survey and over 70% of the people said they either did not care or that it didn't change what they would vote for.
Sweden is three weeks from a election. It's a time when every newspaper and every TV channel cover the election in some form and where several hundred candidates for various positions make plays for attention every single day. There are currently seven major parties competing for press and at any one time, two of them will most definatly be talking about the same thing. This is normally called a debate or argument or conflicting standpoints or a "talkie" or what-have-you.
The Swedish Liberal party (Folkpartiet) are focusing a very large part of their political campaign towards integration (of immigrants) and school issues. They bring it up every other day, or more often. The Swedish Social Democratic party (Socialdemokraterna) Party are in a defending position and vie for media attention every single day. They don't always discuss school or integration issues, but often enough. To say, as the Dagens Industri ("Industry Today") article does, that it is some sort of conspiracy if the Liberal Party happen to speak on school or integration issues on the same day that the Socialist party do, is an extremely peculiar accusation. If you look for a pattern, you will see that pattern everywhere in nature.
As for the timing of this news release. The Socialist party was informed by Dagens Industri this last Tuesday that the incursions were taking place. Yet the Socialist Party chose to hold public release of this news until yesterday evening, the same evening when Fredrik Reinfelt, leader of the largest party in opposition, the Moderates, was the subject of hearing in public television. Yet more election propaganda, of course, but covered by and questions asked by public service TV journalists.
If you want to talk about coincidences, you might want to look back at the television hearing a few weeks ago when the party Christian Democrat leader was heard in the same show. Before the political analysis of the questions and answers he had given could ever reach the press, the Social Democratic party just happen to "discover" that a (young, again) member of the Christian Democratic party had "spied" on the Social Democratic party. How had she performed this espionage, you ask. Had she hacked the Social Democratic database? Had she broken into the Party headquarters? Or had she perhaps made a single phone call to the Social Democratic election strategy center? Take your pick.
As far as I can smell, there's something fishy about the way information keeps popping out of the Social Democratic headquarters at extremely opportune times. They don't participate in the resulting ruckus, but they do choose when it should be started. Something smells fishy, and it's not my caviar that's doing it.
/ Per
Try living in Sweden. The social democrats are actually working with two communist parties right now. Vänsterpartiet and Miljöpartiet. None of them believe in private companies. I can't stand it but I'm to young to migrate and I really think the blue parties (right wing) will win this election.