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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."
saying 'Liberal' in Sweden is not the same as saying 'liberal' in the USA. Of the two major Swedish political parties, the liberals are the more right leaning. In the US however, both swedish parties however would be generally considered to be left of the Democrats.
(Generally, I don't find terms like 'left' or 'right' helpful for a serious political discussion, but it will do for slashdot)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
... over here, not members of opposing parties are opening the respective other boxes, but email is illegaly read by members of the own conservative party CDU without consent... See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77680 for further information (or Googlelated)
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
Just before 2006's Hungarian Parliamentary Election, the Hungarian Socialist Party accused the Alliance of Young Democrats with accessing the private server of theirs. The "proof" was a screenshot from a Win2003 server log showing the host belonging to the party. The accused party countered by showing proof that their internal site was systematically accessed by the other party, also showing logs.
The internal server of the Socialist Party turned out to be a password protected http server containing some upcoming promotional campaign pictures, with some trivial password like hsp:redflower. The pass somehow leaked and thousands of other people viewed it, myself included, before it became a "scandal" and "proof of hacking" and "ServerGate".
I hope the swedish parties are more grown up than to play stupid games like that and I hope the swedish public is more educated than the hungarian, so that they can tell if nothing extraordinarily happened, just some PR hype..
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
1, 84 times not hundred of times.
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
There is an election this month in Sweden. The alleged crime was committed last year and until mars this year but not publicly known until now just before the election.
You take your pick of who has done most to use this to win the election.
Just saying it like it are.
The largest party in sweden would be the social democrats, the second largest party are Moderaterna, the liberal party would be the third largest. And your placement of the parties on an american left-right-scale is not entirely true either.
:)
- Social Democrates, pragmatic power party with an emphasis on a large welfare state and a regulated labour market.
- Moderates, previously somewhat conservative that now have triangulated the social democrates more or less totally.
- Peoples Party - Liberals, Social-liberal party that now could be placed to the right of the moderates.
Since there are seven major parties in sweden instead of two large coalitions like in the United States I find it hard to compare them to either the democrats or the republicans. For example it is hard to find any great amount protectionism in any of the parties platforms, but all favour a welfare state with socialized medicine for example. So you are over-simplifying things a bit too much!
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Hee bor shteer, bom bor shteer doo,
A dish-pi-doo.
Bor bor shteer, lum bor shteer doo,
Bork! Bork! Bork!
Shteer!
Sheeba shleeba goo, dish mooga hacken PC. Ung gish libo hacken PC, mish gee looder bouffer ooverfloo. Gee pish der bouffer ooverfloo mish der leety scripty in der shellcode mik joo inken Intel assoumbler. Fish, ung gish leeber scannen porten mooga funky nmap, bish der open port shif lish der foorwoll. Dish skel loder mish der leety scripty, spur gifor der bouffer ooverfloo, ung desh ooger morgen der stackenschmoosher! Ung gesh, mooga dish spur lorger hacken PC!
The enemies list and the dirty tricks were an offense against the spirit of democracy, but as you say that wasn't Watergate.
The break in at the Watergate was not most of the Watergate story, although it was the germ from which the scandal of Watergate grew. It was, as you say, just dirty tricks.
What Watergate was about was about the Nixon administration trying to cover up the Watergate break in, and in the course of doing so using the powers of the Presidency to undermine the law. Every American has been taught: the powers of the President are granted to uphold the law and defend the nation. It is obvious to all but the most partisan Americans that when a President uses his powers to undermine the law, it is an abomination that strikes at the foundation of our nation's identity.
The single act that fatally poisoned the Nixon presidency was when he fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor, for getting too close to the truth. When he was fired, he said this: "Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." It was a ringing endorsement of the American people, and a throwing down of the guantlet in the court of public opinion. My mother-in-law was a Harvard Law School secretary for many years, and Archibald Cox was one of "her" professors. During the Iran Contra scandal, he remarked to her that it was unlikely that much would come of it, because when a President decides to break the law, there is really no practical way to stop him, unless the American people rise up against him. In Watergate, American public opinion rose up agains the President. In Iran Contra, it may have disagreed with him, but it did not rise up as a whole.
Over the many years I've been following politics, one thing has become very clear: democracy doesn't ensure that politicians pursue wise or virtuous policies. Vietnam, the Watergate coverup, Iran-Contra, the second Iraw War; no practical democratic system can prevent such misadventures from starting.
The great virtue of democracy lies not in preventing folly, but in the inevitability of people doing collectively what individuals who have identified themselves with a disasterous plan seldom can: they change their mind.
I like to remember this when prospects for my country look bleak, so that I can never be totally discouraged. Over time, there are truths that are too large and connected to too many lives to be hidden. Inevitably, the scales fall from the people's eyes, and when that day comes it is a day of reckoning for politicians who pursue the Big Lie. It does not prevent untold harm from befalling; indeed it is only great harm that brings this about. But as long as there is any memory of democracy, any shred of the democratic spirit left in us, we will exercise the greatest democratic right of all: throwing the bums out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...how is the Pirate Party (www.piratpartiet.se) coming out in the polls recently? Any swedes who could tell us?
While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates ;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the June-list. The first one was formed as a response to a percieved lack of feministic issues being discussed in the national theatre (I'm a rabid feminist, it's an extremely important issue for me, but unfortunatly, the leaders if FI are, well, insane). The second one, Juni-listan (the June-list), was a party that was formed at the last swedish referendum (whether we should join the European Monatery Union and start using the Euro) as a rabid anti-EU party. Both are now trying to get into the parliament. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, but the Pirate Party has unfortunatly no chance of getting any seats. I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...a Swedish Liberal is more like a Canadian Liberal, which is to say that a Liberal doesn't really have any concrete principles except to say and do whatever might help them achieve and maintain power ;-)
As others have observerd here, politics outside the US is far more complicated than "left and right" (hell, even US politics has more dimension than that, though the fact that only two parties have power simplifies things). Even the Canadian landscape is far different politically and in some ways mirrors the Swedish situation. For those non-Canadian readers:
Canada's federal parliament has 4 official parties, which dont exactly fall evenly on a political left-right spectrum...cynically, they are:
1. The Conservative party currently leads a minority government (largest portion of the commons but still less than 50%). It is also the youngest federal party in Canada (it has only ran in two elections--2004 and 2006). It came into being largely because of a coalition of some disaffected MPs from two now-defunct right-of-centre parties (The Alliance and Progressive-Conservatives/PCs). This un-official coalition ended when the Alliance chose a new leader (the current Prime Minister), and a formal merger was achieved not long after the PCs chose their new leader (now deputy leader of the Conservatives and current Foreign Affairs minister). Because of this heritage, the Conservative party is a fairly mixed-bag of vaguely right-wing principles. The Alliance generally represented the "far right" (equivalent to moderate US Republicans) though in acutality it was an almost evenly-split coalition of populitsts, social conservatives and libertarians. The Progressive-Conservatives (which sounds like an oxymoron to many people) were nominally right-of-centre in that they were socially "progressive" (protect socialised medicine, support gay marriage, strong central government) but economically conservative (scrap costly gun control, support free trade, outlaw deficits...).
Despite PM Harper being described by his critics on the left as "shrub" or "George's puppet" or other such nasty ways, suggesting that he and his party are nothing more than far-right republicans, Harper himself is acually from the libertarian faction of this large "right wing" coalition. Though he is a regular church-goer he is loathe to legislate morality and evasive on subject such as gay marriage (he'd generally prefer to defer such moral decisions to free votes in Parliament). This lets him get out of having to put the coalition in jeopardy by angering the social conservative support base and appeals to the populist demand for more direct democracy.
Disappointingly to most Conservative supporters the party is viewed as the "least bad" of all the parties. Populists want more action on democratic reform and more openness in goverment than we've been getting recently. Social conservatives would like more vocal defence of thier values by their learder and MPs (which would probably scare off most Conservative support realistically). Libertarians are frustrated at pledging support for large government programmes like mandatory universal healthcare. The one thing that truly unites this party is economic conservatism, and it support is not realy solid--it retains its support basically because it has acutally kept most of its election promises. A study was recently done and quite literally it is the first government that has kept more than half its election promises since, like world war II.
2. The Liberal Party is the official opposition though it has held power for most of Canada's history as a nation. It, well, stands for nothing in particular. Ironically the Liberal's are probably best described as "classiclally conservative" as they support (or at least pay lip service to) "traditional Canadian values". These values are not "bic C" Conservative (what we'd call right wing), but it does fall under the definition of a "classic conservative" (which is to day, they advocate the preservation of