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Sweden Admits Tapping Citizens' Phones for Decades
paulraps writes "Sweden is close to implementing new surveillance legislation that will include the monitoring of emails, telephone calls and keyword searches using advanced pattern analysis. The objective is to detect 'threats such as terrorism, IT attacks or the spread of weapons of mass destruction' but the proposals have divided the country. In a misguided attempt to put people at ease, the government admitted that Sweden has been tapping its citizens' phones for decades anyway."
The software to encrypt your information is free. If you don't use it you have to assume that people are reading your information...
Deleted
Strange country they got there. On one hand they have the Pirate Bay, wich runs with impunity, on the other this.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Cause I'd be sooooooo relaxed if my Government tries to pass a law in favour of torture, but only if they admit they've been doing it for ages.
It's like a 7-mile-wide billboard shouting "SORRY, WE HAVE NO FUCKING SHAME"...
My 0.02 cents
People should not be afraid of their Government; Governments should be afraid of their people.
Living With a Nerd
It's not like Sweden is alone. UK + NA have had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON for quite a while.
So all the people who regularly point out how much "better" a society Sweden is than the US, either have to:
- entirely backtrack
- agree that domestic surveillance really ISN'T that big a deal
- just be hypocrites.
(grabs some popcorn)
OK, let's start discussing!
-Styopa
I live in the UK, and we are the surveillance capital of the world. The fact that phones have been tapped for years in other countries as well doesn't surprise me at all.
;-). The fall of the Soviet Union, as it once was, has always puzzled me in that I wonder whether many security services organisations could actually see what was coming.
With the internet I now have the option of securing my communications if I so wish, which isn't really a problem for surveillance at all for legitimate purposes, but this quite clearly scares the security services here and elsewhere because they want to feel like they're in control. Crucially, the security services in many countries now have to give themselves a reason for being, wasting taxpayers money and continuing the old boy's network - which is where the exagerrated levels of terrorism and foreign threats come from. We've had a ton of these arguments in the UK, and none of them stand up to scrutiny or evidence. Apparently, we're facing threats that are even graver than anything seen in World War 2, and yes there are terrorist groups out there in the world, but this is quite obviously ludicrous to any sane person.
However, I don't think that telling citizens that their phones have been unknowingly tapped for decades anyway, so there's nothing to worry about, is exactly the wisest of moves. These security services organisations are so out of their depth now it isn't even funny, especially regarding internet communications. If they wanted to keep themselves in a job then they should have worked harder to keep Communism and the Soviet Union intact
And when a government doesn't need a warrant to tap a phone, then you're well on the road to fascism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even though you're semi-trollish, it's interesting to note that Arabic is one of the biggest minority languages in Sweden. Many governmental services are even available in Arabic. I'd say we're pretty well set in case we'd need to find Arabic translators - there are tons of them already. Not that there are any real terrorist threats to Sweden, Arabic or otherwise.
The point is that a very significant part of all traffic from Finland to the rest of Europe as well as to North America is routed through Sweden. It may be that traffic between Sweden and, say, Russia gets routed through Finland, but the vast majority of international traffic from Finland goes to the west, whereas the same probably can't be said about the communications from Sweden to Russia or so.
I'd also be interested to hear about a single major (and at least partially Swedish) telecom company providing service to a large population in Sweden that houses servers for said services in Finland and routinely routes its traffic through the country as well. On the other hand, it's easy to name at least one such company in Finland. (In fact, it would seem that my ISP's e-mail server, which I don't use, may be located in Sweden, and at least a traceroute shows the packets going through some apparently Swedish routers.)