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."

Comments

Grow UP

[huckamania]

The article is bombed, but if it is anything like the US program it is common sense.

If a government is prohibited from tapping phone calls originating from their country, then once a terrorist gets into the country, they have carte blanche. It's beyond stupid.

This is not to mention that it is really difficult to know exactly who placed a call, who answered the call, what they are talking about. Believe me folks, they don't care about your petty crimes. They are looking for a well disguised needle in a hay stack. Besides, anything they had on you would be thrown out of court if they ever tried to use it.

Grow up or shut up, but please stop trying to tie our hands.

Re:Grow UP

[Jerry Rivers]

"And when a government doesn't need a warrant to tap a phone, then you're well on the road to fascism."

You mean just like in the US?

Swiss banks Swiss government

[Der Huhn Teufel]

One would think their government would be more secure than their banks are.

Re:Hee hee hee

[R2.0]

Not to worry - the Euoropean horse is so high that, even if they do fall off of it, it will be decades before the plummet to the depths in which the ignorant, fat, jingoistic US citizenry is mired.

Re:strange

[Teun]

The Swedes are very aware of terrorism, it is a little over twenty years ago their Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot and killed.

This is still an unsolved crime.

I await your apology, Sweden

[ccmay]

In my experience, the Swedes criticize the United States more, at least on a per-capita basis, than the citizens of any other civilized nation except perhaps Germany. A great deal of this criticism pertains to things like the PATRIOT Act that offend their exquisitely refined sensibility of human rights.

Now, I am no fan of the PATRIOT Act, starting with its Orwellian title, but I am also sick and tired of being lectured by supercilious Euro-trash. Especially when it is obvious they know nothing about their own internal affairs, much less ours.

All of the countries of Europe have some areas in which they are more free than the US, and some in which they are decidedly less free. They need to get over their conceit that they are somehow better than us in every sphere. It ain't so.

-ccm