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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
Guy : Honey, I think we should start seeing other people .. SMACK
Gal : I can't believe you are saying that, I thought our relationship was strong
Guy : I don't know why you're so upset, I've been seeing others for 10 years now, hasn't bothered you yet
Gal : You've been doing WHAT?!>
Guy : Oh, uh, I mean, well, did I say 10years, I meant
Yeah, well it's not like Sweden has a document like the US Constitution that prot....ect......s.... its um, citizens from....... Er..... Nevermind.
Revolution!
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
.. that data mining doesn't work.
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
FRA has always been listening to "international" traffic (radio, satellite etc), not cable/telephone. Most countries do that. Olofsson doesn't really know what she is talking about.
^^
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.'"
That's why they spy on them.
Everyone knows what they've been saying on the phone: endless variants on "B0rk b0rk b0rk!"
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I'm a Swede and judging from the major news sources FRA (Military radio surveillance agency, basically) has only been allowed to monitor radio based sources (primarily the Russians) and not e.g. cable channels. They have certainly not been sanctioned to wiretap phones which is a police matter and requires a warrant. This is what they want to do, but there's been a massive uproar against this, since they say they want to "only" surveill international communications and technically they cannot distinguish between national and international communications (IP-traffic).
:-)
In fact, they don't wish to at all guarantee that people who've been wiretapped should know about it afterwards - in other words, this is a very sloppy proposal and they are receiving a lot of critisism for it.
They way they say that "this has been going on for ages and we are now just passing a law for it" is nothing but BS, which purpose is to make the matter seem less drastic.
Most likely, the law will be delayed for a year, debated and more restrictions as to what they may surveill be specified. Expect to see protests here any day soon.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
Well, Phill Zimmerman not only gave a heads up in 1991, he gave to the tools to use to do something about it. According to even a slow beast as the European Parliament, you should already be encrypting your e-mail. It's warning is from 2001, read and weep:
29. Urges the Commission and Member States to devise appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and above all to support projects aimed at developing user-friendly open-source encryption software; 30. Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes; 31. Calls on the Commission to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the "least reliable" category; 32. Calls on the European institutions and the public administrations of the Member States systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm; 33. Calls on the Community institutions and the public administrations of the Member States to provide training for their staff and make their staff familiar with new encryption technologies and techniques by means of the necessary practical training and courses; — from European Parliament resolution on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI))Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
In my country we have a constitution that protects our rights from invasion by the government. I could say wahtever I wanted to about President Bush and suffer no consequences at all.
I for one would never say anything bad about President Bush though, even though I know the FBI/CIA/Whaterver aren't listening to me. That would just be silly.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Well, I too graduated from the "American Public Education System" but I am well aware that they are two independant countries. Are you sure you really graduated?
Posts like this annoy me. Are you saying you were actively taught they were on country? I doubt that. The only other explaination is your total lack of interest in world geography. Even one cursory look at a map of Europe and you would know.
For example 90% of internet traffic from Finland to international destinations goes through Sweden. Which means that Swedes may be able to spy on Finnish traffic as well.
This causes problems because in Finland your mailbox (and of course e-mail traveling to it) is protected by legislation to be your private space. For example your employer has no right to go and look at its contents without your permission even if they own the equipment and the disk space and it contains valuable company information. Of course there are provisions for accessing your e-mail if you happen to be run over by a truck, but in that case the employer has to document when the mailbox was opened, who were present, what was read/removed etc. This applies to e-mail logs to some extent as well.
Sooooo, if you are a company offering e-mail to your employees in Finland but hosting the e-mail servers in Sweden, this Swedish initiative may mean that you are in violation of Finnish laws because outsiders can get access to the mail traffic. The Finnish authorities have taken the view that if this becomes reality, the e-mail servers for Finns need to be moved to Finland.
Long live Nordic co-operation!
>And when a government doesn't need a warrant to tap a phone, then you're well on the road to fascism.
How very ironic you are posting this in a thread about a country that has been chiding the US for its policy on this very issue for years. Always posing as the civilized bastion of liberty looking with disdain on US policy for tracking terrorists, and in many cases harboring known terrorists from extradition.
As long as there are legal prohibitions against use of this information to catch petty drug crimes etc, the march to fascism is pretty much stalled in its tracks.
But do come back and share your thoughts when the airplanes hit your buildings.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
That's not ironic. Ironic is their making a statement that they've been tapping people's phones all along in an attempt to make people feel better.
I live in the US, so the airplanes already hit my buildings. And I also live in a country well on its way to fascism. I don't need to live in a utopia to point out the failings of repressive and overreaching governments.
And the simple fact is that if we hadn't been using the Taleban to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, they would never have been in a position to do what they did. In fact they probably never would have ended up deciding that we were the great satan or what have you.
Throughout history, terrorism has tended to occur most when there actually is a wrong that needs righting. I'm not sure whether or not doing wrong is a valid response to doing wrong; frankly I have a hard time making that judgment call because I've never been in their shoes. I've never been part of an organization that was trained and equipped by the US, then abandoned and left to die when we were no longer useful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've had one of the more famous professors in data mining directly tell us how stupid it is to try and find "terrorism" in these sorts of data sets. There are too few training data points (actual terrorists) and too much data with a lot of variability. In essence false positives alone would make it all worthless. Now of course some people in the field disagree but those are also usually the ones who stand to make a pretty penny if governments do go this route.
So soon we may no longer have many freedoms but at least I'll have guaranteed employment.
2. Fundamental Rights and Freedoms
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
.. the target of terrorist attacks or under threat from WMD's?
Things are pretty rough if a country that doesn't even suffer from the /illusion/ of terrorist threat* can go to such lengths to violate their people's privacy in the name of security. Makes one think that maybe it's a part of human nature to overreact, or something.
Random statistics from the internet, demonstrating I at least made a half-assed attempt to research this comment: Terrorist "Incidents" in the past 40 years. Sweden is way down at #60, U.S. at #15. Interestingly, per-capita stats place Sweden at the same rank, but the U.S. way down at #93. Of course, this statistic may be entirely meaningless - but I guess it does show something, in terms of the tax base supporting the respective anti-terrorism efforts vs. actual risk.
* - (such as the illusion of threat we have in the U.S. At least people hate us here. Who hates the Swedes? The Finns, I guess... Or the Geats.)
You can be better and still suck. I hear news like this and get feelings of disgust, but I'd still rather live in Sweden than here in the USA.
And how much would Sweden have to suck before it stars being worse than the USA? The exercise goes like this: Start taking away (alleged) Swedish liberties one by one, and raise your hand when the liberty removed breaches the threshold and causes living in the USA to be preferable to Sweden.
If you run that exersie through your mind and discover that you still feel disgust and disdain for the USA no matter how many (alleged) Swedish liberties you remove, then voila: you're an anti-American. It means that you define the USA as the evil enemy. It means that all the prattle about rights and liberties and "police state" is rhetoric. In other words, you don't really give a shit about rights or liberties. It means that you care about weakening or destroying that which you have defined, regardless of any evidence, as evil to begin with: the USA.
Does this apply to you? That question is not only for the parent poster. It's for anyone who is reading this.
I remember debating with my fully-"progressive" sister who because zealotized when she moved to the UK. In one conversation, she blurted out at me, "The United States has the WORST human rights record!" In response, I asked her, "Really? Worse than North Korea?"
I got a deer-in-the-headlights look that I'll remember fondly for the rest of my life. However, her inability to answer merely showed weakness in her resolve. If she were fully committed to the anti-American cause, then she would have revved up the engine that robotically bleats out, "All of the information you've been told by the Imperial and Greedy Western Media about the glorious People's State of North Korea is LIES! They can feed all of their citizens if not for Western Greed and Imperialism! They need nuclear weapons to defend themselves against Greedy Capitalist Imperialist pigs from the West!"
That's the litany of the anti-American zealot. And that type of zealotry is just like all other types of zealotry: full devotion to the cause (whatever it may be) is of prime importance. All other concerns, including facts, logic, human life, happiness, etc, are secondary. It sounds an awful lot like Ash on the Nostromo, doesn't it? Robotic, cruel, and stupid.
But you can't call it unprincipled. And that's precisely why it's attractive.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Sweden has a "proud" tradition of big-brotherism.
Bewteen 1936 and 1978 we had the IB (information bureau, it held a few other names through it's existence but IB is the one most used to refer to them), a vast network of informers in every major workplace in Sweden. When they were exposed to the world in the seventies, a law was made saying that the state cannot register the political opinions of the citizens. This was obviously just window dressing, and the SÄPO (Security police) essentially continued the work of the disbanded IB (as you can read in the annual report of the security police at their website), if without their extensive network of informers.
The pirate bay is of very little political importance and of no risk to "national security" (as opposed to political opposition) and therefore the Swedish state does not care very much about them.
granted this makes a good point about how pervasive misandry is in that the original poster automatically placed the male as the cheater
Are you saying that I hate myself? I guess I could have said "person1" and "person2", since had I switched the genders around then I could also be accused of being a misogynist (or maybe more correctly that my statement was misogynistic).
but you could have used a slightly more diplomatic way to draw attention to it
How about:
Gal : Honey, I think we should start seeing other people.
Guy : That's funny I was thinking the same thing.
Gal : Oh, you were?
Guy : Yeah, as a matter of fact I've been thinking about it for years now
Gal : You have?
Guy : Yup, I figured our relationship was strong enough to take it to the next level
Gal : Yeah, I guess
Guy : Glad you feel that way, by the way, what would you say to a threesoSMACK
Guy : Thought so
This is not in reference to wiretaps, which the police may use with a warrant, but an all pervasive monitoring of all traffic passing Sweden's national borders (talk about archaic perspectives). The surveillance in question is not performed by the police, but by FRA; military intelligence.
L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.
Just because something becomes technologically possible (i.e. mass screening of emails) does not suddenly make it ok. No-one would have accepted such things in the days of snail nail. Can you imagine a democratic leader in the 80s explaining why everyone's letters needed to be steamed open and photocopied to counter the threat of the Soviet Union?
You're much more likely to be killed in a violent mugging than by terrorists. Does that mean we should allow mass email screening to identify muggers? Would they be stupid enough to discuss mugging people in emails if they knew everything was being screened? Of course not, and terrorists aren't stupid enough to discuss terrorism either.
Even if it did catch a few terrorists it's not worth giving up your freedoms for anymore that it would be worth giving them up for the possibility of catching a few more violent criminals. It doesn't take much for a democratic system to lurch towards tyranny and it is the height of stupidity to provide the facilities that make it possible.
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.