Sweden On Verge of Passing Sweeping Wiretap Plan

An anonymous reader writes "No one seems to have noticed that Sweden is close to passing a far-reaching wiretapping program that would greatly expand the government's spying capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country. If a bill before parliament becomes law, the country's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) will monitor all internet traffic that passes in or out of the country. As the article notes, there's a good chance email traveling from, say, the UK to Finland would be fair game, since it's likely to traverse through Sweden before reaching its final destination. So far, there's been nary a peep from Swedish media about the plan."

Comments

But will it pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep seeing these articles that So-n-so is about to pass some law but how many of them actually get passed?

Re:But will it pass?

[nx]

This one is almost certain to pass, a majority of parliament have already professed their coming yes-votes.

Party whips takes care of those who are critical to the law: It was up for a vote last year, but got put on a year-long hold for further debate (which, naturally, never took place). One member of parliament (Fredrick Federley) who was elected on a privacy platform, among other issues, abstained from voting and took so much heat from his party that he'll be voting yes this time around. At least according to his blog.

Re:But will it pass?

[richie2000]

Unless several MPs suddenly grow a spine, this one will pass in less than two weeks.

Re:But will it pass?

[SwedishPenguin]

One member of parliament (Fredrick Federley) who was elected on a privacy platform, among other issues, abstained from voting and took so much heat from his party that he'll be voting yes this time around. What a f*cking coward..
The only parites that have had a consitently negative attitude towards this proposal has been the left party and the greens. One of the will get my vote in the next election.

Re:But will it pass?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually it's quite normal for european members of parliament to be forced to go along with their party's stance. In a few countries the parties can actually override a member's vote on a law.

In all other countries it's easy to get thrown out of a party meaning that you have little chance to ever again make an impact on politics. But sometimes this means that you just got "unelected".

So acting all "courageous" wouldn't have done any good.

But the european system doesn't represent the will of the majority so much as it goes as far as what some 50% of the population will not revolt over (which isn't all that far).

This isn't America were you have coherent government. This is Europe. If you want to understand European politics think "how would a government react if the president were republican, the vice president democratic, the secretary of state republican, ...".

In other words you get the combined downsides of all parties : massive taxes (democrat), sweeping investigative powers (rep.), no freedom of speech (dem.), direct judicial interference by unions (dem.), ...

And if you have an issue like nuclear power, which one of the parties thinks unacceptable, only an absolute majority (which almost never happens, > 66% for one party) can TRY to override it, and even then you'll never hear the end of it on TV.

European governments are utterly blocked and halted things. They never do anything. The EU only manages to do things because it's a completely undemocratic institution governed by unelected (appointed by the prime minister of the respective countries) representatives. In other words : it's like the american executive power : with a few qualifications it's in the hands of one singular person, but it's a law-giving AND executive AND judicial power.

Therefore laws like this don't make sense, since the EU can simply override them. Making them worse (or better, but I've yet to see that happen)

Re:But will it pass?

[SwedishPenguin]

Actually it's quite normal for european members of parliament to be forced to go along with their party's stance. Yes but that doesn't make his position right. If he has the principles he said he had when he was elected (he was elected with person-votes, where if a person gets at least x% of party votes he/she is automatically included among the partys MPs (assuming of course the party gets over 4% of the vote).

Some issues are worth getting thrown out of the party come next election for, this is one of them.

Re:But will it pass?

[plover]

This isn't America were you have coherent government. Thanks; if I had been drinking anything, I would have laughed it out of my nose when I read this!

think "how would a government react if the president were republican, the vice president democratic, the secretary of state republican, ...". But that's not exactly how it works in America. When the powers are split between the parties (executive is one party, senate and/or house is a different party) then they accomplish nothing at all; and I learned long ago that gridlock is how the founding fathers assured we would preserve stability in our laws.

In other words you get the combined downsides of all parties : massive taxes (democrat), sweeping investigative powers (rep.), no freedom of speech (dem.), direct judicial interference by unions (dem.), ... Ah. Gridlock avoids that particular downside quite well. The only way much change happens is when one party really controls both the legislature and the executive. We kind of saw that here in the US when Bush took office and both houses of Congress were controlled by his party. They did some republican agenda things like passing popular tax cuts, but refused to accept the unpopular responsibility of cutting government spending. (So we've been generating a huge deficit ever since he came into power, essentially financing the Iraq war on the promise that if I ever have grandchildren they will pay it back.)

So now the US is on the verge of "throwing the bums out" again. I guess it's not 100% hopeless for those of us who are fans of gridlock: the Democrats who are poised to take power have much internal squabbling and no coherent direction other than "away from George Bush", and can barely agree on anything themselves, so I'm not too worried that they'll pass much of their crazy platform either.

Re:But will it pass?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Then he should have been independant, or have gone for the position in the EU comission, in other words, he should have bribed the leader of the largest party. Sorry but that's the way the system works.

And, should you think that's bad, try going independant in a union election. It gets worse. Much worse.

Re:But will it pass?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Great speech, and I like this aspect of the American system.

But I was talking about the european system. Every party controls "bits" of all powers, law-giving, executive AND judicial in European countries.

So everything in government here gets always expanded, and gets expanded in incoherent directions (because ministers from different parties sabotage eachother with the arm of government they have at their disposal). The army got ordered to expand quite a bit (by a "centrum-right" party), and gets a 20% budget cut (by a person from a "left-extreme-left" party) AND got ordered to modernize 60% of its equipment to improve safety (by what I think is truly a centrum party).

It got ordered AND forbidden from checking the borders. In other words, they have to stop people coming in illegaly ... without actually being anywhere near the border ... without approaching anyone ... without ...

That's what you have in Europe. That's normal. Social security both expands massively AND contracts massively, making it utterly unreliable. There is no unity in government at all, and that's what you get.

The strange thing is, that this way of doing government actually beats what the muslims have in northern-africa. Heh, perhaps God understands, although I'd find it completely understandable if he wants nothing to do with it.

Well the above speech was true until about 1995, when all EU members surrendered their sovereignty to a single person (the president of the EU, then not yet elected). Currently there is exactly one individual in Europe that has law-giving powers, executive powers AND judicial powers in ALL member states : José Manuel Barroso, a socialist/communist.

What also amazes me, is that I actually think that, despite hating communism, and socialism (and therefore not liking obamites at all for example, nor do I have any love for their messiah), I think Barosso is (for the moment ...) doing good work (and some terribly bad work, but hey, at least something moves). Then again, I truly fear for what he's going to do when a recession hits, which is happening now.

OTOH most people I know want to move to the US or Australia/New Zeeland, so perhaps I'll simply join them.

Re:But will it pass?

[Hatta]

This isn't America were you have coherent government.

Um, what now? I know the grass is always greener on the other side, but good god man. Have you not been paying attention?

Re:But will it pass?

[porcupine8]

So when you said:

European governments are utterly blocked and halted things. They never do anything.

You actually meant "they manage to do everything all at once, even the contradictory things, thus making most of what they do meaningless"? Because "they never do anything" implies that none of these laws get passed (which is what happens in the US when the parties are evenly balanced), but you're saying now that they just ALL get passed and because of that nothing works.

And this is because the Ministers of various things are free to act in whatever way suits their party without approval by Parliament, is that right? (Just trying to understand how this works. In the US, you do have different departments that can do some things autonomously, but in the end they all still answer to Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court and many of their ideas/proposals have to be directly approved by Congress. For instance, the Dept of Education couldn't just declare No Child Left Behind to be official policy, Congress had to approve it.)

Re:But will it pass?

[jimicus]

Some issues are worth getting thrown out of the party come next election for, this is one of them. They're politicians.

Certainly in the UK, it's likely to be all they've ever done since leaving university. And they very likely studied something with little practical application in the real world.

The upshot is that what they do versus what they say they'll do may or may not help them get re-elected (probably won't make much odds, voter apathy being what it is). But not towing the party line on a regular basis is a fantastically good way to find yourself thrown out of the party - which in turn is a fantastically good way to find yourself out of a job with little other prospects open to you.

Spot the obvious problem here. If the governing parties have such a strong hold on their members, then all you do when you vote is decide which (hopefully relatively benign) dictator you want in.

It logically follows that if politicians are representing their own interests to the point whereby they ignore the issues that bother the people, a party based on populist politics (ie. base your policies on whatever crazed radical steps would be needed to fix the top 5 things appearing in the more hysterical tabloids - immigration, education, that sort of stuff - consequences be damned) is in with a strong chance of winning serious numbers of votes. And so we have the BNP gaining ground.

Re:But will it pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words you get the combined downsides of all parties : massive taxes (democrat), sweeping investigative powers (rep.), no freedom of speech (dem.), direct judicial interference by unions (dem.), ...

Psst! Your politics are showing.

Re:But will it pass?

[SwedishPenguin]

1. There is no "President of the EU"
2. Jose Manuel Barroso is the president of the European Commision. He, and the rest of the commision, is nominated by the European Council (ministers from member countries) and confirmed by the European Parliament (elected by the people)
3. The european commision has executive power, yes, but it only has leislative initiative, it doesn't vote on legislation, that's up to the Council and the Parliament.
4. Jose Manuel Barroso is not a socialist, he's a conservative.

Not that I like the way the EU is run, I do think there are some reforms needed, but the bullshit you're spewing is so utterly wrong I have to call you out on it.

Re:But will it pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Power Grab by EU Parliament President:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeMBNB0cII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIYPeiuRkh8

Re:But will it pass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Sweden, except here they most likely never made it to University and instead went straight to politics right after high school.

Information wants to be free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since everything is public information in a democracy, I'll be able to request your emails from the public email service. :P

Re:Information wants to be free...

[vilgefortz]

Since everything is public information in a democracy, I'll be able to request your emails from the public email service. :P You do that. I am sure you will find many interesting offers of blue pills as well as miraculous operations that will enlarge your capability.

Sonera moved their email servers because of this

[kaarlov]

Finnish telco Sonera, which is nowadays part of Swedish TeliaSonera moved recently their email servers back to Finland from Sweden because of this.
Apparently their customers were concerned enough.

Re:Hate to say this but...

[remahl]

This has nothing at all to do with Pirate Bay. This is NSA-style wiretapping. The evidence gathered can (supposedly) not be used in regular criminal investigations for copyright infringement.

Not entirely accurate

[j1976]

There has actually been quite a lot of fuss around this law. For example, a seldomly used law paragraph enabled the social democratic minority to delay this proposal for a year, something which gained quite some attention when it happened. If that had not been done, the law would have passed a year ago. An update to what was happening during this period is available at http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.156736 (swedish only). IDG is the largest swedish news agency for technology-related news. At the national swedish radio homepage http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/ekot/artikel.asp?Artikel=1242136 you can read about finlands protests against the law. They also published news about the growing criticism of the law at http://www.sr.se/Ekot/artikel.asp?artikel=1240436 (both links in swedish).

Re:Not entirely accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

To say that the national radio and IDG (how many Swedes are "geeky" enough to read IDG?) has created "quite a lot of fuss" is a bit of an exageration. As the majority of the Swedish population basically rely on two sources for their news, the two national tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen, which unfortunately are pretty much the only two media channels capable of creating a fuss among the general populace.
Then again if Aftonbladet and Expressen were to report on this chances are good that the majority would act like they always do, baah like the flock of sheep they are and quickly focus on more important issues like the Italian Goth couple that had sex in a Confession both (a article prominently featured on the frontpage of todays online edition of Expressen) or the latest Docu-soap gossip.

Re:Not entirely accurate

[TheP4st]

o say that the national radio and IDG (how many Swedes are "geeky" enough to read IDG?) has created "quite a lot of fuss" is a bit of an exageration. As the majority of the Swedish population basically rely on two sources for their news, the two national tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen, which unfortunately are pretty much the only two media channels capable of creating a fuss among the general populace. Then again if Aftonbladet and Expressen were to report on this chances are good that the majority would act like they always do, baah like the flock of sheep they are and quickly focus on more important issues like the Italian Goth couple that had sex in a Confession both (a article prominently featured on the frontpage of todays online edition of Expressen) or the latest Docu-soap gossip.

Re:Not entirely accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

You comment makes it seem the social democrats did something good delaying the proposal, when in fact it was their idea in the first place. It was not delayed to help citizens, it was delayed because it got more attention than BodstrÃm wished.

Re:Not entirely accurate

[Zironic]

Aftonbladet & Expressen arn't sources of news, they're sources of entertainment.

Actual sources of news are newspapers like DN (the daily news), Göteborgs-posten, Svenska Dagbladed, Sydsvenskan, Dagens Industri, Metro, City etc most of which are read by as many people as the tabloids.

I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but it seems Sweden is speeeding towards the finishing line. Any other contendants we are not aware of?

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[The Master Control P]

Doesn't screaming "1984" at the top of your lungs every single time technology and government occur in the same context ever get tiring? At least read some other dystopian books and put some variety in the alarmism!

C'mon, let's give some airtime to Hiro Protagonist and Bernard Marx at least. That's more where this kind of shit is headed to...

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[sigdrifa]

C'mon, let's give some airtime to Hiro Protagonist and Bernard Marx at least. That's more where this kind of shit is headed to... John Twelve Hawks, "The Fourth Realm" triology. A lot of fantasy, but also many "total surveillance" elements in the near future.

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

This "kind of shit" is about a surveillance society, and neither Brave New World nor Snow Crash is about that. It's true that always hearing about 1984 is getting tiresome, but unfortunately there is not a lot of other (popular) novels that put a strong emphasis on this subject. The sad truth is sci-fi is mostly interested in "cool" technology (even if this pseudo technology is absurd) rather than political ideas.

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[KinkyClown]

Take your pick: http://snarkerati.com/movie-news/the-top-50-dystopian-movies-of-all-time/

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

not good. but so far, this is only spying - not censoring.

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[arevos]

John Twelve Hawks, "The Fourth Realm" triology. John Twelve Hawks writes fiction with all the technical accuracy of Dan Brown, but even less entertainment value.

Hawks likes to lecture about privacy in his books, but has little idea how surveilance and privacy technology actually work. This would be forgivable if the story made up for Hawk's lack of knowledge about the subject matter, but the characters are dreary and the story dragged-out and dull.

Re:I thought the UK was on the road to 1984...

[Z34107]

The Deliverator does not approve of meta-verse wiretapping.

Umm... overlords?!

Its not a swedish idea.

[miffo.swe]

This has more to do with being able to help forieign surveilance than any domestic spying. When an ally calls for help sweden will use this to be able to bend over properly and hand over any domestic information about the targets living in sweden. Swedish domestic security has never been self-sustained but rather a help organization for ally interests like the US.

Re:Its not a swedish idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the case, and the current (right) government (changed in 2006) is even more eager to bend over to US demands. One wouldn't think that was possible with the last (left) minister of justice. Our current one is literally a real bitch who wants more surveillance, longer prison times, lock up psychologically ill, and naturally (due to the current government being far to the right and is so pro-US it makes you sick) bends over to any US demands. Let's not forget that when basically the entire world was against the Iraq war, these right-wing parties were pro. Now they are the governemnt, and is just as hypocritical as Condo Rise, not taking any responsibility at all, and shifting the reasons from bullshit lies about WMD's to some dictator/monster/democracy mumbo jumbo.
Speaking of silence in media, how is this interpreted?

It's problematic that the otherwise so colorful political differences in Sweden, is non-existent when it comes to how they feel about the law of justice.

Also to note, it sounds from the abstract that this inter-country wiretapping (UK to Finland as an example) would somehow be revolutionary. What has the US (NSA+CIA) been doing for decades? Don't believe them not to wiretapp everything. This is absolutely no excuse for us doing so in Sweden too, but the abstract could have been bit more "fair and balanced".

Re:Its not a swedish idea.

[toddhisattva]

When an ally calls for help sweden will use this to be able to bend over properly and hand over any domestic information about the targets living in sweden. Does Sweden reserve the right to search persons and possessions at its borders?

If so, then why cannot Sweden search communications that cross its borders?

Re:Its not a swedish idea.

[spyfrog]

I think that the reason for the new law is simple: FRA (Swedish NSA) already do this and now they want to make it legal. I belive that Sweden is one of the members of Echelon but I have no proof whatsoever of this.

However, I find it quite strange that the some of the government parties was against the law before they come to power and swiftly changed opinion when they came to power. My guess is that they simply was shown how much spying FRA already was doing when they came to power, something they hadn't knew of before because it was very secret.

Re:Hate to say this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Email and VOIP has nothing to do with the pirate bay, you really don't have a clue....

At least it's defined in law

[Candid88]

At least their declaring it in law, with a few limitations etc. They could just do as our government has done and start screening emails using a secretive organization with few safeguards without even officially telling people.

Re:At least it's defined in law

[richie2000]

Oh, they have been doing that since 1976 (as recently revealed by a recording of FRA's director acknowledging it). This is an attempt to legalize that practice, add a few useless "control stations" and give them even more authority.

Re:At least it's defined in law

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the issue. I have no problem such when practices are employed by "secret agencies" without legal cover. It has always been the case - intelligence agencies break laws regularly. It is marginal though, since they cannot afford breaking the laws on a large scale.

The issue is when the illegal becomes legal. Then not only intelligence agencies, but also the police, the judiciary and whoever the government wants could spy on people with a legal cover, on a large scale.

Such practices have always existed and will always exist. But they shall remain illegal.

Re:At least it's defined in law

[bjourne]

Oh, they have been doing that since 1976 (as recently revealed by a recording of FRA's director acknowledging it). This is an attempt to legalize that practice, add a few useless "control stations" and give them even more authority.

Actually they have been doing that since the 1950's. It was revealed in the "IB" scandal. Named so after the secret buerau InformationsByrån that conducted the registrations. It was big news in the late 1970's. At the time, there were lots of Communists in Sweden and the establishment with the Social Democrats in lead was genuinly afraid that they would take over.

So Informationsbyrån was set up in secret and the information retrieved from the register was offensively used to keep the Communists in check. Unions used it to keep them out, employers used it to deny them access to important positions in the companies and so on. Some got their whole careers ruined thanks to it. IB is a good example of how when a democratic state feels threatened, it will do everything in its power to keep the status quo. Even if that means resorting to fascist methods.

Re:At least it's defined in law

[richie2000]

Yes, "they" have been doing it, but that wasn't FRA. And yes, IB is a good example on what not to do. Sadly, todays MPs seem incapable of learning from past mistakes.

ECHELON?

[Indyan]

I found this report from the EU parliament very interesting: http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/rapport_echelon_en.pdf At page 27 there is a list of all countries intercepting private communications, and basically everyone does it? I think some former FRA employee basically admitted they have done this sort of thing for a long time already too. I'm by no means saying this is ok, but it's kinda interesting how Google reacted on this for example. They said they can't put their servers in Sweden, but US/UK etc is fine? What is the differance?

Re:ECHELON?

[servognome]

They said they can't put their servers in Sweden, but US/UK etc is fine? What is the differance?

Perhaps the difference is who they primarily serve? If most requests come from the US or UK, then placing servers within the country reduces Googles exposure to surveillance because the transmissions are domestic not international.

Re:ECHELON?

[init100]

I think some former FRA employee basically admitted they have done this sort of thing for a long time already too.

They did, noting that the new law would make their already active wiretapping legal.

Re:ECHELON?

[Indyan]

I'm assuming they already have servers in US/UK, putting a server in sweden would in this case improve the privacy of swedish users by the same logic?

Re:ECHELON?

[steelneck]

The difference is that the FRA have not been spying in wire before. That is illegal, today the telcos are not allowed to give out any traffic or personal data without a specific court order, some of the data they are not even allowed to save. This bill, and the EU-dataretention bill is about to change all of that. The FRA (roughly The Defence Radio Agency) have been listening only to radio, satellites and such. But in the recent debate we have come to learn that even that practise is illegal according to swedish constitution and the european human rights. It is not allowed for the state to actively take part of private communications without a positive law support. This bill will of course change that too (and be in breach of human rights, and probably upset citizens in other cuntries since IP-traffic usually takes "the scenic route"). The base is: Citizens are allowed to do anything not forbidden, for the state it is the other way around, anything they do must be allowed by law first. This have not been the case, and the normal thing to do, is not to allow things afterwards and pretend its raining, it is to prosecute the perps. The FRA have also recently bought the 5th most powerful computer in the world (on top500.org), gee wonder why..

Re:ECHELON?

[redelm]

ECHELON was funamentally justified somewhat differently -- the UK would spy on US territory, and the US would spy on UK territory. This is nominally legal under the guise of national intelligence efforts against a potential/past enemy. Then they would share information under the guise of international law enforcement. What is clearly illegal (verging on treason) is the willful failure of counterintelligence -- the US & the UK have a duty to protect their citizens against foreign spying of all kinds. Instead, they have facilitated it.

This trawl is quite different -- it is under the guise of Customs. All countries exert jurisdiction on what is allowed to unter their country, and under what conditions (payment of duty). Many (US included) exert similar jurisdiction over what is allowed to leave their country. Of course this requires detailed inspection, and has always been held to include information as well as physical objects.

Absent encryption (not legal everywhere), email is not private. Consider it a postcard.

Re:ECHELON?

[odelta]

Did anybody notice on page 3 of this report the quote from Juvenal? Quote: "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Translation: "But who shall guard the guardians." Domestic surveillance is suppose to be used to protect us, but what happens when the governments start to abuse their power. Who will protect us from them? The answer is that the people should guard the guardians. Government should be accountable to its citizens. We need to start making some BIG noise about these issues before it's too late.

Sweden? wtf?

[The Master Control P]

*reads article*

Oh, just another out-of-control power grab, no doubt MAFIAA approved, with a healthy side-dose of "fuck you" to privacy.

Re:Hate to say this but...

[BadAnalogyGuy]

That's perhaps one of the most Pollyanna-ish comment's I've read on Slashdot in a long time.

Re:Hate to say this but...

[miffo.swe]

"The evidence gathered can (supposedly) not be used in regular criminal investigations for copyright infringement."

When the US put pressure on Sweden for ThePirateBay Swedish authorities happily broke multiple laws and smiled about it. I have no doubts that any information about petty things like small time copyright infringement will be handed over.

FRA got new hardware last year

[Anonymous Coward]

National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) got money to buy themself into the fifth place on the Top500 list last year. With a 13728 processor system from HP, doing 102 TFlops (RMAX).

Re:FRA got new hardware last year

[aliquis]

That's what I wanted to say, was looking for a comment if someone had already mentioned it.

According to "Ny Teknik" or whatever page I found it's made up of a cluster of 2128 blade servers from HP.

Theoretical max 182 Tflops, seems like it made second place when compared to the june list / when it was done / news out.

It's number fifth on november 2007 list:
http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/11

System in question:
http://www.top500.org/system/8819

Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Henriok]

First: As one living in Sweden I don't recognize this description. For one, there is quite a stir in IT related, and mainstream media about this. And this have been going on for several years. The current government suggested this while in opposition a couple of years ago, and it was one of the first new legislations that they announced when they got into power 2006. It's been under debateand scrutiny in media and several governmental instances since then.

Secondly: FRA is _not_ a military organization. It's a civil autority that can be used for several other governmental organizations such as the police, secret police, military or even state owned corporations. But the name is confusing, I grant you that.

One interessting thing is that FRA operates the fifth fastest computer on the Top500 list. Most people believe that is was purchased to meet the need of this new surveillance demand.

It's hardly unknown to the public, even if most are not interessted in such matters. Swedes are pretty used to governmental control and oversight, and we acually enjoy the benefits of it. Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[init100]

Swedes are pretty used to governmental control and oversight, and we acually enjoy the benefits of it.

Such as?

Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past.

You mean your trust. I, for one, do not trust them anymore than any other government. And in what instance did it serve us well in the past?

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[exscape]

> It's hardly unknown to the public, even if most are not interessted in such matters. Swedes are pretty used to governmental control and oversight, and we acually enjoy the benefits of it. Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past. What?! Please speak for yourself. You make it sound as if people like myself *enjoy* this crap! And, yes, it IS unknown to the public. Few realize that *all* internet traffic crossing the border is fair game, most still seem to believe only die-hard criminals are subject to this. And regarding media, I think I've seen two articles in all major newspapers combined, and both were about the fact that the law got accepted (but the voting isn't done yet). Neither mentioned how bad this is, or what consequences it will have.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Yvanhoe]

Bah, as long as strong cryptography is still authorized...

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[richie2000]

For one, there is quite a stir in IT related, and mainstream media about this. Really? If so, you should have no problem pointing to at least one article in mainstream media in recent months.

The current government suggested this while in opposition a couple of years ago No, they did not. This comes from the MoD via the MoJ under Thomas BodstrÃm, but his lawyers screamed bloody murder so they canned it until it was revived by Odenberg under suspicious circumstances. Read more about it here: http://rickfalkvinge.se/2008/05/30/fra-forslaget-en-tidslinje/

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Zironic]

Most people in Sweden don't mind far reaching goverment power, however this program doesn't only capture all the traffic passing the border, it'll also capture most of the traffic that's not passing the border aswell.

And the bill doesn't cover just internet, it covers any information going by wire.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[jfolin]

The current government suggested this while in opposition a couple of years ago, and it was one of the first new legislations that they announced when they got into power 2006. This is wrong. The former socialdemocratic government with then minister of justice Thomas BodstrÃm in charge ordered the investigation that led to the proposition. The former socialdemocratic government was then in favor of the new law while the middle-right Alliance was against it, but the socialdemocrats lost the election in 2006 and is now (formally) opposed to their own bill. The roles are reversed compared to three years ago. That said, both blocks are hypocrits who wants FRA to spy on the citizens of Sweden, but only if they are in power when the bill passes.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No all countries share the distrust Americans have on their own government? (after all, the government is chosen by you, if you don't trust your judgment, why vote for it?). Anyway, Swedish government created a working, and very generous social safety net which to large extent avoided the kind of gap between haves and have-not you saw here in the states. Swedish government, despite their small size and the fact the it's surrounded by big powers, managed to largely avoid the kind of disastrous wars that consumed Europe during the first half of 20th century. My personal experience with Swedish government is it's way more efficient and responsive comparing to the sh*t I have to deal with every time I'm unfortunate enough to have to deal with US government.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Henriok]

Such as a personal ID number. It's hard to find swedes that doesn't belive that it's a good thing. A national medical journal database is wanted, and having this connected to the database with prescriptions. Automated tax declatations are quite enjoyed too. There are more things that most Sweds enjoy: automated enrollment into schools, child benefits, state funded mandatory vaccinations and dental care.

I certainly doesn't speak for ALL Swedes but for the sake of argument, I'm speaking for most. I'm quite sure of that.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[richie2000]

And in what instance did it serve us well in the past? He is probably referring to the incident in Ã...dalen 1931, when the heroic forces of truth managed to stop a full-scale terrorist attack on healthy Swedish family values.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Free the Cowards]

I don't vote for it. I consistently vote against the people who end up in power. So why should I trust them? It ultimately comes down to trusting my fellow citizens, who have uniformly shown themselves to be worthless chowderheads when it comes to voting for politicians.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of the FRA (which is kind of same as the US NSA, no?) about two years ago or so, there was a small incident that sent a tingle down my spine. I had discovered a security flaw in a pretty high-profile internet server software. I sent a bug report to bugtraq and full disclosure lists. Immediately after I sent it, there appeared two emails in my inbox from individuals @fra.se saying "Out of office for vacation". Now, taking a second to reflect on this, it probably just means they were subscribed to those mailing lists, but the immediate reaction was one of shock, thinking FRA had intercepted my email (since it did concern a security hole in an at least somewhat important application). Well, hehehe, it would be pretty stupid way to intercept mail, or at least a stupid to forget to turn off the auto vacation notice, hehehe.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[bumby]

Swedes are pretty used to governmental control and oversight, and we acually enjoy the benefits of it. Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past. I do not concur, and I know many who agree with me (disagrees with you). I don't trust my government more then I trust a stranger on the street. And I certainly do not enjoy my privacy being stepped on like a rug.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[TheP4st]

Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past. I would say that the Swedish trust in authority of this kind is more a result of Pavlovian conditioning than factual proof that it has served us well.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

First: As one living in Sweden I don't recognize this description. For one, there is quite a stir in IT related, and mainstream media about this.
Really? Has any mainstream newspapers covered this that you are aware of??? The people (you know the ones who voted in the sitting government) are very much in the dark on this. I have not heard a single comment from anyone (besides from the techno /. crowd)

Secondly: FRA is _not_ a military organization. It's a civil autority that can be used for several other governmental organizations such as the police, secret police, military or even state owned corporations. But the name is confusing, I grant you that.

F = Forsvaret = The (Military) Defence('s)
R = Radio = Radio
A = Anstalt = Facility

Due to rethoric, in Sweden we do no have "armed forces", we have "the defence" (which as the name implies can never be used offensively :-)

Just because a military organization helps the civil authorities does not make it non-military.
The name is correct and you are confusing.

One interessting thing is that FRA operates the fifth fastest computer on the Top500 list. Most people believe that is was purchased to meet the need of this new surveillance demand.

Most people know that a swedish military organization was tasked with monitoring Russian / Soviet military movements and intercepting and decrypting their radio traffic. Would such an organization ever need massive computers to do its job? Yes... The organization was the FRA: the Defence's Radio Facility.

---

The FRA will probably monitor all your emails from now on, concidering how you seem to represent "most people".

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever voted for either of the two main parties? It's hard to imagine you always vote for the loser. Who did you vote for when Clinton was one of the candidate?

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[anerki]

What do you expect from a country that has Asbolut Vodka as their main export product. And it's a state company at that...

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Free the Cowards]

I generally avoid voting for the two main parties, because the two main parties are both completely untrustworthy.

To answer your question, I voted for Obama. He may end up winning, but since that vote didn't put him into government it doesn't invalidate what I said.

If you mean that other Clinton, I was not old enough to vote in 1996.

Even if my record is not 100%, it doesn't change my argument one whit. Even if 100% of the people I vote for make it into office, that still leaves 98 senators and several hundred representatives who I didn't vote for. Even if I voted for every single one of them, I could be voting for them simply because they're the lesser of two evils (which is always the case if they belong to one of the two major parties).

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[aliquis]

Personally I'd want them to just create one big administrative authority instead of current:
* CSN (student loans and money)
* FÃrsÃkringskassan (if you are sick, or your children are, or handicapped, or for whatever else reason can't work)
* ArbetsfÃrmedlingen (employment office)
* Socialomsorgen (social security / welfare)
* Skatteverket (tax administration)

Or atleast let them share their journals/databases with each other, which they aren't allowed now unless you give them permission to. This just lead to that you may not get the money you have the right to if you don't know about it, or some people cheat and get more money when they should have (some year one guy got social welfare from lots of countys at the same time because they had no idea what each of them did and he asked for money from many of them.) and most importantly lots of paper work when you have to get papers from all of them to send to the others, probably makes them much less effecient aswell.

And no, I wouldn't be bothered, since for some reason I expect people to behave nicely so I don't see the risks, I just see it as an opportunity and less retarded system.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[aliquis]

Well, much media have covered that FRA got a new machine atleast, and I would guess that TPB, Piratpartiet, IDG, various forums such as Sweclockers, Flashback and such have discussed what it may lead to / why it may have been bought.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[aliquis]

Imho BodstrÃm suck, it wouldn't surprise me if it's just that BodstrÃms and Folkpartiet got similair ideas, but back when we had Socialdemokraterna in the government maybe they/most of them didn't cared that much because BodstrÃm was one of theirs, but now when Folkpartiet got a similair opinion they have started to care more. What do I know. I to belive both sides would accept it thought.

Most people who know what BodstrÃm wants probably dislike him, I know I for sure do, the problem is that he's popular with the ladies in their 40s:
http://www.svb.se/bilder/Bodstrom_Tomas.jpg
http://bloggbilder.aftonbladet.se/images/4321/img_44d24cf261d24.jpg
http://www.realtid.se/ArticlePages/200701/04/20070104171139_Realtid302/Bodstrom_Thomas_P_200.jpg

With looks like that you can get away with anything,

The ladies start to think with whatever body part are their equivalent of the penis and loses all sense.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[nx]

Swedes are pretty used to governmental control and oversight, and we acually enjoy the benefits of it. Our trust in authoroty of this kind is strong since it have served us well in the past.

This is partly correct and partly bullshit. Swedes usually do have a positive view on turning authority over to the state, that part seems to be true. The reasons for why this is true are very much debatable. Some, like historian Peter Englund, point to the fact that the King often stood with the peasantry against the nobility (in contrast to how it was in the rest Europe, where the monarch was the enemy). The monarch being on the side of 'the people' is especially true for relatively modern times (pre-WW1).

Another explanation might be something sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has noted: the working class is much more positively predisposed to authority than upper classes. And Sweden has a large group of people who self-identify as working class.

Of course, there's probably not one isolated reason for why we trust the state as much as we do. But it is certainly not because "it has served us well in the past". We've been royally screwed by them several times in the past. IB-affären, comes to mind, as does the non-existance of civil liberties during WW2.

About IB-affären in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informationsbyran

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

state funded mandatory vaccinations

Shudder. So do you have special vaccination cops who hold you down while sticking needles into you? And you like that?

Mind you, it wasn't that long ago that that Sweden stopped sterilizing the mentally ill. Scary place.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Quiet_Desperation]

There's also the recognition that anyone in office you did vote for is still human, and can be corrupted just as easily as anyone. The Governator here in California is a prime example.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[MSZ]

state funded mandatory vaccinations

Do you realize, that "state funded" means "paid with remains of the money taken from the citizens (after most of it were wasted)"?

Back to the topic - it seems Sweden had a great luck and avoided the kind of scum most countries have in their governments. It's not only USA where people distrust their rulers, and most of the time rightly so.

You've been lucky, but can you be sure it will continue? I'm not American yet I share a belief that the governemt should not know too much about it's subjects. Too much knowledge causes abuse, both small by some official and big, by the state itself. Besides, most of these thing they do not need to know - your health is your business and it should be a secret between you and your doctor, not something any petty clerk could look up when he's bored - like it happened not so long ago in Ireland.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I also live in Sweden. Where's this stir you talk about? There's just about nothing in TV or newspapers, apart from some editorial column that almost noone reads.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, as long as strong cryptography is still authorized... Um... that'll be next...

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Morth]

Even while being sarcastic, you could've provided a link.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[spyfrog]

FRA is not a military organization, despite its name.
FRA is civilian and is govern by a civilian, not a military.

This is from SFS 1994:714 (where new laws are published):
1 Försvarets radioanstalt är en central förvaltningsmyndighet
med uppgift att bedriva signalspaning enligt den inriktning som
regeringen, Försvarsmakten och övriga uppdragsgivare anger.

What it state is that FRA is a central civilian agency that is tasked to perform radio survilliance on behalf of the government, defense or other assigners.

You is also wrong when you assume that there was a military organization monitoring Sovjet. Yes, it was FRA but it was civilian already at that time. The DC-3 airplane that was shot down by Sovjet in 1952 was manned by FRA. The pilots and the airplane might have been military but the FRA operators where civilians.

Last, the reason behind the calling the defense for defense and not military is that the law forbid the Swedish military to perform any aggression. Even on the order from the riksdagen. The purpose of the military in Sweden is strictly defense and hence it is called Försvarsmakten.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I hear, Swedes are quite a different creature, socially speaking. There is an inherant trust in their government and a very strong sense of acting for the benefit of their society as a whole; much more so than any individual concern. This whole thing isn't supprizing at all.

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[sandstig]

"Last, the reason behind the calling the defense for defense and not military is that the law forbid the Swedish military to perform any aggression. Even on the order from the riksdagen. The purpose of the military in Sweden is strictly defense and hence it is called Försvarsmakten."

The official translation of Försvarsmakten is "Swedish Armed Forces" though. See: http://www2.mil.se/en

Re:Peep? Not so.. pretty loud buzz more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably has a whole lot to do with the government teaching us from a young age that the government is good, knows best and that it is in our best interest to let it take care of us. As for acting for the benefit of our society, not really. It used to be so at one point, but since the decision was made to remove any trace of a national identity it has become more and more of every man for himself, and I think it will continue in that direction. Something as simple as most youths considering it to be ok to be on welfare if you can't find an interesting job, where thirty years ago it was more or less considered a sin.

It's already up

[Anonymous Coward]

Today FRA has the lawful right and ability to monitor all communication that is broadcast using radio/wave-transmission, since much(most?) traffic at some point goes via satellite and/or radio link they already listen in.

The new bill gives them the right to tap into the cables directly, but it also leaves a possibility for them to share their information with other government bodies, and that is the real kicker. So if you write in an e-mail that you drove home drunk yesterday, that could be used against you in a court of law (in Sweden there are no rules against what can be used as evidence).

FRA claims that this will not be the case, but the new bill would make it lawful to do so.

So in conclusion: Everyone in the world is already being wiretapped by the Swedish government, but this would make it a bit easier for them, and also give them the right to share the information with other Swedish government bodies.

Re:It's already up

[richie2000]

Today FRA has the lawful right and ability to monitor all communication that is broadcast using radio/wave-transmission No, they do not have that lawful right. They do have the ability, though. And they do it. Illegaly.

Finland as well

[SgtChaireBourne]

From what I gather there is a similar threat in Finland as well: the representatives of major and minor multinationals have been meeting with Finish legislators lately to work out laws granting private companies the authority to monitor *all* communications in any form. AFAIK more of their subversion will occur during coming weeks or months.

Welcome to your summer holidays. If this is surfacing now, what real nastiness is lurking for the deepest summer?

Re:Finland as well

[upside]

Please provide details (source?), am interested.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[qrwe]

OK, so the solution is to place a mail server at TeliaSoneras net, create a VPN-tunnel (or SSH-tunnel) to it and send the mail that way instead? Or the boring fix: frankly change from my own domain to GMail..

what seems to absurd to me

[circletimessquare]

is this attitude on slashdot: shocked, shocked i tell you, that a governmental organization is not going to protect my information for me

encrypt if you don't want it snooped on. if it goes out on the wire, it is prone to being intercepted and snooped on, by the government or someone else. you realize that, right? so where is all the shock and amazement coming from that a government is doing what governments always do?

i'm not saying you don't have a right to privacy. i'm saying you are absurd if you rely on a government organization to protect your privacy for you. regardless of the law. YOU need to protect your privacy. you can't expect the government to do that competently, regardless of the law. and then, in a forum populated with a bunch of people supposedly experienced enough with the subject matter, to come from this position of complete naivete on the subject?

all i am saying is that its just kind of disingenuous for a lot of you, who to start from the default position of healthy distrust of government... to suddenly express shock and amazement at a government trying to snoop on you. this is a new concept to you? you're not jaded and cynical at this point, as you SHOULD be on the subject matter of governments and snooping if you have any awareness of the subject matter? folks: your shock and amazement is only possible if massive trust in government is your default position. you see the absurdity in that, right?

"omg! my government wants to spy on me? the idea never occured to me!"

really?

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[steelneck]

So you are not visiting other sites than encrypted ones? People seem to forget that aspect, what sites you are visiting is often more sensitive than what info you transmit. Think of those times you are searching the net for something, drowning in irrelevant hits, visiting sites just to discover it did not contain what you where looking for. The state cannot see what you thought of the page you just where visiting, the only see that you requested and got it sent to you. So, do not visit wrong pages in the future, that can be used against you.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[mmcuh]

The government is supposed to work for us. We have every right to be outraged when they instead turn against us.

That doesn't mean that we're surprised.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[Troglodyt]

It's not about wanting the government protecting us from snooping. We just don't want it snooping on us. It's not the same thing.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[rar]

encrypt if you don't want it snooped on. I don't want my private communication snooped on. So, does anyone have experience with what is the easiest and least intrusive way to push email encryption on less technical friends and family? I would prefer something I can install/activate for them which automatically encrypt/decrypt emails to/from me, while still allows them to communicate as usual with others. Preferably an open-standard multi-platform / multi-program solution.

If things really are not this easy, maybe it is time to work hard on developing tools/standards to make them. The trend for governments to want to spy on private communication seems to only get worse over time.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[xaxa]

The Enigmail plugin for Thunderbird. It's a wrapper for GPG.

Normally, you have to type in a passphrase to unlock the private key, but I suppose if you're only worried about the security through the wires you needn't use a passphrase.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[miffo.swe]

Encryption dont help much. The snooping makes it possible to map your entire social network. Not just who you talk to but when and from where. If you use a mobile phone you can even be tracked in real time. While encryption can help protect the message it wont help protect much of your privacy. It really makes Stasi and KGB look like a bunch of amatuers.

The really sad part about this is that it do look like a foreign idea. Sweden can very well be doing this to please another country and their want for private communications. Like always they bend over and take it in the poop shute for uncle sam.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, we should not be required to implement encryption schemes just to protect ourselves from our government. Period. Just because a technology is available that nullifies the governments' abilities to spy on us does not give the government the right to expect us to do it if we require privacy.
That line of thinking is completely ridiculous.

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[R2.0]

You forgot "...and it's all the US's fault!"

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[rfroberg]

encrypt if you don't want it snooped on. if it goes out on the wire, it is prone to being intercepted and snooped on, by the government or someone else. you realize that, right?

Hmm, well. Only, it includes text messgaes (SMS), phones (both wired and mobile) and Faxes as well. Ho do you encrypt those?

Re:what seems to absurd to me

[bit01]

encrypt if you don't want it snooped on.

How quaint.

i'm saying you are absurd if you rely on a government organization to protect your privacy for you. regardless of the law.

If they have a back door into your OS encryption is pointless. How confident are you they don't? Given the existence of ECHELON I'm confident that the US government has back doors at least in all the OS' made in the US.

In any case it's all about defense in depth. Good law like privacy guards, good technical tools like encryption, good monitoring by citizens, good implementation by law enforcement, good organizations that fail safe (e.g. no massive centralized databases) etc. The law is just one element and /.'ers are right to be concerned about it just like every other element.

My guess is that the Swedish government is implementing this snooping partly so they can swap data with foreign government snoopers like the US and track down international criminals. Won't somebody think of the children/terrorists/pirates/communists?

---

You're a fool if you think advertising pays for anything at all.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[SgtChaireBourne]

Yes, but Telia-Sonera blocked many Open Standards sites (both pro- and neutral-) from their subscribers during the weeks leading up to the latest OOXML scandal at ISO. That was for all of Telia-Sonera, not just Sweden.

Enabling provision v. Always will do

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get it straight.

It will be possible to look at every email v.s We will look at every email is different.
I don't think it's draconian to have such a law as long as there are reasonable restrictions on whose transmission even if intercepted is looked into and when they can do that.

It's the way the world works, unless you live in a self created cocoon, every country has access to such a system.

Re:Enabling provision v. Always will do

[endemoniada]

Can Do vs. Will Do is a non-issue. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that they're not allowed to read my mail, but the mere suggestion that they COULD read if they wanted to is intolerable!

I refuse to to allow such a thing, on principle. If they CAN read my e-mail it doesn't matter if the want to or not, eventually someone will abuse this power and read them anyway.

Re:Enabling provision v. Always will do

[Anders Andersson]

It will be possible to look at every email v.s We will look at every email is different.
I don't think it's draconian to have such a law as long as there are reasonable restrictions on whose transmission even if intercepted is looked into and when they can do that.

It's already possible for the police to obtain a wiretap on anyone's subscriber line if they have a wiretap order from a competent court of law. They don't need any dedicated "wiretapping lines" for that; they can simply order the telco to establish the wiretap and send them the transmissions.

The current proposal, due to be voted on June 17, is not about creating dedicated lines to be used once in a while for transferring individual messages from senders singled out by a wiretap order.

The proposal is about creating dedicated lines to monitor all traffic passing any one of a number of access points 24/7, scanning the contents and metadata of every message for certain patterns (some sources claim there are to be around 250,000 search patterns in simultaneous use, all of them secret of course).

The FRA has claimed there will be no breach of privacy unless a message matches a pattern. This is a confusion of words at best, and a blatant lie at worst. It's like opening every letter handled by the post office, scanning it for an uncommon term like "hexamethyl fluoride", and then claiming only the privacy of messages containing the term "hexamethyl fluoride" has been breached, not the privacy of every other message.

Excuse me, but when anyone accesses my e-mail christmas greeting sent to a friend abroad to verify that I don't use the term "hexamethyl fluoride", my privacy has been breached regardless of whether I have used that term or not. And it doesn't matter a single bit to me that my message is scanned by a computer rather than a human, when I haven't the faintest idea of what that computer is looking for. Saying I'm unlikely to send a matching message doesn't resolve my complaint. I'm unlikely to be killed during a bank robbery too; that doesn't mean I will approve of making it legal for bank robbers to fire a gun at me.

When mass wiretapping is legalized and the physical infrastructure is implemented, there is nothing to stop this from being abused way beyond the original intentions, and the original intentions are unclear enough as it is. A committee of humans will oversee the world's fifth largest computer cluster scanning billions of messages every day for items matching a quarter of a million patterns, to make sure noone's privacy is being invaded without sufficient cause?

It's like watching a golf course from the club house during a thunderstorm to make sure the grass doesn't get wet.

And it's not like this 24/7 mass wiretapping programme is some unverified conspiracy theory. The technique to be used is described in the proposal itself, in the Proposed act on signals monitoring for military intelligence purposes ("Förslag till lag om signalspaning i försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet", pages 9-11), Article 3.

The good thing about this is that more people will become aware of the surveillance, whether it's legal or not, and hopefully begin defending their own privacy with the help of encryption and other means. It's a pity that it has become necessary, though.

Re:Enabling provision v. Always will do

[mikael]

Article in todays Daily Mail:

Phone spies: Town halls using anti-terror powers to bug residents' calls and emails

Town hall snoopers used controversial anti-terror powers to delve into the phone and email records of thousands of people last year.

They wanted to check for evidence of dog smuggling and storing petrol without permission - and even to trace a suspected bogus faith healer.

In one case they were inquiring into unburied animal carcasses.

Some councils are allowing middle-ranking staff to authorise covert operations under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which is intended for use 'in the interests of national security'.

Re:Hate to say this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, good point! What do these guys think, anyway, operating within the law?

Just imagine where we'd end up if everyone actually did things just because they were legal! It's every patriotic citizen's duty to follow any future laws, even before they're passed!

Everything

[Anonymous Coward]

This post and my IP have been logged on database of the Swedish government. Indefinitely.

Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[asackett]

I know it's a pipe dream, but if enough of us would encrypt everything we can that crosses the internet we could vote with our resource consumption and force the bastards to be selective about what they decrypt. Our individual privacy would thus be somewhat assured by the signal to noise ratio.

Re:Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[mmcuh]

From what I've heard the snoops care more about who is talking to who than about what's actually being said. Mapping social networks and all that.

So in addition to encryption, we would all have to run anonymising proxies, such as Tor or Freenet.

Re:Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[wITTus]

From what I've heard the snoops care more about who is talking to who than about what's actually being said. Mapping social networks and all that.

How do you want to find out these social networks? By IPs? If everything is encrypted as he said, how do you want to make the difference between a chat and a P2P connection (whose clients don't know themselves either)? What we would need to eliminate are "mapped social networks" as MySpace and others. Have a look at this Southpark episode.

Re:Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[wITTus]

Amen! This is so true. I couldn't have said it better than that. I would love to see how the CIA trys to decrypt the pak0.pk3 which I send just for fun to one of my friends.

Re:Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

force the bastards to be selective about what they decrypt. The decrypt-time of paranoid-strength encryption is measured not in computer years, but computer known-universe-lifetimes.
Of course, the government can hold a gun to your head and demand the keys (the UK government already will), but at least that way you know when they're reading your mail.

Re:Encrypt everything. ALL of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminals are lazy so wiretaping is still big business in criminal prosecutions. Social networking "programs?" like Facebook are a gift for snoops regardless of which side of fence. Remember once someone is marked, they are marked for life!

Who did what?

[upside]

You mean Cogent prevented Telia-Sonera customers from accessing said documents?

You've got to be a politician, lawyer or a spindoctor for the way you present facts.

They already do

[Anonymous Coward]

They've already bought and installed the big computer that will monitor the traffic, the head of the defence agency has already admitted they monitor the traffic. His theory is that it's legal if they only monitor freely transmitted signals, however it's clear they've tapped the wires already because he admits they monitor telephone tapping.

This law is to try to make what the defence department has been doing legal.

More on this from Swedish Pirate Party leader

[CrystalFalcon]

Read more about this from the Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge:

More on the Ubiquitous Wiretapping Bill

Swedish NSA to monitor all phones, Internet

Excerpt from first link:

The bill's name is en anpassad försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet , translating roughly to a better adapted military intelligence gathering. Key points of the bill:

• At about 20 points in the national information infrastructure network, all traffic is spliced off and fed into the Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA) agency. These points are placed as to catch all traffic entering and leaving the Swedish borders, but will catch much - if not most - domestic traffic too, for technical routing reasons. Electronic traffic, in particular, always takes the scenic route.
• This affects all Internet traffic and all telephony traffic, meaning web surfing, e-mail, phone, and fax are affected, to mention but a few.
• The FRA will scan all traffic in real time according to about 250,000 search criteria. The traffic that matches will be automatically saved for manual intelligence analysis. This obviously takes a lot of computing power. We don't know the exact extent of FRA's computing power, but we do know that they have the world's fifth most powerful computer, in competition mostly with nuclear physics labs.
• "Customers" that will be able to place requests for searches include all authorities (all some 500 of them including Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, etc., but notably the police, secret service and customs).
• The political administration may order (not request, but order) a political wiretapping to catch communications they are interested in.
• Major businesses will also get access to the wiretapping grid, but will have to go through an authority.
• The bill specifically allows for singling out Swedish people for specific wiretapping, although only under certain qualifiers.
• The mandate for the agency's own intelligence gathering is broadened from "external military threats" to "external threats", which are exemplified as international crime; trafficking in drugs, weapons, or people; migration movements; religious or cultural conflicts; environmental imbalances and threats; raw materials shortages; and currency speculation. More examples are listed.

Re:More on this from Swedish Pirate Party leader

[Reziac]

More telling are his quotes of comments from Sweden's own law enforcement:
============
Responses to the bill

How did the bureaucrats respond? In unusually plain language, actually.

The Department of Justice, among other similar comments, simply called the bill "completely alien to our form of government".

The Police Board said that the bill "indicates a frightening lack of understanding for the requirements regarding the protection of citizens' privacy that follow from our Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights".

The National Registry Authority replied that this bill "is compatible with neither the Swedish Constitution nor the European Convention on Human Rights. Such an immense expansion of wiretapping of telephony and other forms of communication
cannot be legislated under any circumstance."
============

Re:More on this from Swedish Pirate Party leader

[QuoteMstr]

The political administration may order (not request, but order) a political wiretapping to catch communications they are interested in.

What on earth? At least here in the United States, the government pretends to not wiretap for private political motives. I thought Sweden was a pleasant, progressive nation. What happened to you guys?

Re:Hate to say this but...

[dintech]

National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA)

I'm the poster explained the acronym. My Foreign Language Acronym Prediction Algorithm (FLWSP) would have missed this one.

Telia-Sonera

[SgtChaireBourne]

Read it again: Telia-Sonera's customers could not access those sites. Full Stop.

Re:Telia-Sonera

[Zironic]

Read your own link.

If you seriously think that was about the OOXML then you might want to have your head checked.

Re:Telia-Sonera

[Zironic]

The whole point is that they COULDN'T route through the outage. They originally did so and then cogent blocked that aswell.

Use PGP/GPG for email!

[VincenzoRomano]

For email there is a simple solution.
For everything else ... we need to work it out!

Goddammit Sweeden!

[ThatGuyJon]

Now that you've started following our bad example, where am I going to migrate to?

Re:Hate to say this but...

[Chainsaw]

FRA stands for FÃrsvarets Radioanstalt, if you really want the swedish word for it.

Cat got your tongue?

[nova.alpha]

Dear FRA, Haev phun reading PGP, SSH? Anyone worried? I think you shouldn't.

Yes, any evidence can be used

[Anonymous Coward]

In sweden there is no such legal concept as "fruit from the bad tree". That is, any evidence (gathered regardless if a search was lawfull or not, will hold in court. Single police officers may loose their jobs, but the evidence found still hold.

Not that I think these laws will be passed to please the music and movie industries, but they could certainly use any evidence passed to them from this perfect, ever watching organization.

Re:Yes, any evidence can be used

[TheP4st]

Not that I think these laws will be passed to please the music and movie industries Maybe not, but you can be certain that MAFIAA lobbyists now are busy manipulating Swedish MP's into passing the bill under the pretense that it is crucuial for national security. That they then will try taking advantage of the bill (if passed) for anything but national security reasons is certain.

Re:Yes, any evidence can be used

[spyfrog]

The "national security" don't really fly as argument in Sweden.
The "think of the children" argument is going to be the one used.

Re:Yes, any evidence can be used

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Now that the government has already increased the amount of child pornography in circulation (by widening the definition of child porn to encompass drawings) they can use that to claim that increased surveillance is needed. They have another expansion for the law in plans as well, that makes porn with adults illegal if one of the participants looks like she's underage (even if she is over 18). A law that will create even more "pedophiles" and "sex criminals". A perfect excuse.

WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is SWEDEN! Since when has IT been a hotbed for terrorists or drug dealers? Middle-eastern terrorists moving to the cold sub-arctic climate of Scandinavia? Drug lords from the Columbian jungles? Not bloody likely.

It can't be militarily inspired either; Sweden is "non aligned" and has (officially) maintained a neutral stance in all wars for (nearly) the last 200 years, and they are not a party to NATO or a similar organization/treaty. Sweden has, in fact, the longest tenure of neutrality of any country in the world (yes, that includes Switzerland).

So, they're going to wage war against, and gather enormous amounts of intelligence on, its own citizens, instead? Are they going to raise the already highest tax rates in the world to pay for this needless Britain-esque surveillance?

This has nothing to do with terrorists or drugs, and everything to do with copyright "enforcement" and having more "legal" ways to gather data on Pirate Bay, their users, and other services that may set up shop there. There's no other plausible explanation.

Re:WTF?!

[vilgefortz]

Well, to be fair, there is still Russia. They will remain a serious potential threat for a considerable while.

Re:WTF?!

[odourpreventer]

This is SWEDEN! Since when has IT been a hotbed for terrorists or drug dealers?

File it under "delusions of grandeur". Our politicos like to think that Sweden is important enough to be considered a terrorist target.

Sweden is "non aligned" and has (officially) maintained a neutral stance

"Officially", yes. Practically, not so much. We (the government, that is) bend over for the guy with the biggest guns, and have done so since World War One.

Re:WTF?!

[Fizzl]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pw3e64sosEg

Sorry. I had to :)

Re:WTF?!

[greatpatton]

Sweden has, in fact, the longest tenure of neutrality of any country in the world (yes, that includes Switzerland). That's true for the modern form of neutrality, but the Swiss tradition of neutrality takes its root in the 1515 battle of Marignano, and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 reconised Switzerland and its neutrality...

Re:WTF?!

[Reziac]

Hmm... I've always wondered why my Norwegian ancestors so vehemently denied being related to any of the Swedes in our pedigree.... could be this fundamental difference in attitudes is the real reason. Cuz when someone shoots at Norwegians, they don't bend over; they shoot back.

Re:WTF?!

[belmolis]

Sweden isn't as peaceful, liberal, and crime-free as it once was. Among other things, Sweden reportedly has significant problems with unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Large areas of the city of Malmo, in particular, are now dangerous to enter to the extent that ambulance crews and firemen refuse to go there without police escort. The incidence of rape, especially gang rape, has risen considerably. There have been a number of arrests of Islamic terrorists in Sweden.

I don't approve of such uncontrolled wiretapping, but it is quite possible that the Swedish government is concerned, among other things, about Islamic terrorism.

Re:WTF?!

[AP31R0N]

Just because they are neutral doesn't mean they don't have threats. It just means they're selfish cowards.

Re:WTF?!

[scuba0]

I can't believe I'm saying this but it is no other word for it ... LOL! The US of A is the biggest threat to world and Swedish peace at this time.

Russia has no interest to invade Sweden, it would primarily go more south/central like Poland and Ukraine, maybe Finland would go too, if it would ever happen.

so you believe in a scenario

[circletimessquare]

where you will go searching for information about xyz, and no one out there will have any record of your search?

i'm not talking about government policy here, i'm talking about basic understanding of the technology: don't you think it is rather absurd of you to expect anonymity from a system that is fundamentally nothing but open packets traversing random nodes?

once you accept the notion of the complete lack of anonymity on the internet, why do you expect government policy to suddenly come in, and not only vanquish the fundamental truths of the technology of the internet, but also to suddenly behave in a virtuous way that no government has ever behaved in?

protect your own privacy. to depend upon others to protect your privacy for you is insanity. you want a government, a GOVERNMENT, to value your privacy more than you value your own privacy yourself (because you rely on others to protect your privacy for you). its an absurd position

Re:so you believe in a scenario

[steelneck]

It is not absurd when looked upon from a power perspective. Yes google can see any searches i do, but they wont see what i do at yahoo, so can site owners and most important, neither google, yahoo or any site owner has any way near the power to hurt me as my govenment has. Is is about the trust of the messenger, the same goes for the old postal service, snail-mail. This trust comes from the law. Today it is illegal to eavesdrop on private communication, this is what ISPs earn their trust from. The trusted part is allways the one who can hurt you the most, since you do not allow any info in the hands of the untrusted. This bill is forcing the owners of nodes to copy everything, even ordinary phone calls, to FRA for further analysis. This breakes the postal secret and the messengers trust. The anology is that the post office opens all letters but only looks closer on those meeting some criteria. The invasion of privacy is not in the first place to be looked upon closer, it is when the letters are opened by someone other than the reciever. The government should be transparent, not citizens. All countries where the opposite have been true, have been very nasty places to live in. In the seventies we had a scandal uncovered where the top suits in the byggest political party had created their own police who registered people. This had the result that many people that just happend to at the wrong place at wrong time got secretly blacklisted from job offerings, careers and some government services open to the rest of the society, in secret. Blacklisted people did not know, they did not have any way of defending them self. Half shut out from the society. This bill opens up for more of that, this is also exactly the reason behind the basic principles of human rights. To protect citizens from the regime, not protecting citizens from citizens or heaven forbid, protecting states from citizens. Citizens should be allowed to do anything not forbidden, for the state the opposite is true, it is not allowed to do anything without support in the law. This bill is creating a law-support governments should not have. Because as a citizen you cannot escape the government. So the trust will be lost. I will take the consequences if this bill gets passed. It is very sad, i will stop using the net completley, stop all my participation in communitys and program developing, no more mails. Shure i will miss it, but this is the end. I will not miss cellphones, because i have never owned one. In my 25 year working career i have never owned credit card either, so that i can do without in the future too. But the Internet i will miss. As i see it, they (actually the straussistic USA) demolished the library of Alexsandria once again. The end.

How about Switzerland ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only remaining country on my list.

A pathetic and desperate act for sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they really check out everything that goes on on the internet? Will they make sure they check each and every packet? Making sure it is not somehow coded? This is just as stupid as all other tries to fuck up freedom for absolutely no gain at all.

You catch criminals by having a competent and large enough police force, not by crap like this. And living in Sweden our police force today is a joke... yet they have time with crap like this and attacking the pirate bay...

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[jhol13]

Actually Finnish law required that.

According to Finnish law e-mail has very high level of privacy protection.

So in order not to break Finnish law they were practically forced to move the servers to Finland as they could not guarantee e-mail privacy otherwise.

Encrypt everything

[Joce640k]

Demand encryption from vendors. Encourage others to do so.

PRNG

[SgtChaireBourne]

• ...
• we do know that they have the world's fifth most powerful computer, in competition mostly with nuclear physics labs.
• "Customers" that will be able to place requests for searches include all authorities (all some 500 of them including Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, etc., but notably the police, secret service and customs)....

Interesting. So the PRNG flaws that get introduced every few years are, in effect, backdoors accessible to the FRA but probably out of reach of casual troublemakers.

Tit for tat?

[hyades1]

The United States has already said that pretty much any private communication it can get hold of is fair game. Does anybody have the feeling that a lot of other countries are responding by taking the view that, "If you read my mail, I"m sure as hell going to read yours."

Re:Tit for tat?

[Zironic]

That sound so retaliatory, wouldn't suprise me if it went mroe like:
"What a brilliant idea, why didn't we start doing that sooner"

Re:Tit for tat?

[hacker]

"If you read my mail, I"m sure as hell going to read yours."

Herein lies the problem. We CAN'T read THEIR mail!.

There is no oversight. We can't watch the watchers.

We are living in an unbalanced surveillance society, where the core system of checks and balances has been thrown out the window.

Federley's Blog

[Dobeln]

From his blog: http://federley.blogspot.com/

"Vad som kommer att ske den 17 juni? Ja vem vet. Kan ju bli pÃ¥kÃrd, sjuk, vara pÃ¥ resande fot, bli gravid eller bara vara dÃr och rÃsta ja. Vem vet. Den dagen den sorgen."

Translation:

"What will happen on the 17:th of June? Well, who knows? I might be hit by a car, become ill, spend the day travelling, become pregnant or just be there and vote yes. That day, that sorrow..."

The sad fact of life is that Swedish MP:s serve almost entirely on the whim of their party leadership. If they make trouble, they get wiped off the list in the next election, and they're gone.

Re:Federley's Blog

[Anonymous Coward]

The voters should vote for someone else then. That'll make sure they're gone too :).

It's just most voters aren't that upset - they keep voting for their favourite bunch over and over again despite what happens.

Once food stops getting on the table, or they have no heating for winter, or everyone gets mugged by muggers. Then people get angry.

This spying stuff? Most voters won't care.

It's not about expecting anonymity.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about expecting anonymity. I only expect the government not to monitor citizens without a good reason. If they suspect you of a crime, fine. But not everyone all the time. That tilts the power to much and will together with selective prosecution allow for harassing citizens who are only guilty of opposing the government and exercising their democratic rights.

Monitoring EU

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, and what about the telcos that aren't moving?
Loads of traffic from/to nordics, western europe, the baltics and eastern europe is routed or managed in sweden.

You understand the US Constitution WELL

[tjstork]

The base is: Citizens are allowed to do anything not forbidden, for the state it is the other way around, anything they do must be allowed by law first.

My God, if only Americans understood the US Constitution as well as you do, with that statement.

Oh the Irony...

[tjstork]

Is, that, at the end of the day, the right wing American President George Bush will have been the guy to have the LEAST onerous security impositions out of any of the western nations.

so let me get this straight

[circletimessquare]

you believe a government that harasses people just for exercising their democratic rights would wait for a law to spy on you?

why do you trust the government to behave so upstanding and forthright on one hand, and then expect nothing from them but fascist harassment... all in the same thought?

fix your impression of the government in one of the two modes you present to me in your statements above:

1. the government obeys the letter of the law all of the time, it is always well-behaved
2. the government wants to harass you for ideological reasons and exercising your democratic rights

whichever operating assumption you pick, you reach 1 of 2 conclusions:

1. the government is well-behaved. therefore, that they are privy to all internet communiction (they already are) doesn't bother me, they won't behave badly with that info
2. the government is fascist. therefore, it doesn't matter what laws exist, they will do whatever the hell they want anyway and rape my freedoms

you can't have it both ways friend. either the government is well-behaved, or it isn't. you can't expect good behavior (they will respect my rights) at the same time you expect bad behavior (they will rape my rights). it's one or the other

Re:so let me get this straight

[Man On Pink Corner]

you can't have it both ways friend. either the government is well-behaved, or it isn't. you can't expect good behavior (they will respect my rights) at the same time you expect bad behavior (they will rape my rights). it's one or the other

No, it isn't even remotely that simple. Governments change. "Behaviors" which were benign under one regime may not be so benign under the next, or after a particularly spectacular national trauma removes previously-accepted constraints. When you allow those behaviors to be encoded into law, they are much more difficult to remedy when they are eventually abused.

You sound like one of those Free Republic types who defend the Bush Administration's endless expansions-by-fiat of executive power. I really wish those people would have had the chance to stand aside, powerless, while the same rationalizations were employed by Hillary Clinton. Maybe then they'd have remembered why they they joined the Republican party in the first place.

Re:so let me get this straight

[Man On Pink Corner]

why do you trust the government to behave so upstanding and forthright on one hand, and then expect nothing from them but fascist harassment... all in the same thought?

The reason we developed the Rule of Law is because we recognize weaknesses in our own nature as humans, and as rulers of each other. When it comes to government, the only rational outlook is to hope for the best while anticipating the worst.

You need to hit the history and philosophy books before going any further down this path, or you'll manage to make yourself sound even more naive. You'll be surprised to learn that you're not the first to ask those rhetorical questions, and that they actually have been thought out.

Re:so let me get this straight

[circletimessquare]

if you understand that governments change, you wouldn't view the retardedness under the bush administration as an unstoppable slippery slope into fascism, but a fart in a small room that will evaporate under the next administration

but far be it for me to point out that your own words betray your hysterical attitude. feel free to carry on believing we are all going to hell in your panic and fear

oh, and feel free to call me a bush supporter based on nothing but the vaguest of impressions. meanwhile, i'm going to call you an asshole. that's based on a clear interpretation of your own hysterical, prejudicial thinking towards me. but don't worry about the insult, asshole, by calling me a bush supporter, you've insulted me far worse. asshole

compounded absurdity

[circletimessquare]

it either snoops or it doesn't

there is no model of the internet where you are wrapped in a magic tcp/ip bubblewrap cloak of protection from government snooping

it's not about the the law. you have a fundamental misunderstanding about your privacy and the technology involved. once you understand how the internet works, you wouldn't expect absurd things like "go ahead and snoop, but just not on me"

Re:compounded absurdity

[Troglodyt]

What? I never said "go ahead and snoop, but just not on me". I meant, "We just don't want it snooping ". We don't need the government to protect our information. We just don't want the government snooping. I don't have a fundamental misunderstanding about my privacy and the technology involved, I just want the government not spying on its citizens. Not spying is not the same as protecting from spying.

evesdropping all the rage nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

just more evidence of the insecurity of the (hopefully) outgoing regime of our greed/fear/ego based fearful 'leaders'. talk about 1984/big brother being foistered upon US? they want all of our 'secrets' available, whilst revealing none of their own murderous global warmongering intentions.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[TheP4st]

Did you actually RTFA you are referencing to?
Telia-Sonera did not block webtraffic Cogent Communications did!
FTFA:

Cogent has decided not to exchange traffic directly with TeliaSonera's AS 1299 or indirectly with AS 1299 through a third-party provider. As a result, Cogent has partitioned the Internet and disrupted the flow of traffic between Cogent and TeliaSonera customers. While this has a negative impact on some users of the Internet, this effect is the result of Cogent's decision and is unfortunately beyond TeliaSonera's control. Until Cogent rectifies this situation, TeliaSonera customers experiencing any difficulty reaching Cogent's network can continue to purchase IP Transit from TeliaSonera along with another Tier 1 provider. This will fix the immediate problem and ensure optimal connectivity going forward. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused⦠If you have further concerns, please address your commercial contact at TeliaSonera

Care to explain to us who are not wearing tinfiol hats how this can be interpreted as TeliaSonera willfully blocking traffic to Open Standards sites?

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[Anonymous Coward]

And France Telecom is going to buy TeleSonera so French law on privacy will be tighter :)

The Swedish News in English Story on this

[XavidX]

A English Source From Sweden

http://www.thelocal.se/12252/20080605/

all of which i agree with

[circletimessquare]

the question is, why do you think that such a villainous government would wait for a stupid law to sift the internet? either the government acts virtuously, or it doesn't. currently, your operating assumption about how the government acts has contradictory characteristics: on one hand, you expect a law to be passed, and then suddenly every governmental official will behave unerringly to the letter of that law. on the other hand, you expect the government to go out and rape your rights in secret no matter what. it's either one or the other as a basis for your opinion. your opinion can't be valid if it is base don a characterization of the government which is contradictory in the same scenario

you can't use proof of the government doing sneaky evil things to compel a law... that a sneaky evil government will somehow respect? its absurd of you. the law does not offer protection from what you fear, so why do you spend your time focusing on the importance of a bulwark of protection that offers no real protection from what you fear?

no law will compel the virtue that you seek, no law is protection from what they can and cannot do. if your snail mail was protected by law from snooping, do you think that law would stop them from snooping anyway if they wanted to? why do you think it is any different with the internet? why do you expect a flimsy law to compel unvirtuous people to be virtuous?

Re:all of which i agree with

[steelneck]

Why they would wait? Because they cannot do it today. The state simply do not have the access today, the infrastructure required is not built. What the bill proposes is that the owners of all bordering nodes should install special hardware and cables to the FRA, but not paid by the FRA. This copying would also be illegal today. So, none of the telcos have this infrastructure today, because it would both make no sense and be illegal.

Telia-Sonera

[SgtChaireBourne]

The outage affected key standards sites covering the OOXML problem. The outage suddenly lifted hours after the OOXML vote.

The blockage was marketed as an attempt to break net neutrality. However, choosing a network hosting key information sites at a crucial period just prior to an important decision was a bit of cleverness.

Telia-Sonera could have easily routed around the outage, but chose not to. As a result, Telia-Sonera's customers (both business and private) were blocked by actions/inactions by Telia-Sonera from accessing sites which were hosted by or used DNS services on that other network.

Sweden did this also in 1940!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting that Sweden has tapped German international lines in 1940 and later and offered gathered information to Britains.

More about that here: http://www.ams.org/notices/200308/rev-bauer.pdf

Potential For Good

[Shihar]

I personally think that this law might actually be a good thing. Due to the networked nature of the Internet, Sweden will be opening everyone's mail, not just the mail of their citizens. As a result, you might find that this prompts people to start truly using some decent encryption. If there was a sudden rise in encryption, individuals defending themselves might make this entire argument a moot point. If it takes a few dozen NASA (or Sweden's equivalent) super computers a few weeks to crack an e-mail, that fairly well rules out mass snooping.

The obvious counter is to make encryption without a back door illegal. With mobile open source projects which can set up home in any nation (or no nation) though, I think that the governments ability to enforce such absurdity would be rendered impotent.

Re:Potential For Good

[aurispector]

I get your point about this forcing positive change, but the plan is still bullshit of the worst kind.

1 - Get enough nations to start monitoring foreign email and phone calls, claiming it's only for serious national security issues. Ban use for domestic spying or criminal investigation to appease opponents.

2 - Implement international information-sharing agreement for said national-security information. Implement it so well that the various nations are essentially accessing the same system, effectively bypassing the domestic-use ban since another country gathers the information for you.

3 - Grandstanding politicians running for re-election allow access for domestic issues like kiddie porn while screaming "Think of the children!!!"

4 - Greedy politicians bribed to allow access for DRM violations citing made up numbers about lost revenue for a dying recording industry.

5 - ???

6 - World-wide panopticon-enforced fascist dictatorship. The word "privacy" is removed from dictionaries of all languages. George Orwell's ghost stands slack-jawed from the realization that he vastly underestimated the degree of control governments are now able to enforce.

At this point in history I'd like to see an open source email client that automatically uses nsa-grade encryption. Make it dead simple & make it default. Basically this will be necessary to ensure freedom since corporate controlled government has no further use for it.

Welcome to the new milennium!

Re:Potential For Good

[spikedvodka]

6 - World-wide panopticon-enforced fascist dictatorship. The word "privacy" is removed from dictionaries of all languages. George Orwell's ghost stands slack-jawed from the realization that he vastly underestimated the degree of control governments are now able to enforce. no... he understood that, see "newspeak"

How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinkingâ"not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. a Little more subtle would be Heinlein's take on it in "Stranger in a Strange Land"

Language itself shapes a man's basic ideas. and the discussion about the lack of a martian word for "War"

Re:Potential For Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious counter is to make encryption without a back door illegal.

Agreed.

With mobile open source projects which can set up home in any nation (or no nation) though, I think that the governments ability to enforce such absurdity would be rendered impotent.

I can see the obvious counter to that, and I don't like it at all. Thy will just make open source illegal, programming or asking about programming will be on par with e.g. chemistry, explosives, weaponry, ... today. In the end, you will be only free if you are computer-free, and then again, "the Man" will keep an around-the-clock eye on you because you avoid expressing yourself ergo you gotta be some kind of terrorist (unless you have medical report of having a mental condition).

You see, laying down before oppressor's tanks doesn't stop them if they don't care. Likewise, if we fight to keep our freedom, and use another freedom as a weapon (or an armor) we may as well lose both freedoms ... and none will care. Stupid masses of consumers, human cattle belonging to global corporations' herders, won't even know that there was once free software, even less so that it was important for anything.

Sometimes, a great tree falls down, and you can not save it from falling, you would get killed if you try to hold it from falling down, so you just step aside. One day, very far in the future, another tree will grow up to be as great as fallen was. Each tyranny ends in rot, eventually, if it cannot be ended by heroic deeds. If we choose today not to confront vigorously, not to give excuse to get struck down on a point which is of very little majority-perceived public interest, all that Big Brother nonsense will grow into bloat and die out from too much expense and gradually getting on nerves of increasingly too many "ordinary" (non-nerd) people.

For those with cheaper tickets, in short, this is the end of an era. It will come back, but not in our lifetime. And now something completely different ...

Re:Potential For Good

[pacinpm]

The obvious counter is to make encryption without a back door illegal. With mobile open source projects which can set up home in any nation (or no nation) though, I think that the governments ability to enforce such absurdity would be rendered impotent. I disagree. All they need to do is put those who USE such tools into jail. Location from those tools got downloaded doesn't matter at all. If such tools are illegal (their use is illegal) YOU will go to to jail - not the one who wrote those tools.

Re:Potential For Good

[AnyoneEB]

At this point in history I'd like to see an open source email client that automatically uses nsa-grade encryption. Make it dead simple & make it default. Basically this will be necessary to ensure freedom since corporate controlled government has no further use for it.

The problem with making encryption simple is that, as far as I know, there is no way to make encryption easy without also making man-in-the-middle attacks easy or involving a certificates agency collecting money and verifying IDs. Users need to be somehow involved in key exchange in the current models.

A partial work-around is that instead of end-to-end encryption, use currently existing support for encrypting all of the links. Require clients to use the encrypted versions of the protocols to connect to the mail server. Have the mail servers communicate with each other using encrypted methods. It is not completely secure, but then in order to read an e-mail you would need access to one of the mail servers it passed through, which is a lot better than the current state of merely needing access to one of the routers it passes through.

Good morning Sweden!

[MRe_nl]

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Puts a new light on email

[smchris]

So the number of countries who read your email depends on the number of countries the servers are in that it passes through. At least with snail mail, you'd _see_ the greasy fingerprints and cum stains on the envelope.

But I thought

[gelfling]

That the Nordic socialist happy hippy countries were the liberal slacker's friend. How can this be?

Re:But I thought

[Sigg3.net]

Sweden is very syztematic, and very precize. True story: walking in the Norwegian mountains the attractive routes are a bit clumsily marked. Crossing the border over to Sweden STRAIGHT LINES with STANDING MARKERS over a meter and a half! And this is in the middle of nowhere.

That said, Norwegian politicians' incompetence is likely to see a similar bill passed here as well.

This is to deal with their young Muslim immigrants

[nickos]

Sadly we can probably expect to see more countries in Europe pass these kind of laws as they realise the risks posed by their large Muslim populations. Sweden has a tradition of naively importing huge amounts of Muslims and then paying them very generous unemployment benefits (since they are usually ill equipped to work in a modern economy), and the effects are starting to be felt. Read more here.

That said, European governments are just treating the symptoms of the problem rather than the root cause: religious extremism (and some would argue religion generally). The sooner we realise that, the better.

AallemansrÃtt for snoopers.

[Therefore I am]

In Sweden, AallemansrÃtt allows free passage through the countryside as long as you respect crops and farmers gates etc. Clearly, the government now wants to tip-toe through peoples electronic mail in return. Seems fair enough to me ;)

Google's hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden's borders if the proposal goes through," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said last year, according to this article. "We simply cannot compromise our users' integrity by allowing Swedish authorities access to data that may not even concern Swedish activity."

Which I guess means either A) Google is moving all of their servers out of the US or B) any data to Google servers in the US is legitimately the concern of the US authorities?

Encrypt everything.

[Sigg3.net]

That's what the terrorists will be doing anyhow.

(tc and ToR user myself)

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[jo42]

fix: frankly change from my own domain to GMail The naivety of that statement is profound. Give the US and an evil mega-corp. easy access to your email? No thanks.

I Miss the Soviet Union

[Doc Ruby]

Back when the Soviet Union was tyrannizing everyone in it like this wiretapping, the "free" nations including Sweden, the UK and the US would never want anyone to think that we were doing it too. The example of the Soviets' evil was something of a deterrent to our own governments' being evil.

Our governments still did evil. But the threat of being exposed as "as bad as the Soviets" tended to minimize it. Without the Soviet counterexample, our governments are going as wild on us as the Soviets were.

And since Putin's Russia is a KGB paradise, the Russians probably have it just as bad as back then now, too.

Re:I Miss the Soviet Union

[azgard]

I agree with this assessment, but disagree with the sentiment. I am from Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite. Your comfort was at a price of much greater unjustice for others, people from Eastern Europe and Soviet Union. Please, fight your fights with government yourself (we also have our problems with our government), do not ask others to suffer so you could have comfort.

Re:I Miss the Soviet Union

[Doc Ruby]

You're right. I had mixed feelings as I posted that "I miss the Soviet Union". I don't. I get mad when I see people wearing T-shirts with a hammer and sickle logo, or "CCCP", as some kind of "ironic" fashion statement. If they wore a swastika, it wouldn't be funny, either, but about as hideous, and for a much longer duration of cruelty to a much larger number of people, and a much closer threat to destroying human freedom on Earth.

I'm sorry I didn't at least post my mixed feelings, or mention that "missing" the Soviets was a sarcastic statement about how much we've forgotten, take for granted and abandon without a tear.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[qrwe]

Guess you prefer FRA to read my mail instead. No thanks.

the infrastructure to snoop is not there?

[circletimessquare]

you believe that?

(snicker)

"This copying would also be illegal today"

there's that same fallacy: we need a law to protect us from people who don't obey the law ;-P

follow your opinion of the government all the way through: you say it is going to rape your rights, a heinous thing to do. ok, so, we will simply pass a law, and **poof** magically, heinous people will suddenly be virtuous

i'm not saying the government is heinous. i'm not saying the government is virtuous. i'm saying you need to make up your mind. because currently, you put forth both concepts: the government acts heinously. therefore, we need a law that the government will follow, of course... because it acts virtuously

make up your mind

Re:the infrastructure to snoop is not there?

[steelneck]

In this case it is not a fallacy, since it does not follow that logic. The government do not run our telcos anymore like they once did. It is illegal for the operator the owner of the hardware, what the government agency thinks is irrelevant - today. The company would not do anything illegal especially if it is only associated with a cost and no income. The point is that it is illegal for the owner of the hardware, the bill would turn that upside doown, ordering them to do what is illegal today. If the FRA would go to them today, they would get an healthy "up yours" as an answer. But not after this bill..

Re:Hate to say this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the US put pressure on Sweden for ThePirateBay Swedish authorities happily broke multiple laws and smiled about it.

And the sitting government lost their power in the subsequent election with the opposition achieving a majority with a margin smaller than the number of votes given to the pirate party.

The sitting government is not the same as the one which was in charge when the pirate bay was raided on US command. Of course, as is the case elsewhere we are screwed since politicians are only opposed to these sort of things while they are in opposition. The moment they get into office they tend to forget all about privacy, free speech etc...

wrong

[circletimessquare]

the snooping doesn't make it possible to map your social network, the structure of the internet makes it possible to map your social network. you and other idealists basically say: "i want a free and open network... that is also locked up and closed" what?

look: the internet is good thing, because it is open. but all good things also have a downside. the downside is that any expectation of privacy is absurd in an environment which, inherent to the technology, has none

and then people compound this absurd expectation of unfettered access with an expecation of security and privacy, with the more insane expecation, drum roll please, that governments are going to act completely virtuous on this system and not snoop on you. you expect a virtuousness in government that no government has ever had in the history of governments!

2 absurdities, one compounding the other

protect your own privacy. don't, for any reason, believe your privacy ever was, is, or ever could be an inherent component of a system that is based on free and unfettered access. and certainly don't expect your GOVERNMENT to protect your privacy for you!

how can people be so schizophrenic as profess complete cynicism in how governments behave towards their citizens... but then also somehow expect a law or two here and there will suddenly impart magical levels of virtousness that have never existed in government behavior ever before. i don't get it

you think working with a company

[circletimessquare]

is the only way to snoop on network traffic

hilarious

Re:you think working with a company

[greatpatton]

No but it's much more complicated otherwise they will not try to pass such a law... it's obvious! Not all data go through satelite link that are eady to snoop. Some traffic go through direct peering and if you don't have sniffer at the right place you will never be intercepted.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[greatpatton]

It is not required by Finnish law otherwise it will be againt CE law as it will create a distortion of the competition as services are free to be provided in the EU.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Anonymous Coward]

The alternative to controlling populations with religion is to control them with technology. Religion tells everyone that they are being constantly watched by an invisible superman, so they have to behave, whereas technology can *actually* watch everyone constantly. We are better off with technology, because it (1) actually works, (2) is amenable to change, e.g. balancing freedom against security, and (3) it doesn't require anyone to believe weird things.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[gruzurg]

Wow. You actually manage to make it sound like the swedish goverment is doing a bad thing letting people fleeing from a war into the country. I live in Sweden and I wish we would just accept any immigrant that comes here. Sure, some will be unemployed (but a lot fewer than you think), but I am prepared to pay the price. Tax money could be spent on far worse things than helping people.

What defines stuff going in and out of a country?

[SupremoMan]

I know we have come a long way with the internet, but I'm sure it still happens that something sent between 2 locations withing the country crosses international boarders. Would they then monitor those emails?

It just makes it legal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) All governments spy on their citizens. There are NO exceptions.
2) So-called "free" governments keep the spying very tightly covered up. "Not Free" governments tell people they are being spied on. (Score 1 for the "not free")
3) "Free" government must "pass laws" in order to share the ill-gotten information. "Not Free" governments do it anyway. (Score 2 for "not free")
4) Only citizens who are a special kind of stupid actually believe their government isn't spying on them all the time. These are the same people who are actually shocked by news items like this. The rest of use are "shocked, shocked I tell you" in the good Claude Reigns fashion.
5) "1984" wasn't a cautionary tale, people. 1984 was an ILLUSTRATION. It has always been that way. It will always be that way. Grow up!

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Anonymous Coward]

"We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and the Muslims because when we will become the minority they will be so towards us."

-- Jens Orback, minister in the Swedish government and member of the ruling Social Democratic Party, November 2004 on the Swedish radio channel P1

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[nickos]

You actually manage to make it sound like the swedish goverment is doing a bad thing letting people fleeing from a war into the country.

Like I said, naive.

I am prepared to pay the price.

I don't think any of us know the full price yet.

direct peering?

[circletimessquare]

you mean where instead of going through open relays i run my own wire from my house to kandahar?

"direct peering"

i do not think that concept means what you think it means

you catch the big major pipes. that's all you need to see everything. and you can do that in a number of ways in a number of places, without the notification or involvement of any company

the internet is not some weird foreign entity the govt needs to inject itself into. we are talking about a system that was built on top of an originally government project. the government has been there every step of the way. the internet has grown up organically on top of the government

when someone runs some new pipe somewhere, they know about it. no one laid some pipe somewhere that lots of internet traffic is moving over that the government doesn't know about

basically your position is: "we must stop the government snooping on... the network built on top of the government network"

absurdity

Re:direct peering?

[greatpatton]

If I send traffic from my ISP to a friend that is using another ISP where both ISP use a direct private peering (I'm here not talking about large exchange point). Can you tell me where you are going to snoop the traffic? I understand that some big under sea cable can be snooped but I'm talking about more local traffic. This kind of traffic is currently hard to intercept without the cooperation of ISP. That's why such kind of law are requested.

it's the swedes for crying out loud.

[oledoody]

it's sweden you fool. the swedes are good people. who cares.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Quiet_Desperation]

Religion tells everyone that they are being constantly watched by an invisible superman, so they have to behave, Yeah, but that kind of falls apart when the invisible superman tells them to go blow themselves up in crowded pizza parlors. You savvy?

so let me get this straight

[circletimessquare]

you've conceded that all of the major switches are already snooped on

what you are concerned about now is that the government will be able to snoop on the internet users who shape their traffic according to their detailed knowledge of quirkly local internet topology

how many people is that? ;-P

you don't win an argument by switching and confining the argument's scope to a neglible issue

so say the government gets all of these vast snooping powers now on these neglible traffic channels. if this is the last vestige of your freedom, i guess you never had any to begin with, and your resistance to these snooping powers are moot. which is my whole point

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[gruzurg]

No, no! Assuming Muslims will be a problem is naive. And also racist, but you already knew that.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[nickos]

I wasn't aware that Islam is a race.

Sweden did this during World War II

[mbone]

During World War II the Swedes intercepted German traffic from Norway to Germany proper going over Swedish territory, and broke the T-52 encryption to listen in to what they were up to. I don't think that the Germans ever had a clue.

Yes, but.....

[crhylove]

Will it blend?

Seriously, I'd put any cowardice ridden, shit-bag politician who votes yes on something like this directly in a blender. If they don't fit, I'd cut them up first.

I'm not kidding. Wire tapping is step one into 1984, and it's an inevitable step backward in human existence. Please, please somebody have the courage to do the right thing and off the mother fuckers involved in supporting this.

And then blend what's left of them. Thank you.

Swedish Environmental Party...

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

FRA has apparently stated that they had already been using wiretaps. I think some posts in the thread mention that as well. The swedish environmental party (miljöpartiet) has requested that an investigation should be do to see if FRA has broken the law. Source here (in swedish)
http://www.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/riksdagsfraga_fras_laglosa_avlyssning_maste_utredas

if you understand the rule of law

[circletimessquare]

to be nothing but a wish in the middle of a hurricane, god knows why you think the law ever protected you from anything, or ever would. the rule of law is exactly as you describe it in your first sentence, and then in your second sentence you make a solid statement of its total lack of worth. so which is it oh great guru, you have faith in the value of the law, or you have no faith in the value of the law? pick one, you can't have it both ways

"You need to hit the history and philosophy books before going any further down this path, or you'll manage to make yourself sound even more naive. You'll be surprised to learn that you're not the first to ask those rhetorical questions, and that they actually have been thought out."

gee, thanks dad, can i borrow the car keys? in your vast wisdom as compared to mine, one would have hoped that you would have learned at some point that patronization and condescension would engender anything but hatred in whomever you were talking to, prick

what an asshole you are

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh .. Tthanks to this policy places like Malmö are vastly different than they used to be. Rampant crime, rapes, whole districts practically off-limit to white population ... enjoy.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[vuo]

You really think that the bought politicians would voluntarily break the silence and sue Finland in the European Court of Justice for enforcing its own privacy laws? I see a slight chance of this tactic backfiring, with Sweden being sued...

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Reziac]

The price will be when the country is no longer Sweden or Swedish. Where will you, as Swedes, go when your country no longer exists??

MP question to Minister of Justice

[rfroberg]

An MP of the Green Party, Max Andersson, put a question today to the Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, regarding FRA's previous wiretapping in violation of the Swedish consitition. The text is in Swedish but translates roughly to:

According to claims in the media, for instance Computer Sweden, there are strong reasons to believe that Försvarets Radioanstalt, FRA, already engaged in wiretapping of phone calls, despite the fact that there is no legal support for doing so. It is said that FRA already listens, or have listened, to phone calls transmitted wireless. That may include calls over the wired telecom network which may sometimes be routed over satellite or radio, and are thus possible to listen in on via radio recievers. Although this has not explicitly been illegal according to Swedish law, it has neither been explicitly permitted. According to FRA's former second in command, Anders Wik, The European Convention on human rights is interpreted such as wiretapping is illegal unless explicitly permitted by national law. Anders Wik is said to have commented the bill as "the task" (to listen in on conversations over radio) "have existed earlier, but will now be made legal.". Thus, there are strong reasons to believe that the FRA has engaged in wiretapping whose legality may be questioned. Will the Minister take any steps to investigate to what extent this has been done?

Re:What defines stuff going in and out of a countr

[m94mni]

The definition is - any packet that crosses the border. The fact that it will later make a reentry only means it gets recorded twice.

Encrypt

[nurb432]

Repeat after me .. We Will Encrypt All Traffic

Tagged Switzerland WTF?

[theolein]

Who the fuck tagged this article with the tag "switzerland"????

Just how dumb can one be if you can't even use google to spot the difference

Re:Tagged Switzerland WTF?

[Handlarn]

Lighten up, it is obviously a JOKE. The joke is Sweden and Switzerland are always mixed up, and we're both small countries that nobody cares about. :D

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[jhol13]

I'm sorry you are wrong, privacy really is required by Finnish law.

You can compete as long as you obey the laws.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[greatpatton]

Yes but if you have to locate your infrastructure in Finland then this no more obey to European free market law that prohibit this kind of protective behavior, and that's why there is privacy law at the EC level. It will be the same than saying that crope must be grown in Finland to meet local sanitary requirement. You may say it but it will not make it legal.

Re:Sonera moved their email servers because of thi

[jhol13]

The law does not state the e-mail servers must be in Finland. The law is stricter than EU wide privacy law.

Telia-Sonera decided the easiest way to do accomplish that was to move the servers to Finland. They could have done it by other means, e.g. with encryption.

The free market law is not some magical silver bullet which overrides every other law. Same with crops - if they do not pass Finnish sanitary laws they cannot be sold in Finland. It does not matter if the free trade is hindered. It does not even matter if they pass laws of e.g. UK (remember the mad cow disease "incident").

Women vote: security rights

[pbaer]

Looks may help, but it's more than that. Women typically vote for perceived security over freedoms. This is most pronounced when they are single. When they are married they vote more like a man. Don't mod me troll until you've read the paper.

Re:Women vote: security rights

[aliquis]

Well, I have no idea if women votes for or against him, so it wasn't based on facts and therefor how they actually vote and neither of perceived security or freedom. It was just "but we are screwed anyway because they will like how he looks."

But you are probably correct.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Teron]

Oh god how I wish you could pay yourself and then be left out in the cold when you realize your own foolishness. Instead the whole country is doomed to suffer for your crazy ideas.

Re:This is to deal with their young Muslim immigra

[Teron]

Switzerland still looks decent. Hopefully they still allow Swedes to immigrate, though I wouldn't blame them if they banned us in order to prevent us from ruining their country the same way we've ruined ours.