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Wiretapping Law Sparks Rage In Sweden
castrox writes "This Wednesday at 9am the Swedish Parliament is voting on a new wiretapping law which would enable the civil agency (FRA — Defense Radio Agency) to snoop on all traffic crossing the Swedish border. E-mail, fax, telephone, web, SMS, etc. 24/7 without any requirement to obtain a court order. Furthermore, by law, the sitting Government will be able to instruct the wiretapping agency on what to look for. It also nullifies anonymity for press tipsters and whistleblowers. Many agencies within Sweden have weighed in on this, with very hefty criticism, e.g. SÄPO (akin to FBI in the US), the Justice Department, ex-employees of FRA, and more. Nonetheless, the ruling party block is supposedly pressuring its members to vote 'yes' to this new proposed law with threats to unseat any dissidents. After massive activity on blogs by ordinary citizens, and street protests, the story has finally been picked up by major Swedish news sources. The result will likely be huge street protests on Wednesday. People have been completely surprised since this law has not gotten any media uptake until very late in the game."
Obvious answer - too many Americans believe that the government knows best.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Obviously you've never had soylent greens, nor have you read 1984. Good job, move on, enjoy your perceived to be excellent life. The rest of us will keep fighting for what barely remains of most rights.
Or can they snoop encrypted messages too?
If you tap peoples' phones for good reasons, pretty soon you'll be tapping them for bad ones.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The US has long been resigned to give up freedoms gradually to 'ensure their security', but the end result is nowhere near worth the cost. Free thought has slowly been taken from us as a direct result of our willingness to sacrifice for no apparent reason; the current administration has really done nothing to be forthcoming with what is really going on, and we're on the way to being screwed as a result.
And this bit of legislation, whether we here in the States realise it or not, has much broader implications than just the privacy of Swedes being impeded; as I understand the article, any communications that hit Sweden are subject to monitoring; and as the article doesn't cite whether or not this requires the Originator or Terminator of a given communication be physically present in Sweden, this could include US-based items that pass through a network element of some sort that IS Swedish. And there's nothing to say that there won't be information sharing with governments of other countries, including ours, to implicate our citizens of crimes (where there are none being planned, let alone committed) on the basis of nothing but the content of a phone call or email that happened to cross through or end in Sweden. And it is foreseeable that the United States, in order to circumvent what discord there is domestically, may use that fact to continue the abuses that are already occurring, and in a way that may not be open to much challenge. All in all, this shouldn't be an outrage just for Swedes, but for anyone who would prefer that not everything they do be subject to some form of monitoring that is declared legal by some manner of court in the world.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
Funny thing, I thought Animal Farm was about democracy failing due to an uneducated public.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why are governments all over the world still taking things so slowly? By now, I'd have expected at least several 1st world countries to be 100% police state. Tapping, tracking, and using every tidbit of information regarding citizens is such old news. We'd have less to discuss if we talked about the countries that are NOT taking this road.
Personally, I've given up caring about what governments do. Until the general population is ready to literally rip their government down, nothing is going to change. Somebody should really start by assassinating a few key politicians and corporate lobbyists. (Hrm, I wonder if a sentence like that is enough to land a person in Guantanamo these days).
"It's an important book to read - it's on the school curriculum in most western nations."
Yes, I first read 1984 at high school circa 1974. I think you need to bear in mind that the OP looks like an attempt at insightfull humour.
OT Trivia: In the appendix of my old copy it says (paraphrase) "C is a precise language used only by technocrats".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Anti-freedom laws are springing up left and right, and invariably they're pushed through in some cloak-and-dagger midnight sessions, often either completing the bare minimum of readings or even trying to get away with simply ignoring the necessary process. Pressure is being used to browbeat MPs of the ruling parties into submission (where necessary) while every trick in the book is being used to avoid informing the opposition (and population) earlier than absolutely necessary.
Makes you think. I mean, those people are supposedly being voted into office by the majority, supposedly working for their interests. Why the hush-hush-rush-rush? If you're doing what your voters wanted, why bother trying not to inform the press? After all, what you do must be in the interest of the majority, so why care about the outcry of some naysayers and professional paranoiacs?
You're doing what your voters want, right? Right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Small bits and pieces my friend. Mostly curious articles blowing in the wind. Nothing serious. We get mad proposals every once in a while - that's no reason to think they'd go through. This one, however, all of a sudden has broad support in the Government and parties in the Parliament - opposite to what anybody sane would think.
Also, people are slow - they reject it until it's in their faces and they are forced to act. Most people think that spying on the enemies is a good thing, but they never realized that they themselves, and their neighbors, would be wiretapped. That's why the uproar.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
*sigh* No, communism - the economic theory - has absolutely nothing to do with ultimate government control. In a communist system, there is no government. Perhaps you're thinking of socialism? Or Marxism-Leninism?
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Actually, the final form of communism is about as far from centralized government control you can get. The big problem occurs because of Phase 2 when transitioning from a capitalist/fascist society to the utopian form of communism:
Phase 1) you supposedly have to instigate a revolution to get control of the society away from the rich fatcats,
Phase 2) there is a totalitarian phase where the revolutionaries assume absolute control in order to reconstruct all of the social & economic institutions to support the new communistic structures (while crushing any attempts by the fatcats to reestablish THEIR institutions), and
Phase 3) eventually everyone lives in little communes caring for each other (hence the name communism) and the political power is supposed to flow UP from those little communes.
I have forgotten just about all of the details, but this was the gist of what I remember reading (a long, long time ago) about Marxist Communism.
Needless to say, there hasn't been a major attempt at communism yet that made it past step #2. Somehow, the revolutionaries always seem to get stuck at that phase stamping out just one more discontented "enemy of the State" before they're quite ready to give up power.
The cynical might even suspect that, at least in some cases, the revolutionaries never actually intended to get past step #2, and instead were just using the "workers unite!" propaganda to build their revolutionary armies from the poor, desperate and gullible.
There, fixed that for you.
"You supply the story -- I'll supply the war!"
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This was reported a week ago on torrentfreak and the swedish media is running this just now? It's sad that I, an American, knew about this before the average swede. Fucking media.
that assertion is like saying the federal government has no say on the minimum drinking age, but we all know that to be false.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This may seem counter-intuitive at first, and believe me I don't compare any current people to MLK or any nonsense like that. However, like the civil rights movement, the internet offers a place for regular people to exchange information and ideas (at very little cost and in a semi-anonymous fashion). Websites like Wikileaks frankly scare the shit out of governments. The masses are, and always will be, the #1 enemy of the state.
Basically, as the internet grows more adept at connecting disparate people, the less likely we'll be willing to fight wars. I can go right now and become friends or at least become familiar with someone from China, Iran, Egypt, and even Iraq. Wars, especially for America, are extremely profitable for the propertied classes. It's the reason businesses like Standard Oil sold to the Nazis and the British in WWII. It's the reason IBM had no qualms helping the Germans index Jews for extermination. Now these same companies lobby to congresspeople on a daily basis, and you and I will probably never meet our representatives in person.
And people wonder why the needs of the people aren't being met. It's really quite simple - the people don't matter to most governments. They are the enemy. The people at the top -- you know, the 1 percent of people who own nearly half of all investments in the stock market -- really like things the way they are.
Funny thing, I thought animal Farm was about Communism failing due to greedy bastards exploiting their comrades.
Seriously, where has the outrage been in the US?
hey, we're pretty annoyed. and we're about to do som-
**OMG, did you hear - newegg has a gigabit switch on sale for $9!! kewl! **
uhh, what were you saying, again? oh yeah, we're really pissed off about this freedom stuff. we really are.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Few people here have likely studied political science at a level of anything greater than basic history lessons in text books. The same people who think that the Soviet Union was communist also think that the United States of America are a democracy even though both of those two examples are pretty clearly neither a communist state nor a democracy but, well, this is /. and not politician dot I suppose.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You're placing too much emphasis on the word "government".
You should be a little more abstract and fear "large organizations", which would include governments AND companies. (There are, of course, other forms of organization, but governments & companies are the only ones I can think of which become large enough to become a serious problem to societal health.)
Any organization that grows large enough, whether it be government or company, is more likely to become both corrupt & have the resources to crush opposition.
Sweden has one of the biggest watching Brothers in the world. We've been registered for hundreds of years - first by the church, then by the state. We don't need to register ourselves to vote - the state knows if we are qualified. Most of us don't need to do our taxes, just send an SMS to confirm that the numbers are correct - the state already knows how much we've earned, how much we own, and how much we've got saved in bank accounts and shares.
And we trust Big Brother. We've voted for the social democrats for the most part the last hundred years. Parties win elections by promising tax raises. We trust Big Brother.
We're seen as a copyright safe haven because our laws are not yet draconian, but it's all a process. Our anti-commercialism of course plays a role here. Big scary USA companies want to create and enforce laws in Sweden? No way!
Still, people don't see Big Brother as Big Brother watching, but rather as Big Brother making things easier and helping us when we need him. That's probably why this law has become so controversial. It does not help Swedish citizens. We're not afraid of "terrorism". Our government can't pull that crap on us.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Seriously... someone's got to make the simple point of asking why they need this. Sweden doesn't even have any emotional event like 9/11 to point to in order to induce people to comply. This is an embarassment to the rest of Scandinavia.
Wrong with the governments? Not so much, I think. The people who make up these governments are looking after their own interests, as always.
The problem is more with the people who elect the governments. They are buying into the scares that the government presents them with and giving the governments more control - ostensibly to catch the bad guys, but definitely restricting the freedom, privacy, and security of the good guys.
I am happy to see that the Swedes are standing up against this new restriction of their privacy. Good luck to them, and let's follow their example.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It takes time and they need to start now building the infrastructure. My point is, how are the governments who see what's coming, plan to maintain order when the population grows beyond their capacity to police it if they don't use automation?
Considering the population limit that the Earth can reasonably support is around seven billion using artificial energy like hydrocarbon. Take away artificial energy (peak oil) and the Earth can only support about three billion. Add to that changing climate, changing growing patterns, water shortages... Smart government leaders are anticipating and planning for the eventual chaos.
When the Earth eventually reverts back to being able to support (only) two billion and there's 12 billion to feed how will governments control the populace unless the steps are taken today to build the infrastructure to control the population? No legislation will solve the problem. They can only plan for it.
-[d]-
The revolution will not be televised. Grassroot orgs need to build their own media channels.
-- Let's go Viridian.
This is important. I'm replying just in case anyone has AC filter on.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
No we need to get these big networks broken up, and off the air, and hit their public file[s] so that when a new FCC appointee takes office and it's time for the station's renewal for frequency allocation and station license, there's nothing but complaints that the station is fascist, and to deny the licenses.
That's what we fucking need. So it's more than just hitting the streets, it's more than just voting, it's actually hitting these stations where it fucking hurts. The protests should be AT THE STATIONS, not in front of the fucking Whitehouse!!!
Money is the root of all evil?
It's going to get much worse.
Once the illegal wiretapping is in place, any plans that you have will be countered politically.
Any oversight will be nullified.
If you had rights in Sweden, they'll start deteriorating soon.
Then your economy is going to go to shit.
Sounds like you've already got your fascist media in place.
Plenty of Americans believe the government is full of BS. They just also believe that "somebody else" will take care of the issue for them.
I myself use an approach that doesn't sound so "cool" as a shouting slogan is, but which people accept much more easily: I actually explain what the issue with government is. I tell them basically this: that any group, by being a collective of individuals, has a collective "moral level" that is at best the average of the "moral level" of each individual that's part of it. Thus, government being a collective group composed of all the people in government, you just have to ask yourself what's the typical politician's morals. If you can answer that, you can answer what's the average moral level of government itself. Compare that to the average moral level of the population as a whole, and it becomes pretty clear that government is almost by definition "just worse".
By switching from a "good vs. evil" discourse to one of relative scales where neither "us" nor "them" are at either extreme, but we both are in the middle, "they" just a little below than "us", those with whom I talk recognize that yes, we actually must watch government carefully so that they don't drop "too much".
Longer, but truer. And by being truer, it just works.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
The media isn't informing anyone because the media has its own agenda. We saw that extremely clearly with the manipulative questions politicians are asked in the primaries. The media (and those controlling it) wins by funneling a "lesser of two evils" choice to the general populace to continue the "mirage" of democratic choice. They could care less whether McCain or Obama wins because they are set with their behind the scenes policy groups, especially in regards to Israel and foreign policy, international banking, and big government redistribution programs to manage to ensure the bureaucratic cut.
If the election were to have been Kucinich versus Paul, the media would be in crisis mode. The next president is determined by media manipulation early in the primary debate process, before the general population has a clue of what's going on. This is done by framing who is the "front runner", who is the "fringe kook", etc. Huckabee's surge was controlled and set up by Anderson Cooper's "Jesus" question.
YouTube clips made this manipulation too obvious to too many people, and it is imperative for the powers that be behind the scenes to control information flow with things like DMCA takedown notices, making independent news delivery on the internet too expensive, and using jack boot thug scare tactics such as wiretapping and invasion of privacy to try and stem the tide of a never before seen giant international town hall of message board talking heads competing directly with the officially sanctioned opinion shapers. This is a Berlin Wall falling historical moment.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Yes, that's right. In response to an article about a proposed law in Sweden, the FP waited until the fourth word of his post (not including post title) to mention America. The fourth fucking word. Does he get modded offtopic? Noooo ... his post is +5 interesting, and somewhere around 100+ comments so far have replied. Including this one.
Look, I get it, there's a lot of people here who hate Bush, blah, blah, blah. I'm not debating whether Bush is evil, or has eroded Constitutional rights, or hates cute little animals in ANWR, or whatever. You know why? Because that's not the point of the frickin' article, that's why.
The sad thing is, you can look in just about any article around here, and sooner or later the discussion devolves into the same thing: "Stupid Amerikuns luv there beer, gas guzzlin cars, gunz, and red meet all because of frickin' Bush, who is stealin our rites". That happening here makes about as much sense as a Linux kernel discussion spontaneously breaking out on the Huffington Post every day.
I'm not saying the FP doesn't have a point about the erosion of our Constitutional rights, and I enjoy reading some of the more thoughtful posts. I even get a chuckle out of some of the way-out tinfoil hat rants. I'm just sick of every discussion going down the same off-topic US-centric rabbit hole. No wonder everyone else says that we here in the US can't seem to think outside our borders for more than a nanosecond.
People, for crying out loud, focus, will you? Does anyone here actually have much of anything to say about wiretapping in Sweden?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
As for "mentioning religion", I have no problem if an elected official is religious and uses that fact as a part of his/her campaign. But I do get very upset if I hear that elected official voting for laws that favor one set of beliefs over another, or using his personal religious justification to argue for a law (gay marriage, anyone?). If a law is really that good of an idea, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with an argument that doesn't rely on a religious dogma.No, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution does not protect the right to hunt. Never has, never will. The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to be responsible for defense of community (and by extension, yourself).
As for "never meant for a modern world", that's also false. If you owned property in or near the LA riots of 1992, or in Southern Louisiana for about three months after Katrina, or were in one of the wrong classrooms at Virginia Tech, or any number of other more local instances where the police either opted out "until the dust settled" or were unable to prevent "bad things" from happening, you would know that you are still personally responsible for your own safety.
The Second Amendment is highly relevant in the modern world, in it's original wording, with it's original intent.Activist court? Ugh. You're one of those people.
You don't seem to be aware that invalidating laws that violate the constitution and/or lawful treaties is the responsibility of the judicial branch. Nullification is a critical check and balance that the courts have to offset the sometimes overreaching efforts of the legislature and executive. And that every time a court uses that power, it's necessarily saying that something passed by a majority vote is in fact, a really bad idea?
Go back to high school civics. You were apparently napping at a few critical moments.