Slashdot Mirror
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."
Jeez... if only Americans would have done the same thing in response to this guys efforts in his administration to do the same thing.
Seriously, where has the outrage been in the US? Did not George Orwell warn us? The number of Constitutional rights we've lost under the current administration is truly stunning and if we do not stand up and resist, this sort of thing will continue to spread throughout the world as it has in the UK, Japan, the US and many other European countries.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
I'm getting sick and tired of people constantly referencing George Orwell whenever some government institutes a wire tapping law. There wasn't any bloody wire tapping in Animal Farm!
I have nothing compelling to say
The problem is that a lot of this nonsense was supported on both sides to some extent, the patriot act for example was voted for by both sides with only a few [you can count them on one hand] voting against it. Which is an important point to be made, it isn't just the administration alone that has condoned this, after all these could not have been passed without democrat support to some extent especially now with the democrat majority. it's a severe problem with our government that extends far beyond bush.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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.
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
Here are the links: http://www.gnupg.org/ http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/ http://www.rarsoft.com/
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.
I'm sure Sweden, if this wiretapping law makes it through, will also pass a law making evasion of the law a felony. That way the people watching you don't even need to know anything about what they're doing, so you can fill the internal surveillance organisation with irreplaceable idiots, just like every other government department in the world.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I know, that's generally why I am opposed to the Patriot act well acts really, the second draft was altered after all- and a host of other blatently unconstitutional bills that were passed anyway, it's just rather disturbing to see the collusion that was required for all of this to be passed in the first place.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"Obviously you've never had soylent greens..."
What sort of meat comes with the greens?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think you need to bear in mind that Orwell wrote books other than Animal farm. Such as 1984, which featured a variant on the "panopticon", in the form of electronic surveillance.
It's an important book to read - it's on the school curriculum in most western nations. The USSR banned it, and people in the USA have tried to (w.t.f.???).
You don't know how this encryption works, do you?
Word on the street is that laws to do kind of the same thing are being run through the Finnish government, without much visibility or discussion, backed and sponsored by various multinational corporations.
Here are two facts: 1) Google already said they will not place any servers in Sweden, in case the law goes through. 2) Sweden's prime minister in conjunction with the defense minister fairly recently (no exact estimate) signed a treaty with the United States of America with the express purpose of sharing information obtained with wiretapping. Sweden's and the U.S. systems will be "integrated" and experience shared.
Ergo: big business have already identified this threat and we've already established a nice contract with the U.S. Telia, the largest ISP in Sweden, moved mail servers to Finland because their Finnish customers were getting worried.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
I'm a bit confused where all this "never mentioned by the major media previously" is coming from. There's been several articles, editorials and other mentions in the newspaper since the law was introduced. It just seems that people didn't really care enough to notice until now.
"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.
If you tap peoples' phones for good reasons, pretty soon you'll be tapping them for bad ones.
What do you mean by "soon"? J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) and Nixon are known to have abused domestic spying capabilities for political and dogmatic reasons. John Lennon was spied on, for example, merely for political statements not too different from the lyrics of songs like "Imagine".
Table-ized A.I.
They would just say, "Hey Bill [in the U.S.]... did you get that? We have him clearly visible now. Oh, AES is it? You need help with the brute force? Sure thing."
Sweden reports to the U.S. and vice versa. This is fact. I don't think they'd cut you off transmitting. In any case they would make it easier for you in order to get you to talk more and contact the rest of your terrorist buddies in the good old Soviet.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
One main protest site here, there is also a Google translation here. Oddly, the Google translation has problems with common words such as "integritetsintrång", "utredningsbegäran" and "åsiktsregistrering". :P
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
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.
The complacency of American citizens is disturbing. It's almost comparable to Germans "going with the flow" in the 1930's. Privacy, judicial review, and the right to a fair and open trial are being sucked down the drain with only a mild whimper.
Table-ized A.I.
Modern cryptosystems do not rely on security by obscurity. They rely on the intractability of certain classes of math problems, in particular prime factorization and discovering discrete logarithms, or on the presumed impossibility of reversing certain keyed permutations without knowledge of the key, such as feistel networks. If you're interested, Wikipedia has very extensive articles on all of these concepts, and there are a number of good books that can be had for the price of half an hour's work.
Graduated high school in '01.
brave new world was on the curriculum, but not examined nearly as thoroughly as king lear or the scarlet letter.
1984 was not on the curriculum.
any coincidence that my state was a heavy red state, and the republicans had control of congress for 3 years before I even entered high school?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If the technology exists to eavesdrop on a properly encrypted conversation we have bigger problems than some silly Swedes.
*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!
What Europe needs is another fascist. You know, one who can "get things done" without opposition.
I know of two men who will be available for such a position on January 20th, 2009. Their resume in this subject area is quite impressive. That is if you are not selective about grammar by one of them.
Table-ized A.I.
congressmen no longer read bills.
Further, since 1998 the media has had an agenda, and has become a close bed fellow with legislators.
they trade favors, and have obviously developed a strict code of conduct to cover for one another's acts.
I see no reason why the current media wouldn't help the republican administration by threatening blitzes against those who refused to vote for the act.
Frankly, this won't stop until every media company is broken into 8 or more smaller companies, and all current officers are legally forbidden from practicing business in the sector.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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.
But I guess in this case, more publicity is actually doing good.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
It is a big deal, because without this law, we can take the current criminal wiretappers to court and make them stop.
I'm not an anarchist but my lawn is booby trapped. :o
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think most slashdotters are more paranoid about governmental control than communism currently
Communism is a form of government....
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
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.
In a communist system, there is no government.
Well there is not state to be precise. Whether there is government (as in some form of self government), is slightly different question. But yes, OP needs to get a clue. And the "to each according to their need ..." is the FOSS slogan, no? ;)
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Funny thing, I thought animal Farm was about Communism failing due to greedy bastards exploiting their comrades.
Funny thing, I thought Animal Farm was about democracy failing due to an uneducated public.
Animal Farm is a fairly obvious allegory of the betrayal of the hopes of the Russian Revolution. (HINT: The pig 'Napoleon' is Stalin and the horse 'Snowball' is Trotsky). In Orwell's mind that was "democracy failing," but that is perhaps not how you meant the phrase.
Bear in mind that Orwell was a revolutionary socialist, who fought for the Trotskyist POUM in the Spanish Civil War (SCW) and that the POUM was crushed, not so much by the Falangists, as by the Stalin controlled Communist Party. Stalin during the SCW, was actively supressing all worker-led collectivisation of industry and reinstalling the middle-class owners in the (vain as it proved) hope of convincing France and Britain to join him in opposing Germany and Italy (who were involved in the SCW on the Franco/Falangist side).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
The problem is that there is a lot of information to be gained just by seeing who/what you are communicating with, and encryption doesn't work to stop that.
You have to both use encryption and an anonymizing proxy server/network to protect yourself. Of course, communicating with an anonymizing proxy will of course get you noticed also.
you forgot Phase 4) ??? and Phase 5) Profit!. I'll get my coat.
One of the clearest statements of the goal of making the state "wither away" is in Lenins "The State and Revolution" which is mainly concerned exactly with the abolition of the state. For example:
Finally, only Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be suppressed-"no one" in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population.Arguably that is one of the chief sources of the Marxist-Leninist view of the state.
Note that Lenin did not advocate the removal of the state immediately - on the contrary he though it necessary as a way of suppressing the capitalists after a socialist revolution. This too is firmly rooted in Marx' and Engels writings - being the basis of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" in contrast to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" which was a term Marx' and Engels used to refer to capitalist "democracies" that oppress the poor.
What confuses people is often that what Lenin and his successors called a socialist state, people in the west started calling communist.
One can argue over whether even the socialist label of that society was true, and to what extent they followed their own supposed principles once they gained power or whether the many reprehensible actions taken were a perversion or abuse of the symbolism and support they had built with no connection to the original ideology. Regardless of which side one falls down on in that discussion, it should be quite clear that there was never even any indication from the Soviet leadership that the saw their society as communism in any shape, way or form - it was at least in name intended to be socialism.
This becomes even more clear if one studies the debates that raged in early Soviet society over how soon the transition to communism would be complete, and where depending on who and when you asked the answer might be anything from a generation in the future to hundreds of years - communism was seen as a long term goal by most people.
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 wrong (but it's a common mistake). Go read "The State and Revolution" by Lenin. Even Lenin, who arguably later fucked up and betrayed those ideals himself, did not believe this.
The typical reason why people fail to understand the theoretical basis here is because most people only hear the superficial terminology and never bother to learn what they mean. Marx, and later Lenin, talk about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" which will exist under socialism, as the method of transitioning society to communism.
It is also perhaps one of the reasons why it's proven so easy to trick people into supporting these dictatorships, and a key reason why so many revolutions ("socialist" or otherwise) lead to oppression.
Fact of the matter is that even Lenin's works makes it clear that the proletariat of the dictatorship refers to the working classes oppressing the capitalists in the same way that the capitalists in a capitalist country oppresses the working classes, and hence a net increase in freedom (on the basis that the working classes make a larger part of the people. The whole point is to abolish the capitalist class, by taking away their privileges, and making them gradually become members of the working classes.
Since this would effectively turn them into members of the ruling class, and eventually make everyone members of the ruling class, the idea is that it would eventually lead to a classless society where the state then just "withers away" and disappears.
This is further underscored because Marx and Engels refers to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as a way of talking of capitalist countries when they wanted to put across the point that without economic power political rights alone does not put people on equal footing.
In fact, to quote Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat:
Thus, in capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed, poor, false; a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to Communism, will, for the first time, produce democracy for the people, for the majority, side by side with the necessary suppression of the minority-the exploiters.This idea of "producing democracy for the people, for the majority" is much of the basis of the early introduction of the "soviets" after the overthrow of the Czar.
One of the big problems with Leninism, though, is that it also emphasizes a "revolutionary vanguard", and enforces extremely strict party discipline. Historically, most revolutionary movements regardless of their goal, tend to push for far more radical changes than the people as a whole wants - you're more likely to be prepared to take to arms if you have more reasons to be unhappy with the current regime after all.
And when you then have a very disciplined organization that has spent years or decades building themselves up under the idea of always being in danger (because they were), and that people really supports their end goals (because that's how they justify taking to arms against the current regime), you have organizations that are primed to see any resistance as proof of "counter revolution".
It's a recipe for disaster, and sufficient to pervert any ideology, no matter how much people believed or believe in it at the time of the revolution. You can see that in movements across the political spectrum - movements ranging from the far left to the far right have been seduced into using extreme violence because they "know they are right".
It's a tricky one, because sometimes overthrowing the existing regime clearly is the right choice, but the more protracted that fight is, the more chance of developing an organizational culture that has a strong "us vs. them" mentality that will extend past a victory, making it very easy for a new regime to turn to the same methods as the regime that was overthrown.
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
The sad truth is that the Americans who do realize what's happened and are just too apathetic to mount any kind of protest.
That's just not true. When Baby Bush decided to invade Iraq, tens of thousands protested in the streets of Chicago, shutting down traffic on State Street and Michigan Avenue for a time. Anyone working or living downtown in the Loop (which I did at that time) saw the protest and marvelled at its size--a sea of people stretching a dozen blocks or more filling our streets, peacefully protesting.
They got almost no mention in the news. A brief page 13 story that there had been small protests against the war in Chicago and other cities. Nary a mention on the evening news (local or national).
Why, when we have a free press that loves a big, dramatic story? Well, draw your own conclusions, or form your own conspiracy theories as you will. I don't know why. I only know it happened, as I witnessed it with my own eyes.
People do protest. The problem in America has become that most of these protests seem to go unreported or underreported. Since the whole point of protesting is to make your cause known and get media attention, the protest is thus emasculated and rendered impotent. And of course, the more impotent protests become, the less people are inclined to go out and do it.
Americans do care. In their millions. The problem is, short of armed violence, there seems little chance of making those concerns known to the wider country, much less world. And frankly, most of us don't have the stomach for armed violence, and with the Bush Interregnum coming to an end at last, most of us don't think it's necessary.
So, right or wrong, we've chosen to have our voices silenced rather than start an insurrection, and until you're willing to see your own streets burn because your media muzzles your protests, I don't think you have any place criticising us for choosing to not burn our streets.
Not that things can't get bad enough that that becomes necessary (and without a voice, the odds of that have certainly gone up), but I don't think they're anywhere near that bad yet.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
in Italy the government is trying to pass a law that forbids most (warranted) wiretapping, with the exception of a few mafia related crimes.
In the last few years many white collar crimes made the news after wiretaps transcriptions were leaked the the newspapers.
Since people in the government (or friends and families thereof) were involved they're trying to bypass this 'problem' by prohibiting wiretapping altogether.
Needless to say there was no street protest about this, only a few articles on blogs or newspapers.
Seems like it's most of the world that's asleep and will wake to a harsh reality.
Animal farm shows neatly, what happens when citizens trust government. The book is attack to communists, because they did just that - promised better times, delivered none of it, ruling people worked only in their own interests and nobody else had a clue before it was too late.
I see no problems applying this to "democratic" governments as well. After all, everyone agreed, that pigs are the ones to be trusted with ruling.
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.
Well, Lenin was off to a good start, a lot of actions he took came right out of the Manifesto. It's just that he wasn't able to take it far enough or provide a mechanism against the anti-socialistic bureaucracy of Stalin before he died. Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed illustrates this nicely. I personally think that most current states in the EU have a much more socialistic nature than the USSR under Stalin.
Ultimately Stalin's actions lead to the perversion of socialism into a state built upon corporatism/fascism. The Soviet Union and communism as a whole was the largest intellectual experiment of the 20th century, and it has shown that mankind simply isn't ready for the ideals in the Manifesto. On a small scale it might be workable, but the world-wide revolution as portrayed by Marx is simply too vulnerable to individual greed for power.
Time for some god-given capitalistic coffee.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Animal farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism.
Old Major is Lenin (or maybe Marx), Napoleon is Stalin, and Snowball is Trotsky. The other characters and events were all based on Russian history.
This really isn't up for debate, unless you're a postmodernist, and frankly Orwell didn't like postmodernism.
Even the prime minister has been very clear about that every alliance parliament member is supposed to vote along party lines.
It seems that several of these are very uncomfortable about the law, and one member of the Liberal party has stated that she will abstain from voting.
It takes only four members to vote for the opposition, but the pressure is so big that they probably will do as they're told.
The majority of people saw the NSA wiretaps as the government doing something, that's why it didn't hurt Bush's reelection.
More proof that majority rule can be a miserable failure... when the majority is un/misinformed and too comfortable to give a damn about anyone else and thus wrong. Those of us who care about our rights need to protect ourselves from them.
What?
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]-
This is important. I'm replying just in case anyone has AC filter on.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
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
"You see the problem is that the majority of people no longer believe in the Constitution or even know what it says."
Well if they don't have time to read it they could just listen.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It is interesting to note that the Swedish people has had a long history of trusting the government and governmental bureaucracy, with some historian speculating that the trust has its roots in the kings of the old times actually generally supporting the majority of the population, since they'd otherwise be overthrown. Even in ancient medieval times kings were elected ("Mora stenar") and could be overthrown by the people if they were too unpopular. This is one thing that makes this story spectacular. It might be evidence of a government trust that has been steadily decreasing over the last decades.
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.