Wiretapping Bill Passes Swedish Parliament, 143 to 138

Assar Bruno Boveri writes "Swedish lawmakers came down in favour of a fiercely debated surveillance bill in a vote at the Riksdag on Wednesday evening. Despite some cosmetic changes, Sweden's proposed surveillance law is still a monster, writes Pär Ström from the independent New Welfare Foundation." The Swedish newspaper DN (in Swedish; translations welcome) compares the implications of the proposed law with activities carried out by East Germany's Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (STASI).

Comments

Obligatory

[oahazmatt]

There was considerable outrage among the Swedish. One vocal protestor was quoted as stating: "B'york b'york! Mmb'york york burdy hurdy m'yurdy!"

Re:Obligatory

[everphilski]

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?
See the løveli lakes
The wonderful telephøne system
And mani interesting furry animals

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, I was able to get Gootle to translate the source language (&sl=sv) Swedish to translated language (&tl=en) into English, but I couldn't get it to work with tl=xx-bork, so I had to do it manually.

Sveden's oovn Stesee

Fur tvu deys, oon Vednesdey, is ixpected perleeement tu geefe-a Emereecun intelleegence-a tu scun ell i-meeels, text messeges und telephune-a treffffeec crusseeng zee burders ooff Svedee. Chreestuph Underssun remeended ooff öferfekneengsepperetee in furmer Iest Germuny - und esk vhere-a zee persunel integreety gu.

Re:Obligatory

[Penguinisto]

Swedish Chef muppet jokes aside (damn, I'm old)...

There would likely be a lot less outrage from folks outside of Sweden, except for The Pirate Bay, Relakks, and a whole flock of other Swedish-related services that most of the entire Internet-using planet has an interest in.

/P

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The O-letter you used is Norwegian and it is not used by Swedes. And no I am not Swede nor Norwegian this is just common knowledge outside the USA.

Re:Obligatory

[tmosley]

He's obviously a Norwegian living in Sweden, you insensitive clod!

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

why would Norwegian live in sweden?
Norway produces oil and Sweden does not.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Meat.

Re:Obligatory

[irondonkey]

Including the majestic møøse

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about shallow. I'd mod this down to absolute zero just for being so unbelievably irretrievably stupid.

Re:Obligatory

[AllIGotWasThisNick]

Møøse ...

Meat

Re:Obligatory

[Penguinisto]

Shallow, perhaps - but as true and cold as the ice water in your gut when you clicked "Post Anonymously", my dear fellow.

See also the far more heavily censored and intrusive setups in places that have no real services that outside folks would be interested in. Places like - oh - Syria, Pakistan, and similar... you just don't see too awful much hand-wringing and front-page news concerning those places, d'ya?

Didn't think so.

/P

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean swedish chicks? :D

Re:Obligatory

[lordofwhee]

Swedish rodeo!

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

My hovercraft is full of eels.

Re:Obligatory

[smittyoneeach]

Sure the Monty Python reference, but "furry animals" really points to
Floyd

Re:Obligatory

[iJusten]

You mean mååse? (because that's what the circle over 'a' means)

Re:Obligatory

[ayjay29]

My sister got bitten by a møøse once.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?

    See the løveli lakes

    The wonderful telephøne system

    And mani interesting furry animals Surely you mean

Wi nöt trei a höliday in Sweden this yer?
See the löveli lakes
The wonderful telephöne system
And mani interesting furry animals

Re:Obligatory

[knarf]

No, that would read more like 'maws', the a with ring (å) sounds like a short o as in 'forgive'. The long o (oo) sound in Swedish is used for the 'u' as in 'underbar' (oontherbawr (the 'a' is a long a, here approximated with 'aw'. Swedish also does not use the slashed o (ø), that would be Norwegian and Danish. In Sweden they use ö instead...

Re:Obligatory

[turgid]

Oh, come on now. Swedish Made Simple:

L O!

L O!

F U N E X?

S V F X.

F U N E M?

9.

I F C D M.

V F N 10 E M.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

There was considerable outrage among the Swedish. One vocal protestor was quoted as stating: "B'york b'york! Mmb'york york burdy hurdy m'yurdy!" Oh, you anglosaxons are so funny that I crap my pants!

I was there and I can't think of anything said that corresponds to that lingusitic melody. (Which is unnecessary, since every anglosaxon has a list of funny jokes about swedes stored safe but yet accessible under a skin flap in the rectum. The list was written down in 1962 and hasn't been updated.)

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

There was considerable outrage among the Swedish. One vocal protestor was quoted as stating: "B'york b'york! Mmb'york york burdy hurdy m'yurdy!" Please Mr America, who failed epically in Iraq, what's your point?

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

there has to be at least one country out there that cares about the people, right?

Right?

Hello? Anyone there?

Re:Well...

[aliquis]

Canada here what do you want?

No, actually not, I'm a swede just wishing I was canadian.

Re:Well...

[rustalot42684]

Well, actually our government's about to screw us over too

Looks like you'll have to pick a different country.

Re:Well...

[aliquis]

Ok, China here I come! :D

Re:Well...

[Fred_A]

there has to be at least one country out there that cares about the people, right? According to their brochures, they all seem to. How odd...

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Care is almost always accompanied by control (not chaos -- usually).

I foresee some interesting torrent developments.

[Rod76]

This is sure to have some interesting effects on The Pirate Bay. I wonder if there was any **AA money's or support in getting this passed.

tor

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.torproject.org/

Countdown.

[Penguinisto]

RIAA/MPAA (esp. the Swedish equivalent) coming up with some sort of legal-sounding excuse to set up ongoing packet-sniffers inbound/outbound of TPB.org in 3... 2... 1...

/P

Re:Countdown.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sniffing here.

I do not think that the RIAA will work in your country, because that is in the US. That is like an RIAA reversal here, and I don't know where you would here the rationale.

TPB

- The Demertius -

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

DN, "Dagens Nyheter". Translates exactly to "The days news", meaning "this days news".

for those of us who can't read sweedish

[wizardforce]

google translate sweedish is *right there*
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2FDNet%2Fjsp%2Fpolopoly.jsp%3Fd%3D2502%26a%3D794124&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=sv&tl=en

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[JCSoRocks]

It's also helpful for people that can't read Swedish.

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[omglolbah]

A slightly better translation.
Done by a human! :D

In two days, on wednesday, it is expected that Riksdagen will give the swedish intelligence service the right to scan all email, sms and telephone traffic that passes swedish borders. Christop Andersson is reminded of the surveillance in the old DDR and poses questions regarding privacy.

In the east-german security-police archive are shelves of yellow, redish or dark brown files. The total length of which is 110 miles. Here there are transcripts of regular east-german telephone conversations and long logs of people's phone use with timestamps. Especially interesting to Stasi was the telephone traffic across the east-german borders.

The giant system of surveillance had as a purpose to protect "Democracy" in DDR against "hostile negative forces" and "terrorism". The threats gave Stasi the right to check up on everyone.

Since 1989 the Stasi is gone. Yet, a similar but perhaps worse system of surveillance is about to be created. This time in Sweden. For this purpose the Forsvarets Radioanstalt (FRA) has aquired a monster computer worth millions of SEK according to Computer Sweden. It is expected to get company in the near years.

With help of the computers FRA will scan through all emails, all sms and all telephone calls that cross swedish borders. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Just like in the old DDR the purpose is to prevent "terrorism" and prevent outer threats against society.

The system will be fed search-word both in Swedish and other languages. Further the FRA will search after text strings with randomly selected words and numbers.

Encryption, the defense minister closest man state secretary(?) HÃ¥kan Javrell in a video interview shown at the group "Gravande journalisters"(investigating/digging journalists) seminar in Gotenburg in april.

In the interview he makes it clear that mail with encrypted contents are of special interest to the FRA. Possible terrorists would likely not use clear-text naming of where they will strike and with what sort of force. Supposedly encryption applications like PGP are hard to break but with one or more computers in the million SEK range it will be possible to break everything from encrypted love-letters to journalist correspondance with protected sources. The latter is protected by constitutional rights. FRA can not know anything about the content before the encryption is broken. Thus a catch-22 is created. In practice the constitutional paragraph regarding protection of sources worthless.

The only thing required for the green light for FRA is the approval of Riksdagen for "En anpassad forsvarsunderettelsestjenst". "An adjusted defense intelligence service". Behind the inocious title is a breach of swedish privacy without comparison in the swedish history. FRA will not just search for terrorism but will also search for "forsorjingskriser", ecological imbalance, threats to the environment, ethnical and religious conflicts, large scale refugee and migration and economic cases like currency and interest rate speculation. The mind wanders back to the Stasi system of surveilance.

At the same time HÃ¥kan Javrell and the right wing politicians promise that the public has nothing to fear. The only traffic that will be scanned is the traffic that crosses the swedish border and not traffic inside the country. The problem is just that even email within the country will pass the border. Partially because businesses and organizations use foreign email-servers, partially because email does not heed borders. The email between Lulea and Malmo could just as well go through the US if there is available bandwidth.

Stricly by the rules any information gathered from in-country traffic should immediately be destroyed if it is cought in FRA's net. The problem here is that there is no way for FRA to know if the data is covered by this rule.

Further vagueness in the proposed law conserns the protection of sources in

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[Anonymous Coward]

Supposedly encryption applications like PGP are hard to break but with one or more computers in the million SEK range it will be possible to break everything from encrypted love-letters to journalist correspondence with protected sources. He's optimistic. It is perfectly possible to break PGP, but I doubt any of us will live to see the message (unless P=NP, or someone builds a non-deterministic Turing machine)

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[Narpak]

In the interview he makes it clear that mail with encrypted contents are of special interest to the FRA. Possible terrorists would likely not use clear-text naming of where they will strike and with what sort of force. Supposedly encryption applications like PGP are hard to break but with one or more computers in the million SEK range it will be possible to break everything from encrypted love-letters to journalist correspondance with protected sources. The latter is protected by constitutional rights. FRA can not know anything about the content before the encryption is broken. Thus a catch-22 is created. In practice the constitutional paragraph regarding protection of sources worthless. Well lets all send lots of emails encrypted with the best avalible methods, and lets make sure that the text we encrypt is just random letters and numbers. If they are going to monitor our traffic at the very least we can do our best to flood the system with crap.

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[Fred_A]

Supposedly encryption applications like PGP are hard to break but with one or more computers in the million SEK range it will be possible to break everything from encrypted love-letters to journalist correspondance with protected sources. "Supposedly" ? Has there been some kind of advance in mathematics I'm not aware of ? Or have computers suddenly gotten insanely faster ? Or do Swedish politicians expect to live for centuries ?

The best thing to do would be a huge campaign to promote high grade encryption all over the country IMO.
There are lots of vocal activists that could start this kind of thing.

Then the listeners can "supposedly" feel free to try and decrypt all that crud. It'll give their expensive servers something to do.

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this article a couple of days ago, and I was wondering about the part where he says that encryption is not a problem for the FRA, that they have access to enough computer power to "break everything from encrypted love-letters to journalist correspondance with protected sources".

This seems like complete bullshit to me, I mean the amounts of encrypted traffic on the internet must be huge (with all the ssh and https traffic for instance). Even with a supercomputer like the one FRA has access to, there's no chance in hell they would have time to break all this encryption, right? Anyone with more knowledge in the matter care to enlighten me?

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[Anonymous Coward]

This translation does away with some minor problems of the previous translation -- and has its own problems, I'm sure:

Sweden's own Stasi

In two days, on Wednesday, the parliament is expected to give the Swedish underrättelsetjänst (intelligence service) the right to scan all E-mail, SMS (i.e. text messages) and telephone traffic that crosses the Swedish border. Christoph Andersson is reminded of the surveillance system of the old DDR -- and asks were the personal integrity is going.

The archives of the East German security police contain shelves of bright yellow, reddish or dark brown folders. The total width adds up to 180 km (112.5 miles). Here are transcripts of ordinary East German people's phone conversations and long lists of assorted people's phone contacts, with date and time. Especially interesting for Stasi was the telephone traffic that crossed the East German border.

The purpose of the huge surveillance system was to protect the "democracy" in DDR against "hostile negative forces" and "terrorism". The enemy picture gave Stasi the right to know everything about everybody.

Since 1989 Stasi is just a memory. Despite that, a similar but even worse surveillance system is in the making -- this time in Sweden. According to Computer Sweden, Försvarets radioanstalt (FRA, the National Defence Radio Establishment) has acquired an immense computer, worth millions of kroner, for this purpose. More are expected in the coming years.

Helped by the computers, FRA will scan through every E-mail, every SMS and every phone conversation that crosses the Swedish borders. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Precisely as in the former DDR the purpose is to stop "terrorism" and prevent external threats against society.

It is done by FRA feeding the computer system different search terms, in Swedish and in other languages. On top of this, FRA will look for strings with randomly selected words and numbers.

- Encryption, the Secretary of State, Håkan Jevrell, a close contact of the Minister of Defence, says in a video interview shown at a Grävande journalister (Digging journalists, an association of investigative journalists in Sweden) seminar in Gothenburg in April.

In the interview he says that mail with encrypted contents is especially interesting to FRA. Potential terrorists would probably not write in clear text where they are going to hit -- and with what explosive power. Encryption systems like PGP are deemed difficult to break. But with one or more computers in the million kroner class it would probably be possible to break everything from love mails to journalist's correspondence with sources. The anonymity of the latter is protected by the constitution. It is, though, impossible for FRA to know anything about the matter until the encryption has been broken. Thereby a catch 22 has been created. In practice, the constitution's protection of sources becomes worthless.

What is needed for FRA to start this work is that the Parliament passes the law "En anpassad försvarsunderrättelsetjänst" ("An adjusted defence intelligence service"). Under this non-descript title is hiding a privacy issue not previously seen in Swedish history. FRA is not only looking for terrorist cells or terrorist actions. According to the proposition, FRA should also look for information regarding "supply crises, ecological imbalances, environmental threats, ethnic and religious conflicts, major movements of fugitives and migrations as well as economical threats in the form of currency and interest speculation". The thoughts go easily back to Stasi's previous surveillance system.

At the same time, Håkan Jevrell and right wing politicians promises that the public has nothing to fear. It is only border crossing traffic that is scanned, not domestic SMS, phone and E-mail traffic. The crux is that domestic E-mail goes through foreign countries. Partly because Swedish companies and organisations have servers in other countri

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[omglolbah]

Well, this works great until they manage to pass uk-style laws making not giving up encryption keys a punishable offense.

Imagine the scenario:
You keep a dump of random data gathered from hardware as a pool for a software project.

Police for some reason raid your place and confiscate your equipment.

You are required to give up the encryption key to the encrypted data (your random pool).

You -cant- give the key as there -is- no key. You're punished for this.

Woho. Best not to keep any random data around it seems unless you can explain it in absolute terms .

[/paranoia] :-p

Re:for those of us who can't read sweedish

[turgid]

ssh, eh? Most people I know have never heard of it. telnet, on the other hand....

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[digitrev]

Probably, but good luck finding the paper trail. As for TPB, it'll just migrate. There's enough countries who aren't exactly friendly to US copyright that are chock full of people willing to run Pirate Bay servers.

Wha?

[pushing-robot]

Okay, I'm trying to figure this out. This is Reverse Sweden, right? Not the regular Sweden?

Re:Wha?

[The Fanta Menace]

This is what happens when countries vote in right-wing governments. Yes, that's right. Sweden has a right-wing government. Maybe not by US standards, but certainly by European standards.

Re:Wha?

[init100]

This is what happens when countries vote in right-wing governments.

Actually not. This bill was originally created by the previous Social Democrat administration (which was supported by the Green Party and the Left Party), while the current administration voted against the bill in parliament. Pretty quickly after gaining being voted into power, the current administration resurrected the scrapped social democrat proposal as their own, and put it before parliament. The opposition (the previous administration) used a law that enabled them to defer a decision for one year, and voted against the proposal today.

The only reason for the opposition's no-vote seem to be that they would prefer to vote it into law when they are in power themselves.

Re:Wha?

[Tege]

You surely are aware that this law in its original form was proposed by social democrats. This law would have been passed by any ruling party, with protest coming only from real lefties. The right-wing parties sold old tonight. I always believed in the moderate party's talk about individual freedom et.c. But not after tonight. Not anymore. We don't need neo-cons in Sweden. We need real conservatives or neo-liberals that can stand up for basic ideas like individual freedom. But tonight I'm with you. Thanks.

Re:Wha?

[malavel]

The proposal was originally written by the socialist party when they were in power.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when countries vote in right-wing governments you say?

Would you rather have a left wing government and be forced to change your religion and work for free at hard labor?a, pray 5 time a day smelly barefooted on a rug facing East ?
Sweden has a county to their south called France , who if they don't wise up will likely be renamed to New Mecca .., watch them
France has a nice left wing government.. See how that works ?
Think man.
Not only that, in past history Sweden would have been be a possession of the third Reich today if we had left wing kooks in the USA and the UK during WWII.
What want is a Combination of left and right
wing/ brained people to govern , then they check each other do you see?

Re:Wha?

[ArcherB]

This is what happens when countries vote in right-wing governments. Yes, that's right. Sweden has a right-wing government. Maybe not by US standards, but certainly by European standards. Yes! And the far left wing governments, like those in Soviet Russia, China, and Cuba are known for their championing of civil rights.

Hell, even the left wing states like California, where they want the government to control the thermostat in your own home are known for their personal freedom records.

Re:Wha?

[Arthur B.]

Actually, as is pointed out, the law was drafted by the socialists. The left has the worst possible track record when it comes to spying on people (nazis, communists, etc). Yes, the neocons are doing it as well, but that's a rather recent phenomenon, and if you ask me, they're left-wing.

Re:Wha?

[Arthur B.]

France has a load of crappy problems, the influence of islam is far, far down the list. The country actually has a strong belief in statism... it's a whole religion, with its dogmas, its heretics, etc. Islam is merely a puppet brandished - right and left - in France so that people turn back to "the one, true religion, that of the State"

Re:Wha?

[ArcherB]

This is what happens when countries vote in right-wing governments. Yes, that's right. Sweden has a right-wing government. Maybe not by US standards, but certainly by European standards. Yes! And the far left wing governments, like those in Soviet Russia, China, and Cuba are known for their championing of civil rights.

Hell, even the left wing states like California, where they want the government to control the thermostat in your own home are known for their personal freedom records. Only on slashdot, does the truth get modded troll.

I think this exchange is proof that RightBad=Insightful and LeftBad=Troll in the minds of some mods.

Remember, the first part of freedom is tolerating those that have different opinions than yourself and even defending their right to have those opinions. When I get downmodded for something like this, it proves to me that regardless of all the talk, /.'ers don't give a rat's ass about freedom of speech unless the speech agrees with them.

Re:Wha?

[Wildclaw]

Not right wing, authoritarian.

The two biggest parties in Sweden, the right wing Moderates and the left wing Social Democrates are both authoritarian.

And several other parties have authoritarian pressure coming from their party tops.

Re:Wha?

[Opportunist]

Umm... you are aware that the nazis ain't exactly what you'd call left wing, right? Just checking...

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Idea is originally from the social democrats, so, more or less all parties except the communistic party (or, well, the most communistic party, as sweden is more or less communistic) are in favour of this kind of law. And, well, you can't really vote for the communistic party for obvious reasons.

So, well, tor and strong crypto, here we come...

Re:Wha?

[Markspark]

yeah, and it's what happens when 67 people decided not to go vote, because they had more important stuff to do, like finding lint in the bellybutton or something, one fifth of Riksdagen (the ruling organ) decided not to even show up and vote. It's a slap in the face of the public..

Re:Wha?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I think this exchange is proof that RightBad=Insightful and LeftBad=Troll in the minds of some mods. Since mods are just regular people who have posted a few times, or even just meta-moderated sometimes, all you have done is say, "a handful of people out of the hundreds of thousands with accounts on slashdot hold simplistic political beliefs."

Wow! Keen fucking insight there. If it weren't for your magnificent pontification no one would have ever thought things worked like that. You should be on TV! Have you considered applying for Tim Russert's old job?

Re:Wha?

[__aavljf5849]

Not so. They vote no, because they no the public does not want this. They are EXTREMELY happy that the centre-right goverment takes the hit for this, otherwise they would have to.

The socialists will now complain about this law all they way into goverment after the next election, when they will....do exactly nothing about it.

Just as with everything else they complain about.
That's swedish politics for you.

Re:Wha?

[AshtangiMan]

I didn't mod GP, but the part that strikes me as the "troll" is the part where you call California left wing, just after the extreme left wing examples above, as if somehow California is left wing in the same way that soviet Russia was. To me that is a troll, because the implicit comparison is invalid. It does very little towards having an informed and informing conversation. Both extremes (left and right) are obviously bad, but in the US and in the Slashdot community there seems to be a name calling mentality which breaks down to: you disagree with me, and I am [right,left] leaning so you must be a [commie hippie,fascist]. I don't see either side of the US political spectrum as being particularly interested in personal freedoms of the general population.

Here in New Mexico there is water shortage, if not actual drought, and municipalities govern the use of water during the hot and dry periods. This does not strike me as "big brother", "left", or "right", but as a pragmatic compromise because for every environmentally conscious person of any political bent there are a few more who will attempt to install new lawns, run sprinklers during the day, and water sidewalks as much as they do plants. I think the thermostat example you bring up falls closer to the water use than to totalitarian regimes, and is not a political issue, but a practical issue.

I think it is dialog, and good communication in general that is breaking down in political/governmental conversation attempts. Why is this? What political party stands for not telling other people how to live period? What political party does not pander to religious groups when making laws (indecency, substance abuse, etc)? I don't see it, but wish that I did. I feel like I am an old time conservative in economic and environmental policies, and a progressive when it comes to social agendas. And by social agendas I mean laws that govern how people live their private lives like same sex marriage, drug use, etc. You know, the ol' moral majority crap.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

As socialists, you might call them "left wing". It is an arbitrary designation regardless. YOU WERE AWARE OF THAT? Right? Please tell me you know that rightVleft is almost 100% arbitrary based on geography, time in history, and other contextual factors. If you are old enough to type a post and not know that, then you are pretty fucking ignorant.

Re:Wha?

[aliquis]

More likely that the only thing they do are to say against eachother instead of the actual idea. That's politics for you!

Not that I can understand why the left side wanted this crap either, probably because of that (personal preference:) prick Thomas Bodström.
Some of this work: http://bodstrom.pelpet.com/

Especially the liberals went to election with lots of talk about more police resources and surveillance.

Quite funny actually how it's their side doing this considering how much bullshit they have probably spewed over communism, but meaning russia, ddr and china. But their issues in this regard don't come from the economical politics but rather the authoritarian leadership.

I guess the left side could fix this after the next election but I don't see that happen. So we probably have to live with it.

Re:Wha?

[aliquis]

+ 9.045.000

Both sides can come up with ideas which don't fit their political profile and both sides will just vote against whatever the other side said even if it actually fit their own ideals and so on.

If that wasn't true how could you else say "But hey, it's all their fault! Look how bad it become!"

Re:Wha?

[Mr2001]

I think this exchange is proof that RightBad=Insightful and LeftBad=Troll in the minds of some mods. And now look, your comments are both at +4 Insightful. I'd say that's proof that complaining about phony liberal bias is insightful in the minds of some mods.

You got modded down for comparing "left wing" California to the "left wing" USSR, China, and Cuba, as if those countries are even on the same political spectrum as the US. Then you got modded back up, a net positive, for whining about the moderation. Does that mean the system works?

Re:Wha?

[Plutonite]

Well, he's grouping the Nazis and the Communists together, which is hardly accurate, but then again it was called the Nationalist Socialist party, wasn't it? They combined the worst of socialist interventionism with nationalist/racial pride(necessitating means to goals). So he is partially right, I guess.

The "right wing" platforms, depending on what Right Wing means in your part of the world, tend to be geared towards less government involvement and more emphasis on freedom and natural states of welfare and resource exchange. Same for naive communist utopias, where governments do not even exist. Funnily enough, both ends of the spectrum seem to lose these ideals somewhere on the way to their optimal scenario, and instead turn into draconian nightmares. Libertarians, for e.g, are more "right wing" than the current evangelist hijackers of American government, yet look where we are.

It is best to just ignore labels and instead follow logic, science, and human experience.

Re:Wha?

[aliquis]

Sweden have had a right wing government three times I belive. So uhm, yes, I think it's quite safe to say that most Swedes actually want a left wing government most of the time, the others only get a chance when people have become tired of same old and want something new / fresh to happen. Next election it will be left wing again just as normal.

You aren't forced into any religion, if you are borned a few years ago or earlier you was a member of the swedish church by default and have to pay taxes to them but you can leave them if you want. People here are used to high taxes, they have them now aswell, and for most people the current system probably give them less money since it's much more benefits for the rich and similair or less for the poor.

I know shit about France, I doubt they have to pray, and neither do anyone here. You are free to have your religious costumes in most swedish schools though, but I don't really see why you shouldn't be allowed to so...

We removed the christian public holliday 13 days after easterc and added one on our national day instead, which imho was a good thing, we shouldn't focus the society around a religion.

Re:Wha?

[aliquis]

Go from one to two axis and it will make it much easier for you:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2

Re:Wha?

[aliquis]

Actually he wasn't but who would expect something else from him?

Re:Wha?

[zotz]

"Remember, the first part of freedom is tolerating those that have different opinions than yourself and even defending their right to have those opinions."

Hmmm, yes... Will the tolerant tolerate the intolerant?

A tough decision that.

What will happen if we discover an intolerance gene and it turns out people are born intolerant?

all the best,

drew

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had followed this proposal for the last few years (it is old, being proposed again and again), you would know that both the left and the right support it.

The only party that is clearly against this proposal is a relatively new party that refuses to place themselves on the right/left scale in politics: The Pirate Party.

And no, it is not because they think this could be used against piracy. It it because the first and most important item on they political agenda is the protection of personal integrity, like the right to privacy and the right to free speech.

Re:Wha?

[Opportunist]

Don't go by names in parties. Twice so if the party is heavily populist in nature.

The German nazi party (NSDAP) had, in its full name, the title "NationalSozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei". And it fulfilled NONE of those parts in its acronym.

It was not nationalist. No, really, it wasn't. The nationalism was a propaganda tool to rally the masses behind it. Sure, quite a few of the upper echelons in the nazi party were nationalistic dreamers (namely Hess and Heydrich), but in general, the "national idea" was used as a tool. Germany "sacrificed" Southern Tyrolia, an area that is largely inhabitated by people of German(ic) descent and was part of Tyrolia until WW1, to Italy to appease Mussolini. Would a nationalist country do that, surrender part of its people and territory? They also supported other nationalist parties throughout Europe and even beyond Europe, also nothing that goes well with the idea of the own nation's supremacy.

It was not socialist. It was actually anything but socialist. A fascist state has not the benefit of its people and equality amongst them as a key principle. The socialist aspect of the "unity of Germans" was a propaganda tool to keep people from being jealous of those who have it better. Germany during the 30s and 40s was anything but an egalitarian state, and I'm not even talking about payment. People were anything but equal before the law (and I'm not even talking about the Shoa).

It was not Deutsch (German). Might surprise you, but it wasn't. It was heavily dependent on foreign money, it even had a leader that came from abroad. The only thing German about it was that it was operating in Germany.

It was not for the Arbeiter (worker). Again, a fascist state puts the benefit of the state and the strength of its industry before anything else, including its people and workers.

And finally it was not a party in the original sense. A party consists of more than a leader and some bootlickers.

So please, don't go by the name. If there ever was a party that lied in every single letter of its acronym, it's the NSDAP.

Re:Wha?

[Naturalis Philosopho]

Talk to any right-of-center politico in the U.S.A and they'll generally agree that F.D.R was a "left wing kook". It's not political stance, left or right, that makes you pass a law like this, it's a desire for control over others.

Re:Wha?

[Narpak]

It's not so much about left, right, center or a combination of those; but authoritarian tendencies. People from proclaimed Left and Right parties have been against government control, pro government control, pro more surveilance, against more surveilance, pro war, against war, pro-life, pro-choice, pro equal rights, against equal rights and etc ad infinitum.

Left and Right are terms so broad they are essentially rendered meaningless. The political spectrum is far more complex than what can be explained by a simplistic model. One indication of this is that Left and Right means different things in different Nations. As do Liberal and Conservative. The views a person can hold relating to the social, political and economical organization of his/her nation is varied to the extreme.

One serious problem with this system is that is makes people oversimplify serious and complex issues. Calling those that oppose/support whatever term is classified as negative among their supporters or targeted audience.

Often, it seems to me, important decisions that affect many people are taken on an emotional basis. Those that want a law to pass or fail use peoples emotions to get them to think or feel like they want them to. How many citizens of Sweden, or people in the rest of the world, have an opinion on this matter without having read or comprehended the implications and details of this new law?

Re:Wha?

[Plutonite]

I agree, but that's still the case with most elongated party names in the world now and before. The names and are an important part of the propaganda - they get repeated often because you have to say them, and really that is what matters most. I guess pretty much anyone can argue that [insert least favorite totalitarian regime] was not really [insert political ideology] but was rather parading under it.

As for the Nazi fascism being against socialist principles, I can still remember the poster pics we had in middle school (modern history) showing the "ideal german family". Sitting in their back yard with the children, simple (but not poor) clothing, their own planted vegetables visible. They looked very "socialist" to me - almost directly comparable to Cuban and Chinese propaganda.

Good points though, and should always be remembered. History repeats often. Mod parent up!

Re:Wha?

[ArcherB]

I didn't mod GP, but the part that strikes me as the "troll" is the part where you call California left wing, just after the extreme left wing examples above, as if somehow California is left wing in the same way that soviet Russia was. To me that is a troll, because the implicit comparison is invalid. It does very little towards having an informed and informing conversation. Both extremes (left and right) are obviously bad, but in the US and in the Slashdot community there seems to be a name calling mentality which breaks down to: you disagree with me, and I am [right,left] leaning so you must be a [commie hippie,fascist]. I don't see either side of the US political spectrum as being particularly interested in personal freedoms of the general population. I was not trying to compare California to Cuba (although some in California do think Cuba is a paradise). That's why I used the word "even", as in "even left wing states like California..." The word "even" in this case draws similarities between two different subjects, while stating how far they are apart. For exmaple, Democrats are against drilling in ANWR. Hell, even John McCain is against drilling in ANWR! I use the word "even" to say that even though John McCain is very different than Democrats, he shares some of their views. I also used a paragraph to separate the California statement from the communist nations statement.

Also, you can't deny that CA is one of the more left leaning states in the nation. The fact that the government there even considered fiddling with the thermostat in your own home if THEY think you're using too much energy should punctuate that point.

Here in New Mexico there is water shortage, if not actual drought, and municipalities govern the use of water during the hot and dry periods. This does not strike me as "big brother", "left", or "right", but as a pragmatic compromise because for every environmentally conscious person of any political bent there are a few more who will attempt to install new lawns, run sprinklers during the day, and water sidewalks as much as they do plants. I think the thermostat example you bring up falls closer to the water use than to totalitarian regimes, and is not a political issue, but a practical issue. No, there is a difference. If you use too much water in New Mexico, they charge you more, or maybe even fine you. They do not walk into your home and turn your shower off. Also, energy is different than water. Energy is only limited by our reluctance to make it. Water is limited by how much is in the reservoir and it is fed by mother nature via rain. Electricity is man made product. If you run out, it's because you don't make enough. California (not mother nature) refuses to build power plants, therefor, California runs out of electricity.

I think it is dialog, and good communication in general that is breaking down in political/governmental conversation attempts. Why is this? What political party stands for not telling other people how to live period? What political party does not pander to religious groups when making laws (indecency, substance abuse, etc)? I don't see it, but wish that I did. I feel like I am an old time conservative in economic and environmental policies, and a progressive when it comes to social agendas. And by social agendas I mean laws that govern how people live their private lives like same sex marriage, drug use, etc. You know, the ol' moral majority crap. Sounds like we mostly agree politically, but there are limits. For example, I'm against government recognizing same sex marriage, but I'm against government recognizing marriage at all. I say, "Civil Unions for everybody!". A marriage is between a couple and their God, family or whoever they think they need to get married for. Civil unions are for wills, power of attorney, health insurance and so on...

Re:Wha?

[ArcherB]

I think this exchange is proof that RightBad=Insightful and LeftBad=Troll in the minds of some mods. And now look, your comments are both at +4 Insightful. I'd say that's proof that complaining about phony liberal bias is insightful in the minds of some mods.

You got modded down for comparing "left wing" California to the "left wing" USSR, China, and Cuba, as if those countries are even on the same political spectrum as the US. Then you got modded back up, a net positive, for whining about the moderation. Does that mean the system works? And if I hadn't made that second post, no one would have read the first post as it was modded below the threshold of most /. readers. It would have stayed at -1, TROLL

Re:Wha?

[Heather D]

This is a textbook example of the continuing breakdown of the old right vs. left political structure. It's been known (by those aware enough to care) for years that the most significant difference between the two is that they oppose each other in which special interests they favor.

Re:Wha?

[Markus Landgren]

Oh right, the old "the social democrats started it!" excuse. Some of the right-wing politicians who passed this law actually used that one as a reason for not opposing it. While the observation is factually correct, it is not a valid reason to pass bad laws.

And as for your statement that "The opposition (the previous administration) used a law that enabled them to defer a decision for one year", that was done by the green party + the left party + the christian democrats. To refer to that as "the opposition" seems weird, since one of them are part of the current administration and the list excludes the biggest party of the opposition.

"The opposition" includes the green party, the left party and the social democrats. As for the social democrats I have no suggestion for why they chose to vote now, at least none that seems more likely than yours. But as for the two other parties, you have to consider their recent "no" in light of that they are the ONLY parties who have opposed this law all the way through the process. Maybe they really didn't want the law passed?

Re:Wha?

[init100]

Oh right, the old "the social democrats started it!" excuse. Some of the right-wing politicians who passed this law actually used that one as a reason for not opposing it. While the observation is factually correct, it is not a valid reason to pass bad laws.

You obviously misunderstood my point. I did not excuse passing bad laws because the current opposition created it, I just observed that this bill would likely have been passed regardless of administration, simply because it was supported by both the alliance and the social democrats.

And as for your statement that "The opposition (the previous administration) used a law that enabled them to defer a decision for one year", that was done by the green party + the left party + the christian democrats.

I read in several articles that this was done by the social democrats, the left and the greens. If I was wrong, I'm sorry for that.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Green Party has been and is still against this too! NOT only the Pirate Party!

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the author of the parent post again, with a clarification. When I wrote "... that they are the ONLY parties who have opposed this law all the way ..." I neglected to say the only parties currently represented in the parliament.

Re:Wha?

[Amiga Trombone]

Not so. They vote no, because they no the public does not want this. They are EXTREMELY happy that the centre-right goverment takes the hit for this, otherwise they would have to.

The socialists will now complain about this law all they way into goverment after the next election, when they will....do exactly nothing about it.

Just as with everything else they complain about.
That's swedish politics for you. Actually, this sounds astonishingly similar to American politics. Note, the Democratic Congress hasn't made any attempt to repeal the much-reviled Patriot Act or stop the war in Iraq, both of which they rode into office on...

Re:Wha?

[XavidX]

I would say the majority of the public does not want this. So where is the democracy. How can they let this kind of law pass. Basically everything Sweden has standed for in the past has gone down the drain in one day. *rant* *rant* Yet another reason for companies to move out of sweden. *rant* *rant*. It makes me so angry. Sec. I hear someone knocking on the door.

Re:Wha?

[masamax]

Part of the reason is that Bush is still president. Unless 2/3 majority passes such a law, he will veto. And, that 2/3 is impossible with the current percentages... Senate is basically a tie, and D only have about 55% of the House. ...or at least that's the excuse they'll use for now.

Re:Wha?

[masamax]

At it's core, in the political sense, the original poster was correct, if we talk about the most basic classification: Left wing=more gov't right wing=less gov't Nazi germany instituted work programs, appropriated industrial control, had a secret police, a huge bureaucratic machine, an even bigger military, and placed bans on many, many things (including the famous book burnings in berlin, as well as heavy controls on smoking and other drugs). The list goes on.

Re:Wha?

[Krommenaas]

In many European minds, left = libertarian and right = authoritarian. It would be a great advance for political debate if everybody could agree that there are two major divides in political thinking (left/right and libertarian/authoritarian) and that they can be combined either way. Clearly, protection of privacy has nothing to do with left/right and all with libertarian/authoritarian.

Re:Wha?

[Humm]

This bill was originally created by the previous Social Democrat administration (which was supported by the Green Party and the Left Party)

You make it sound as if the Green and Left parties supported that particular bill. They did not. The Green Party (maybe the Left as well) explicitly did not approve of any kind of surveillance. The support you are talking about is their support when the Social Democrats formed government after the 2002 election. They did not have a majority on their own, so they needed the other parties approval.

And let's not overstate that support. The Green Party threatened to let the right block form government if the Social Democrats didn't include them in the government. In the end, they folded, and the Social Democrats formed government on their own. But it's not like they were best friends.

I agree that it's unlikely that the Social Democrats will move to revoke this new law. I believe the best chance is if the left block wins the next election (2010), and the Green Party takes a lot of votes, forcing the Social Democrats to play nice with them. The Pirate Party is too much of a long shot. They would have to get more than six times as many votes as they did in 2006 just to get a seat in the parliament.

Re:Wha?

[sleaterkinney]

Soviet Russia or China were only left wing in the economic sense, they are both authoritarian (right-wing) states otherwise.

Re:Wha?

[RAMMS EIN]

Just because something happens when you vote in "left wing governments" doesn't mean it doesn't happen when you vote in "right wing governments".

Personally, I think left vs. right is just so much bollocks. Politics is much too complex to be described by a single dimension.

Case in point: there are people who are in favor of less government involvement in people's lives. Less legislation, lower taxes, and less hand-holding; leaving people to fend for themselves. I call this "liberalism". It's considered "right wing", because it is the opposite of "left wing" social-economic politics: the government cares for the people, by redistributing wealth and regulations.

There are also people who are in favor of more government control of people's lives, to keep people on the right path and weed out unwanted people. More legislation, more observation, and higher sentences. I can't think of a good -ism word for this, but "police state" comes to mind (note that neither "liberalism" nor "police state" are meant as value judgments). This is also considered "right wing", because it emphasizes law and order and "proper" behavior - as opposed to "left wing" counter culture, disruptive protests, pot smoking, etc.

So, as you can see, "right wing" is both in favor and against more individual freedom!

You will get abusive laws when you vote for people who make those laws. Sometimes, you know in advance that they will, and sometimes you don't. Lately, governments around the world have ridden the terrorism and copyright scares to introduce the craziest laws. As it happens, the governments I know of that have done this have also been "right wing". However, I think that is really a red herring. Also, I submit that there has been remarkably little opposition from the (supposedly) "left wing" opposition. Or, perhaps I should say "opposition", because they haven't actually done very much in the way of opposing the laws that restrict our freedoms.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, this 'reductio ad Stalinum' argument is definitely trolling. A reasoned argument that goverments ruled by social democrats dont have great records in protecting civil rights can probably be made, but this was definitely not it.

Social democrats parted ways with bosheviks before the russian revolution and have as much to do with them as say republicans do; sharing some very remote common roots, so in a comment motivated by the spectrum of swedish politics, the comparison to China or Soviet Union (and that wasnt just Russia) is as valid as comparing Angela Merkel to Hitler (i think Chavez did that recently)..

Re:Wha?

[Per Wigren]

Left vs right is only about the distribution of money, where extreme left is "everybody owns everything together" and extreme right is "100% unregulated market, no taxes". Authorian (extreme=fascism) vs libertarian (extreme=anarchism) is a different, separate scale. Those who call themselves "libertarian" in the US are usually also extreme right though, and those who call themselves "anarchists" are also usually extreme left.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 fair & balanced

Re:Wha?

[FrameRotBlues]

Generally we do. We are a society of enablers, rather than teachers.

Re:Wha?

[Dice Fivefold]

How come your post are modded +5 then? It proves your post is wrong! And since it is wrong it should be modded -1 overrated. But when it is modded down, it is correct again... Hmm, there should be an additional Catch 22 mod for posts like yours.

Re:Wha?

[KDR_11k]

Left vs Right started as working class vs ruling class and the Nazis allied themselves with the ones who wanted their monarch back. The right is not necessarily for deregulation, in fact they can be for regulation that benefits the rich.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't just Swedish politics. I think they need the law. It's just that it was crafted by a bunch of amateurs. No one in their right mind for one second doesn't understand governments everywhere are already spooking. The FRA boss admitted they'd been doing it for ten years already. A piece of legislation changes nothing.

Except of course the opportunity for the MPAA and the RIAA to use those records to bring people to court haha.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazism, which is short for national socialism, is indeed a left-wing political ideology. It's opposite is communism, another left-wing ideology. The difference is nationalism. Nazism is anti-globalism (hence all the racism), while communism is embraces globalism (solidarity with your fellow workers across all national boundaries).

That Nazism is a right-wing ideology is a common misconception, since many people lump it together with fascism, which indeed is a right-wing ideology, though the most prominent right-wing ideology-the purest in my opinion-is anarchy.

The left-wing extremes also try to distance themselves from Nazism, by maliciously claiming that national SOCIALISM is a right-wing ideology. Nationalism is not an ideology shared by right-wing parties. The socialism part speaks for itself...

Re:Wha?

[unix_core]

Communists can't be mods now?

I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Swedish citizen, I'm thinking of doing the following idea;

Put up a couple of SMTP servers, and creating a script that makes them email each other unprotected emails in plain text with headers like "bomb" "nuclear bomb" "jihad" "destroy the Swedish government" "bomb assembly guide" "kill Fredrik Reinfeldt"

If the government intend to fuck me with, I fully intend to fuck with them back.

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can just cc Mr Reinfeldt everything.

Re:I got an idea

[scubamage]

I like this idea. Since the government is already spying on everything we type in the US, I'd love to set up one of these SMTP bots to help with the flooding.

Re:I got an idea

[RingDev]

Or you can just cc Mr Reinfeldt everything. That's actually not a bad idea...

I'm not even in Sweden (My great-great-grandfather was kicked out for marrying a Norwegian lass), but I think Mr Reinfeldt might like to know about my emails.

All of them.

Every day.

Including system notices.

Sure, my emails aren't that great in number, but what if a couple hundred people were to do such a thing? A couple thousand? Hundreds of thousands?

-Rick

Re:I got an idea

[Znork]

The ole keyword overload is probably something they filter against; they probably run some linguistic structure scan for valid sentances.

In order of increasing annoyance level I'd suggest you follow these procedures:
a) Use a Slavic or Arab sounding email address. Then use GPG to encrypt the content (suggested content: How much did it cost the taxpayers to let you read this?).
b) Run a TOR node to encourage encrypted comms passing their way.
c) Start an ABF (workers education union) class on how regular users can encrypt their communications with their friends and family.
d) Write a roleplaying game where the players are rebels fighting against a fascistic system, but they can only communicate with eachother online. Enjoy the lawsuits when the judicial system contorts in agony trying to deal with obviously made up, obviously completely innocent and private activities... except the spooks wanted to make it not private and it's almost indistinguishable from crap that they get in their too widely trawling nets. And imagine the fun and excitement. Will the guys in suits knocking on the door be the other roleplayers? Will they be the FBI?

There are simply so many ways to make the whole effort completely worthless. Which is just yet another reason why it's an very unconstructive law.

Re:I got an idea

[Opportunist]

Actually a sound idea. The best couter against spying is overloading the system with false positives, so they can't discriminate anymore between noise and data.

I'd use other keywords, though. Like "crack", "decss", $new_movie_name...

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a variant of a very old idea. In the 1980's, as word spread in the community about the U.S. governments eavesdropping of the various networks, the GNU Emacs editor got it's "spook" command. It's still in there today, and is used for inserting various supposed target keywords that spooks will be looking for. Emacs was a major email user-agent back then, so it made sense to include the command right in the editor.

To try it yourself, just fire up Emacs and enter the command M-x spook. It then inserts some randomly selected keywords in the current buffer. Example output:

Blowpipe brigand quiche Capricorn Firefly 64 Vauxhall Cross Bletchley Park clandestine Venezuela War on Terrorism BROMURE ISEC secure Honduras Baranyi

The function description for "spook" says: "Adds that special touch of class to your outgoing mail."

Re:I got an idea

[koma77]

That would be just too easy to filter out. What you need to do is to have your email-network email GPG-encrypted data to each other with various interesting headers. And then, you need to be able to use this network to actually send you own, real messages. That way you create a lot of encrypted noise that will take quite some CPU-cycles to crunch. Remember: encrypted traffic is one of FRAs criterion to examine the traffic further.

Re:I got an idea

[lillgud]

No need. FRA will not just monitor email, sms and telephone traffic -- they will also monitor "normal" surfing. This is a much simpler way to (perhaps) trigger some alarms:
#!/bin/sh
WORDS="bomd nuclear+bomb jihad destroy+the+Swedish+government bomb+assembly+guide kill+Fredrik+Reinfeldt"
for i in $WORDS; do
wget -U 'fittfra' http://www.google.com/search?q=$i
done

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You might also consider running a TOR server:

http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

Why not just add it to your own mails? Back in the days I used to add stuff like that to my IRC sessions just to get Echelon something to do :)

I wonder if I could ever have a green card, or even visit USA :)

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

Send them to Thomas Bodström aswell, he wants to read your mail!

http://www.riksdagen.se/Webbnav/index.aspx?nid=1111&iid=0581480697617

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

How do you know the later part? How long will it take for them to decrypt it?

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government intend to fuck me with, I fully intend to fuck with them back. I am sure the current goverment would throughly enjoy it, irrespective of your gender.

Re:I got an idea

[HertzaHaeon]

Better yet, send some of the emails from nations on the terrorist list. That'll keep them busy.

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking like voip might be useful for a spare cycle volunteer noise-stream system?

Re:I got an idea

[RAMMS EIN]

But why?

I mean, obviously they won't be too happy about this. So you risk them going after you for trying to disrupt their search for criminals. And, actually, that is exactly what you are doing: you are reducing the likelyhood that a system that _could_ find criminals actually finds them. Since they'll be spending the tax euros anyway, you might as well help them maximize the efficiency, rather than minimizing it and getting yourself arrested.

Re:I got an idea

[koma77]

The fact that encrypted traffic is a criterion for further investigation is officially stated by FRA.

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

emacs has had this feature for years.
Try typing the command 'spook' :-)

(that's Esc-X, spook)

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I got an even better idea: use all these servers to send some PGP-encrypted mail around, using the suggested subjects (not encrypted). They cannot break all the keys, obviously (one would have to use long, unique keys, however you dont' even have to transmit them, just create pairs locally and use the public key for encryption).

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I see we've finally got a nice, just cause to use all those botnets created by sharing questionable material on TPB...

Re:I got an idea

[I cant believe its n]

Although I can relate to your great-great-grandfathers preferences, I still dont understand why he was kicked out? We generally like norwegian girls over here :-) P.S. Yes, feel free to pass any information on to mr Reinfelt directly. If your message passes the swedish border, you will simply be helping the collection to become more efficent.

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, send encrypted messages between them like "Hello. How are you today? I am fine." Generate new key pairs for every message. That way you chew up their CPU cycles decrypting without risking actual arrest on some trumped up charge.

Re:I got an idea

[RingDev]

I may have to question Mr Reinfelt directly about the state of appreciation for Norwegean hotties in Sweeden.

Other than this latest poor turn of events, and the clash with Norway, I'm rather fond of the place ;)

-Rick

Re:I got an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I got this idea last week and was also considering a couple of servers just transferring scrambled data (to give FRA something to use their new supercomputer on).

Any other suggestions how this could be done to maximize time spent on their end?

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

So how will this help them? All the "terrorists" need to do are to send their communication in clear text and they are safe?

Re:I got an idea

[mattwarden]

Norm: I got a plane full of people saying you threatened that stewardess.
Greg Focker: I was not threatening her. I was just trying to get my bag into the overhead storage thing...
Norm: You were acting like a maniac and you threatened her with a bomb.
Greg Focker: No, I said I didn't have a bomb.
Norm: But you said bomb.
Greg Focker: I said, "It's not like I have a bomb".
Norm: You said "Bomb" on an airplane.
Greg Focker: What's wrong with saying 'Bomb' on an airplane?
Norm: You can't say 'Bomb' on an airplane!
Greg Focker: Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb. You gonna arrest me? Bomb bomb bomb bomb! During the war I was a BOMBadier!

Re:I got an idea

[koma77]

Encrypted traffic is one of the criterions. There are others as well, such as keywords, language, jargon.

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

I don't see how that will stop terrorists then. So all they need to do is write in clear text and noone will be listening? Yeah, awesome, money well spent!

Or does it just add extra points when trying to calculate if it should be recorded or not?

Re:I got an idea

[koma77]

Encryption just adds extra points. And has the side effect of requiring quite some of FRAs CPU cycles.

Re:I got an idea

[aliquis]

So then why care? If it's not a requirement for them to investigating it, but just an extra point just encrypt it and don't care, it's not like it's very likely that they will break the encryption, how long does 2048 bit gpg encryption take to break? Even though they have some CPU power. I guess it would help if the key was different each time though?

Re:I got an idea

[koma77]

Yes, I will use heavy encryption whenever possible. Not only do they have one of the fastes computers on earth, they also have brilliant mathematicians that have been doing cryptoanalysis for many years. During WWII they broke some of the german cryptos for example. So, who knows what they can do with encrypted traffic?

So...

[Knara]

How does judicial review compare in Sweden to the way it works in the US?

Re:So...

[SwedishPenguin]

There is no constitutional court in Sweden. The law can be tried in the European Court of Justice though. So if the law, as has been claimed, violates the European Convention it can be still be overturned.

Also the left party and the green party wants to rip up the law when power shifts (the right-wing government isn't very popular right now and this isn't going to make them any more popular), the question is if the social democrats will agree to that.

This is truly the worst behaviour of any Swedish government I've seen yet. The government didn't really have any arguments for the law, just the general "The terriorists are coming to get you" propaganda.

To add to that, the law was voted to go back to committe this morning, and by nightfall, the "new" law, with minor modifications was passed.

The Left Party made an official complaint about the law and the government to the constiutional committe, but it would appear that they didn't do what they should have.

Right now there are two parties in parliament that I can trust. That would be the left party and the green party. The social democrats won't say no to wiretapping, they just said no to this specific proposition. The left and green parties and some great people up there debating against this and really kicking right-wing ass, not that it mattered in the end.

The only right-wing party where some members had the courage to stand up to this proposition was Folkpartiet (aka Peoples Liberal Party, though I certainly wouldn't call them very liberal after this), where one member voted no and one abstained.

Re:So...

[init100]

You mean like a constitutional court? We don't have one. The only instance that vaguely resembles one is the joke that is the Committee on the Constitution. They have no power to rule any law as unconstitutional, they just argue among themselves with no actual results.

Ironically, the current administration has actually argued for setting up a constitutional court when they were in opposition. When they were voted into power, those arguments seemed to be forgotten.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

At current I'd say it is probably pretty solid. And FRA, the agency responsible for the surveillance in question has behaved very well so far with every thing else they do.

So, (as a Swede) I don't think anyone is actually worried about the immediate future.

What worries people is what might happen further down the line. That the law side steps our constitutional laws concerning privacy and freedom of communication, and that this might be a slippery slope.

It shifts the balance between the peoples power over the state vis-a-vis the states power over the people, and you have to assume that our population will at some point elect someone willing to exploit that.

And what worries me personally, is that the system will flag on encryption. Which is to say, if you don't submit to having your communications scanned, you are more or less assumed to be up to no good.

But, nothing special will come of it in the short term. And hopefully, we will manage to get rid of it before we have to worry about the long term problems.

Re:So...

[init100]

Right now there are two parties in parliament that I can trust. That would be the left party and the green party.

On this matter, there is only one party that I trust, and that is the Pirate Party. They might be most well-known for their views on non-commercial file-sharing and copyright laws, but they also have really sane views on protection of privacy, something I care a lot about.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

opps.. you said review. I was thinking oversight.

They added some additional stuff about oversight to the bill to placate certain MPs.

The bill essentially failed this morning but was voted in tonight after said changes.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say "Not at all." We do not have a Court of Constitution first of all, but an incredibly pointless "committee" usually used as a stage for political bickering, all seats being proportionally dispersed among the parties. So since the majority usually becomes the government, the majority in the committee... tada! represents the government. It has also very little teeth (basically none) should any miracle happen and they should actually decide to reprimand anyone.

The real control is SUPPOSED to be with the "riksdagen", which basically is the equivalent to the congress. This is where things go seriously south. Riksdagen is supposed to censor the government and make sure it doesn't get out of line. HOWEVER, since the government is made up from the parties representing the majority of the riksdagen, and voting against your party is a huge no no, (basically kills your political career real dead instantaneously) the riksdagen has become just another rubberstamp instance with no real function either. Our system is fucked up, our government is out of control, and it's 2 years to the next election. :( The only hope, however faint is that people neither forgets nor forgives this treason, and remember who the traitors were the next time elections are coming up.

Re:So...

[Andtalath]

There was only one member who voted against, actually. A few lay down their votes as well though.

Re:So...

[init100]

And FRA, the agency responsible for the surveillance in question has behaved very well so far with every thing else they do.

Behaved well? The leader of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, in a conversation with the director of FRA back then (which was secretly recorded by Rick) got a confession that the FRA has been tapping the wires for many years already. The Pirate Party filed a complaint with the police shortly afterward.

And what worries me personally, is that the system will flag on encryption.

If we could get enough people to encrypt their communications, such a flag would be worthless. They would have to break an enormous number of encrypted messages (which is hard work even for the biggest supercomputers in the world) just to find out that they are not relevant.

Re:So...

[init100]

The only hope, however faint is that people neither forgets nor forgives this treason, and remember who the traitors were the next time elections are coming up.

That won't help. The previous social democrat administration created this proposition, and they aren't going to throw out this law unless held by their throat by the greens and/or the left party. And the only way that could happen would be if the lefts/greens would threaten to unseat the social democrats by siding with the (assumed) right-wing opposition. And that is highly unlikely, especially for the left party, because regardless of how much they dislike the social democrats, they dislike all the right-wingers much more.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with encryption is not the cracking of messages, but that they track who sends them to whom.
I.E, if you send encrypted messages, you may end up having all your communications mapped.

And wrt FRA's previous record, I was thinking more in terms of leaks and abuses of information. They have been gathering just about everything they could for decades, but there hasn't been any scandals so far.

Re:So...

[SwedishPenguin]

Camilla Linberg (fp) was the only right-wing MP to vote no. (be sure to send her a thank-you note, I did)
Birgitta Ohlsson (fp) abstained, the only MP to do so. She said that she would have voted no if there was enough opposition to bring down the proposition though.

Re:So...

[GradiusCVK]

Right now there are two parties in parliament that I can trust. That would be the left party and the green party.

On this matter, there is only one party that I trust

Must be nice to trust one of your parties... man, that's gotta be sweet.*whistful sigh*

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no constitutional court but there is of course a review of the law by legal experts (before it is presented to parliament). The entity is called Lagrådet.

Re:So...

[jonaskoelker]

If we could get enough people to encrypt their communications, such a flag would be worthless Or one could set up a shell account on Blinkenshell, which is located in Linköping, for the purpose of securely exporting large amounts of random bits to Sweden ;)

(let's hope blinkenshell has the bandwidth for that...)

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

encryption + steganography (so the email looks like some dissociated-press-like v14gr4 spam/ciphertext inserted into the least-significant-bits of a huge tiff file) = win

If I was a terrorist, there would be no way they would intercept any of my messages... Security by obscurity actually works (for some purposes).

But I do agree with you: people have to start encrypting every little piece of information they send over teh tubes.

Re:So...

[steelfood]

If we could get enough people to encrypt their communications, such a flag would be worthless. They would have to break an enormous number of encrypted messages (which is hard work even for the biggest supercomputers in the world) just to find out that they are not relevant. This would never happen unless encryption becomes the default.

I've never bothered to figure out how to encrypt my e-mails. Why? Because it seems too complicated. And quite frankly, it hasn't been worth my time to make that effort to read about what I need to do to secure my e-mail.

However, if my e-mail was sent securely when I click the "send" button right off the bat, then I wouldn't turn it off for the life of me. And your country, and mine, would have a dozen more e-mails a day to decrypt.

The same applies to websites. /. is a hub where intellectuals and technocrats gather, albeit they might be drowned out by the voices of the more normal among us. The least /. could do is set an example by going exclusively https.

Re:So...

[SwedishPenguin]

Yeah but parliament is free to ignore them..

Re:So...

[init100]

The same applies to websites. /. is a hub where intellectuals and technocrats gather, albeit they might be drowned out by the voices of the more normal among us. The least /. could do is set an example by going exclusively https.

I completely agree.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good opportunity for Swedish people to learn the joys of GPG.

I already mailed the conservative party telling them to ban smoking, or something else that would actually have an effect on saving Swedish lives, but they didn't bite.

My next hobby project: a daemon that sends tonnes of heavily encrypted white noise from the adresses jihad@.se and ghazi@.se to hotmail and yahoo accounts with interesting names. Could this become the new SETI at home? Anyone willing to help flood the FRA with "encrypted" traffic?

(Yes, *of course* I am posting this as an Anonymous Coward.)

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or.... send a shit load of white noise around the place. Hmmmm, time to e-mail myself 20 gigs of random noise for them to decode...enjoy.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we did have a constitutional court I doubt it would do much good, since Sweden's constitution is pretty limited.

What I find strange is that I've heard no one speak about the UN's declaration of human rights. I can't think of a much clearer violation of article 12 than this law.

Re:So...

[piotrr]

Rick didn't speak to the director, he spoke to a functionary, but yes, it is true that FRA has been conducting surveillance before - it what they do.

Now all forms of surveillance are becoming regulated by the new law - regulated in a way they have never been before. Believe it or not, this is a restriction on what types of surveillance may be carried out, and how the results should be treated.

If you believe encryption makes flags worthless, you haven't read Cryptonomicon.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what worries me personally, is that the system will flag on encryption.

If we could get enough people to encrypt their communications, such a flag would be worthless. They would have to break an enormous number of encrypted messages [...] just to find out that they are not relevant.

Quite the contrary. Everything that's encrypted is automatically "relevant" to a government with a mindset like this.

Aside from that they still are tracing with whom you communicate - which is an almost as powerful instrument as the content - If they can't rifle through your mail, this will be only more justification to them for even deeper and more targeted intrusions.

There's no way around it, any technological solution can only be short-term. The people themselves must keep their governments free of totalitarian crooks or they will suffer the consequences.

Re:So...

[dr_d_19]

If we could get enough people to encrypt their communications, such a flag would be worthless. They would have to break an enormous number of encrypted messages (which is hard work even for the biggest supercomputers in the world) just to find out that they are not relevant.

They don't HAVE to break encryption. As long as they store the endpoints of every conversation (which they have done for years, illegaly) they have all the candy they could want. Complete sociograms of every citizens is a very powerful tool when it comes to scaring people into submission. It's also a very good tool for implicating people for crimes they have not commited or have no intention of commiting.

The Swedish people are generally not very good at protesting (not like the French anyway) but nobody likes this and I expect the political climate in Sweden to change rapidly after this.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he only admitted that they had been spying on *sattelite communications*, and not on the cable-bound data.

Re:So...

[I cant believe its n]

I dont fully agree with Pirat Partiet on their views regarding copyrights, specifically I fear that artists, programmers and writers can get rolled by some pimpled teenager with a grudge. "So, you wrote a book and now it is published across the globe. I dont give a fuck if it took you 3 years to write while working extra just to stay alive.".

That is my main concern, but I also agree that most patents for example stiffle competition and if anyone belives that a simple inventor has a chance to protect his/her patent in court against a global corporation... well dream on.

Also, take software for example. You still cant lagally create a copy of for example Windows95 (I know... its just an example), but the company that created it is not supplying it to the market.

A work is either worth something and then you sell it, or it is worthless (my Win95 example fits in here) and then you should give it away. You should not have the option to prevent anyone from access if they are prepared to pay for it.
---
FU Moderaterna, yesterday you started the journey out of government. It is clear that you are out of touch with your own voters and I should know since I was one of them. Fredrik Reinfelt did not dare to be accociated with passing this law, I know. Let the others in the party get the blame, chicken.

Re:So...

[init100]

FU Moderaterna, yesterday you started the journey out of government. It is clear that you are out of touch with your own voters and I should know since I was one of them.

Several of their propositions has had a sense of urgency to them, like they knew from the beginning that they will be voted out next election. So they seem to try to get as much as they can through parliament before they are thrown out.

Re:So...

[damme]

Don't be too trusting on the left wing party. As far as I understood it they voted no on a technicality.

Re:So...

[Per Wigren]

Here is the hero!

Re:So...

[celle]

Well then I guess the only option is ammo. Go get your guns and take your government back.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no constitutional court in Sweden. The law can be tried in the European Court of Justice though. So if the law, as has been claimed, violates the European Convention it can be still be overturned. That would be the European Court of Human Rights, not the European Court of Justice.

Re:So...

[roman_mir]

This is truly the worst behaviour of any Swedish government I've seen yet. The government didn't really have any arguments for the law... - well, we have observed much worse behavior of the Sweden government in the not so distant past. At least at that time they have gotten their asses kicked. I think they may need to be reminded of that event and the lesson may need to be repeated. Of-course Putin and Medvedev are not exactly Peter the Great so it may require some internal intervention ;)

Re:So...

[SwedishPenguin]

No, that's the social democrats. The left party and the green party have been against this from the start.

Re:So...

[LeftOfCentre]

Another institution worth mentioning is Lagrådet (Google translation) which examines the constitutionality of laws before they are voted on. In this case, it had declared the law to be constitutional.

Re:So...

[Ernesto Alvarez]

The problem with encryption is not the cracking of messages, but that they track who sends them to whom.
I.E, if you send encrypted messages, you may end up having all your communications mapped.

And that's defeated (just as the GP said) by having everyone send everything encrypted. One thing is mapping the communications of one cipherpunk, but the game is not the same when that cipherpunk acts just as everyone else. You would have to map everyone's communication, a return to the current status quo, plus encryption for everyone.

Last Bastion?

[z00_miak]

It's unfortunate to see even the forward thinking Scandanavian country implement something so Gestapo-like.

Where does it end?

Re:Last Bastion?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a matter of "where", but "when". And the answer to the question is when people start giving a shit.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

DN = Dagens Nyheter (in English approx. "News of the Day"). /Buzzy

And have them operate from within...

[RustinHWright]

Sounds like a plan. Now if you can have it work from bots within the Swedish government and the offices of the MPAA/RIAA's paid legal whores, we'll be good to go.

The register says rejects????!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

No that their a Swedish news source or something, but for what it's worth, the register says something completely different:

A controversial law in Sweden which would have allowed Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) to monitor all outgoing and incoming communications crossing Sweden's borders didn't get enough votes in parliament today.

or am I confused?

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

It was re-worked during the day.

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

It was blocked earlier, they made some cosmetic changes and voted on it again.

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[gnuASM]

No that their a Swedish news source or something, but for what it's worth, the register says something completely different ... or am I confused? You are confused!

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[malavel]

From the article:

"the draft has been sent back to the committee for revision. Government representatives have pledged to build in more protection for personal privacy."

They made some changes and came back the day after.

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

That's from yesterdays vote which was about withdrawing the law as it read then. Some very hastily made meaningless changes was made after that. The cosmetical changes were not even available in any other form than in handwriting in the margin of the old law proposal, even as the law was voted on today.

The major motivation for the law, as the Swedish government sees it, is to enable the FRA to lawfully continue to do what they've been doing illegaly over the last 10 years or so (now a police matter, after it was revealed two days ago in the major TV news). One of their targets is the Russian internet traffic, as about 80% of the Russian internation internet traffic passes through Sweden. The Swedish spooks at RFA hope, among other things, to exchange information extracted from that traffic for information obtained by organizations such as ECHELON and others.

Re:The register says rejects????!!!???

[Andtalath]

The proposal has been accepted, what was voted for this morning was to postpone it until this evening with somv ery minor changes.

news

[Anonymous Coward]

the Local, swedish news in english...

http://www.thelocal.se/12534/20080618/ //W

Sad sad sad day

[Tazor]

This is insane. Newer thought this could happen in Sweden.

Now it will only be a matter of time before the government in my country (Denmark) will try to pass the same kind of law, i'm sure.

Tomorrow I'm calling my mobile phone company (Telia) and making sure that none of my calls are routed through Sweden.

I hope ThePirateBay.org will start to educate the swedish people on how to encrypt their communications, because they will need it.

Re:Sad sad sad day

[Anonymous Coward]

This just set the groundwork for all other EU countries. The rest will just follow suit.

Re:Sad sad sad day

[Tazor]

Maybe it is time to move to China where my rights are secure..

Re:Sad sad sad day

[Lord MuffloN]

Don't worry, this will be implemented in 2009, and it's a new election in 2010, and believe me when I say that the current government won't make it, giving the left/socialist plenty of time to rip it apart.

Re:Sad sad sad day

[init100]

giving the left/socialist plenty of time to rip it apart.

Unless forced to by the greens and the left party, the social democrats won't rip it out, quite the contrary. They will say thank you to the previous administration, for implementing and taking all the heat on a proposition that was originally created by the social democrats.

Re:Sad sad sad day

[Imsdal]

There is exactly zero (0) chance the social democrats will remove this law. After all, it was their idea from the beginning.

More Coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

More stuff with more of the Swedish stuff translated into English.

'Ja' to Lex Orwell
Lex Blair
Orwellian Update I
To the Vote
Lex Orwell & Intent
Lex Orwell - No for Now
'I Have To Be Able to Look Myself in the Eyes'

Re:More Coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

And another one.

Lex Orwell: How They Voted

Camilla Lindberg was the only MP to break ranks and vote against. Birgitta Ohlsson is in the same party but she only dared not vote.

What's curious - beyond wimpy Fredrick Federley who the day before made such a spectacle talking about his mother along with Annie Johansson - is the leading members of the opposition including former minister of justice Thomas Bodstrom (who was behind the bust of The Pirate Bay) and Mona Sahlin (who may be the next prime minister) had previously voiced opposition to the proposal - but guess what? On the day of voting they didn't even bother to show up!

The bill passed by a very narrow margin - only five votes. If the above people had voted against; if Henrik von Sydow who was also highly critical had voted against; if a few others who had gone on record as being opposed to the bill had voted against; then it wouldn't have passed into law.

Camilla Lindberg received over 140 flower bouquets for what she did. Somebody has to send a message to the MPs who should have been there as well. (Of the 67 who were not there to vote there were 34 opposition MPs which means if all had been there the opposition would have gained yet another vote.)

I guess they're supposed to be representatives of the people? Several journalists asked them to vote with their hearts - they did not mean they shouldn't show up for work at all. Especially with such a crucial issue. It's inexcusable. Possibly typical but particularly in this case inexcusable.

FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org

[bo-eric]

If anyone wondered what FRA will be using its fairly new 13728-core, 102 Tflop/s (Rmax) Xeon cluster for, I guess this is it. When it was new on the previous list (November 2007), it held the fifth place. Here is an article about it in Computer Sweden (in Swedish). Maybe now is a good time to upgrade to 2048-bit keys...

Re:FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org

[init100]

I got my free S/MIME certificate from Thawte today, for encryption of email, and so did all my co-workers.

Re:FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is kind of funny because when they bought (ordered) it, they said it would not be used for this purpose (link).

Re:FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org

[RAMMS EIN]

``I got my free S/MIME certificate from Thawte today, for encryption of email, and so did all my co-workers.''

And, who knows, maybe the Swedish government, too.

Re:FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org

[init100]

Why do you think that? They can get my public key, but who cares? Good luck breaking it. My private key has never left this computer.

Not Funny.

[Odder]

The whole world is starting to look like East Germany and you make a joke about coffee machines? The only thing less tastefull is the second poster's joke about fake Sweed. Humor is good but this is a dark day for freedom.

Re:Not Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not, and what does this have to do with anything?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire Swedish government (okay, a distinct 143+ members) have just proven they are extremely hostile to the will, freedom, and safety of the Swedish people.

They should be voted out of power immediately by No Confidence/Popular Referendum/whatever. Now!

What they have just done goes against Everything the public has told them! They only succeeded by suppressing all media outlets for months - something so blatantly and grossly corrupt does not call for grumbling; it does not call for petitions; it calls for the immediate dis-bandment of the parliament, and re-election of public representatives; NOW ! Today/Tomorrow/Within the week !!!

    Also, the dominant party must not be voted into office next election.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

it calls for the immediate dis-bandment of the parliament, and re-election of public representatives; NOW !

You seem to feel pretty strongly about this. I do hope you are doing a little more than posting on slashdot.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

goodluckwiththat

Re:Anonymous Coward

[ardle]

That's democracy for ya.
They're harder to get out than to get in, aren't they?

The thing we gotta realise is that we're voting them in. Well, I haven't been keeping track of everyone's votes - you know what I mean. Populations have been voting right-wing governments in all over, then getting surprised when those governments stop listening to them (but that's the less interesting bit. I think the first thing we need to address is why we vote for these people in the first place).

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that basically both sides are for this kind of shit in Sweden, they only oppose it when they're not in power. Our last Minister of Justice with our Social Democrat government was very infamous for the draconian laws that were proposed and some hoped this would change when the righties won the election.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

it does not call for petitions; it calls for the immediate dis-bandment of the parliament, and re-election of public representatives; NOW ! Today/Tomorrow/Within the week !!! Or next month... next year maybe

I'm glad you're already starting to accept it

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The party in power doesn't matter, the proposition was originally the current opposition's. Most of the representatives voting no to the proposal did it only because they are opposition and the proposal is not "theirs" any more.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[piotrr]

The weirdest thing about this debacle is that I can no longer tell the conspiracy kooks apart from the fairly rational. It's almost as if they've joined forces somehow, for just this question.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The responsible politicians are terrorists themselves towards their own citizens and their political parties should be put on the list of forbidden terrorist organization. This will prevent re-election.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, not all 143 members was in fact believers of the FRA, but they were convinced to follow the policy of their parties (4 of them being in the riksdag).

This is a fucked up time to live in sweden, and I'm not sure what to do. But at least I know some are fighting for it. Bahnhof internet provider will not provide a cable for them to monitor, telia sonera is moving their email servers to finland etc... not sure how this would help but people ARE fighting.

When I was young, I used to think...

[Ortega-Starfire]

...that the US government really had it in for its citizens. Then later I discovered that even now in this post 9/11 world, we in the USA don't even hold a candle to the abusive modern governments that are out there, such as the UK, Australia, Sweden, and more!

It makes me want to go into politics, try and change the system for the better, protect the liberties we still have here before even those get stolen by those in power, but each time I consider it, I think, "Do I want to let myself become like them?"

How does one change one's government without being corrupted by the system? This is not just a question for those in any specific country to answer, but one every man and woman must consider.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do it.
Get involved.

If you don't, who will?
  Think about the children. Your children.

Seriously, bad apples are drawn to authority like hornets; we need you in there, bud.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[SteveAstro]

This from a citizen of a country where you can still get hauled before the judge for walking across a road !
Steve

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Eco-Mono]

By designing the new system to be robust in the face of corruption, we can ensure that those in power never have an incentive to become corrupt. E-mail me.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that would have worked 7 years ago, but in the intervening time (while I personally was working hard on turning 18) things changed. Maybe there was a time when a few people who really cared could change the world. But now? Now you need a few billion dollars that care. And by the time you have a few billion dollars... suddenly you don't care anymore.

There's only so much a person can be expected to do while holding down a regular job. Vote, obviously... but in a choice between two candidates who both are going to end up doing whatever the people with money tell them to do regardless of their initial platform voting does nothing. Look at the last 8 years in America. First the republicans got into office. Their main platform? Lower taxes. Which they did - exactly once, for the extremely rich. Then they cut spending - if by cutting spending you mean managing to add a few trillion to the national dept. Then they got voted back in *despite* their little war - still no idea how that happened. Then in 2006 the democrats finally take congress back by their fingernails on an anti-war platform. And proceed to do um.... absolutely nothing about the war. Or the economy. Or the other injustices the republicans started. A few token bills they knew would be veto'd and it's back to business as usual. Now the republicans are running for office on the idea that absolutely nothing went wrong under bush - and they have a decent chance. The democrats *really* promise to get us out of the war this time.

Maybe Obama can do it? He has more private donations then any other candidate, but history tells me he's doomed to be exactly the same as all the others.

Write to your congressmen? Sure, but do you really think that helps? Maybe if you attach the maximum possible campaign contribution on a personal check, but even then they'll weigh it against the sum of corporate checks. Recent history has shown that completely ignoring the wishes of the people who elect you is a *great* way to get re-elected. And even if you don't, the other guy's going to do pretty much the same thing anyway.

Go to protests? A great way to get a few interesting scars, I suppose, but when was the last time a protest actually changed anything in the slightest? 1960's?

Run for office? Yea, that'll work. Because history is *full* of people who aren't independently wealthy becoming important politicians. History being the key word, and even "way back then" the odds were thousands to one against for any given person who just decided they wanted to change things.

No, I'm afraid the most effective way to change things is to become the CEO of a multinational corporation and spend a few billion on lobbying efforts. (oh, which the democrats were also going to reform, and naturally forgot about once they were the ones getting lobbied). I'm afraid it may be too late to change anything. But it's still too early to do it the old fashioned way (second amendment) because not enough people are willing. The problem, of course, is that by the time enough people agree it's the time it might be too late for even that.

To the end that by the time everyone agrees to go the second amendment route it isn't too late.... well some tough calls will have to be made. Get rid of all mercenaries? Yea, certainly. But then do you want to gut the military, or to make it far more independent then it is now? I think either might work but I don't really know which would work better.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Pichu0102]

How does one change one's government without being corrupted by the system? Simple. You can't. Sure, you can put one or two non corrupt people in, but the corrupt ones will always prominently outnumber those who aren't.

And there's no way to change it either. It's a cycle that won't stop at the bottom; it'll grab a shovel once it reaches that point.

A sad state of affairs for the world, indeed...

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Reziac]

We did that once. Back in the late 1700s. It seems to have been less robust than we thought, since we failed to take into account human nature.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Eco-Mono]

So we learn from our mistakes and try again. Yeah, it's not ideal, but it's the best we can do.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.. the US is still way a head of Sweden.
This is like the Swedish version of echelon after all.

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Reziac]

Yeah, in fact, it's ALL we can do, barring aliens who arrive and force us to learn other things entirely!

Re:When I was young, I used to think...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's totally unfair. No Swede would trade places with the crap heap that is the United States. Get a clue. And this holds for the UK, Australia, and almost any developed country as well.

Botnet idea

[azzuth]

Perhaps some crafty hacker can persuade the botnets to start spamming the government redflag words. Overwhelm the servers with flags and they might think twice about this type of spying.

a href, for father Dagon's sake!

[KiloByte]

Well, copy&paste on URLs is a bitch, especially for long URLs which get mangled. Could you please read about an invention called the hyperlink?

Here's an example.

Re:a href, for father Dagon's sake!

[wizardforce]

you mean you're not using the linkification extension or selecting the text and dragging it to open in a new tab?

Re:a href, for father Dagon's sake!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use extensions or tabs, you insensitive clod.

In Soviet

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Sweden, erotica watches YOU!

Re:In Soviet

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Sweden, Fredrik Reinfelt and the government watches you (REALLY!)

Re:Someone please remind me...

[SteveAstro]

He's Finnish

There goes sweden

[unity100]

the pinnacle of what europe can accomplish, and accomplished. a bunch of STUPID IDIOTS which are chosen as 'representatives' have totally fucked up the ideals of personal rights, freedoms and handed the whole country to whomever at the helm at any point to be abused. clearly shows representative democracy does not work. you elect the person, then that person can vote as s/he wishes, not how you wish. we need to get rid of all those faggots and start direct democracy.

Re:There goes sweden

[plasmacutter]

. we need to get rid of all those faggots and start direct democracy. Think of how many people go nuts when they can't watch american idol and dancing with the stars.

Think of the nearly 50% of americans who believe the horse crap the intelligent design people are shoveling.

No, this is not what you want.

what you want is a meritocracy. Specifically, you want to amend constitutions world-wide to require a Ph.D. to run for office, but exclude the business and law fields.

Re:There goes sweden

[Loke the Dog]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_direct_democracy

This is what we need. Laws could never be passed in a system like this if they were not supported by the majority of the people, yet most of the time it would still function like a standard representative democracy.

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[snemarch]

It's not like TPB is hosted in sweden anyway, after the raids against www.prq.se (where TPB was originally hosted)... and obviously wiretapping won't help against terrorists using encryption. So, we welcome you, or alien overlord big brothers.

DN

[Anonymous Coward]

Footnote: DN = Dagens Nyheter = News of the day (Daily News)

So... where should I move?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad day for us Swedes... This is really a monumentally stupid effort. To hear a member of the Swedish parliament claim that a "no" to this law would "endanger the lives of our sons and daughters in Afghanistan." really destroyed my day. Why the HELL would Afghani terrorists exchange emails with their presumed brethren in Sweden before attacking some convoy?

In two years I have my degree and I guess this really is the last argument I need to get the hell outta Dodge.

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[Anonymous Coward]

All they would have to do is turn on SSL.

Control agency... riiiiight

[Tazor]

Oh, dont be alarmed.. they will put up an agency to monitor the surveillance activities:

An external group comprising members appointed by the government will monitor privacy and integrity issues
The Register

sarcasm
I'm sure they will appoint people with real objectivity to this agency
/sarcasm

Why have politicians at all?

[Stormwatch]

Sometimes, when I see politicians writing bad laws like this one, I wonder... what if we found a perfect minarchist core set of laws, then said: this is the final version, no updates allowed.

Re:Why have politicians at all?

[geekoid]

You can't make a law that covers everything. Someone will alway find a loop hole, and there will be people who they get that the law wasn't intended to get.

You might want to look into the three major studies looking at AIDS transmission and circumcision.

60% less like to get AIDS if you are circumcision.

Re:Why have politicians at all?

[purplepolecat]

Most. Ironic. Sig. Ever.

Re:Why have politicians at all?

[Stormwatch]

Not really, but it is really strange when you actually think about it.

I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there's some law that says something like this: "You can not go around maiming people." Consider this now: if some nutjob decided to chop off his own child's fingers, earlobes, or nose... well, I don't think there are specific laws regarding nutjobs who chop off babies' fingers, or earlobes, or noses. But you don't really need those ultra-specific laws; there's already that one that says you can not go around maiming people. That same law should cover each of those cases, as well as any other case of body-part-chopping nutjob on the loose.

And here's the thing: a law banning circumcision should be redundant! After all, wasn't there that law that says you can not go around maiming people? And seriously, you'd have to be ignorant or insane to fail to see that chopping off the most erotically sensitive part of a man's body is a kind of maiming. Then WHY is that law not enforced in such cases?

Neither are you

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to have a problem with dispensing some humor yourself under much more somber situations, I don't see why the OP should be punished just because you think his joke is unfunny.

By the way twitter, how many Slashdot accounts do you have now? 15? 20?

Re:Neither are you

[dedazo]

Ha ha, the Ali-Baba post! Haven't seen that one in quite a while. I miss the AC that followed twitter around posting that all the time. At least I had all the links available when needed.

PhD ?

[unity100]

you are well aware that scholastic education system is reminiscent of medieval church and also just an extension of current ruling establishment in spirits ? and also, modern education just happens to be memorizing textbook and playing along to whatever is asked in the exams ?

Re:PhD ?

[plasmacutter]

not at the doctorate level.

For a decade and a half I've watched half baked legislation and other initiatives pushed over and over, and never, ever, have I seen a Ph.D. speak up who was for any of them.

They either were directly against it or wanted deeper examination and substantiation of the so called "problems" they supposedly solved.

you are well aware that scholastic education system is reminiscent of medieval church Let me know when ranking state and private institutions schedule a witch burning. The scientific community requires tested proof to accept a new theory, this not the same as shutting out the truth because it contradicts the supposed existence of a man with a white beard who says "thou shalt not kill" from one side of his mouth and massacres innocent people for being curious (pillars of salt anyone?)

 

and also just an extension of current ruling establishment in spirits ? There is a reason oppressive governments go to great lengths to vilify, marginalize, persecute, and purge intellectuals, and it's not because they cooperate with the propaganda machines.

Human translation

[Kjella]

Sweden's own Stasi

In two days, on wednesday, the parliament is expected to give swedish intelligence the right to scan all e-mails, sms and phone traffic passing through the borders of Sweden. Christoph Andersson is reminded by the surveilance system in the old DDR - and questions where the personal integrity is going.

In the east-german security police's archives there are shelves of fire-yellow, red or dark brown files. The combined length is a total of 180km. Here are printouts of common east germans' phone records and long lists of different persons phone contacts, together with dates and times. Particularly interesting for Stasi was the phone traffic that crossed the border of east germany.

The gigantic surverilance system had as a mission to protect the "democracy" in the DDR against "hostile negative forces" and "terrorism". The threat image gave Stasi the right to collect information about everything and everyone.

Since 1989 Stasi is only a memory. None the less, a similar but even worse surveilance system is about to be created - this time in Sweden. To this end, the military department "Forsvarets radioanstalt (FRA)" has aquired a supercomputer worth millions of swedish crowns (100 SEK = 16 USD), according to Computer Sweden. That is expected to become several in the years to come.

With the help of the computers the FRA will scan all e-mails, all SMS and all phone calls that pass through Sweden's borders. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Precisely like in old DDR the purpose is to stop "terrorism" and prevent foreign threats towards society.

Concretely this will be done through FRA feeding different search words into the computer system, both in Swedish and in other languages. In addition FRA will search for stings with randomly chosen words and numbers. (Yes, translation is good)

- Encryptions, explains the defense minister's closest man, state secretary Håkan Jevreli in a video interview that is shown on the society "Digging journalists" seminar in Göteborg in April.

In the interview he gives the understanding that mail with encrypted contents are of particular interest for the FRA. Any terrorists would hardly write in cleartext where they will strike - and with what force. Surely cryptographic systems like PGP are judged hard to crack. But with one or more computers in the million (SEK) class surely everything from encrypted love letters to journalists' correspondance with sources can be cracked. The latter is portected by the constitution's anonymity protection. FRA can not possibly know anything agbout the contents before they break the encryption - thereby creating a catch 22. In practise the constitution's paragraph about protection of sources becomes worthless.

All that is required so that FRA can begin work is that the parliament (Riksdagen) accepts the proposal "An adapted military intelligence service". Behind the contentless title hides a breach of integrity that lacks its equal in Swedish history. FRA should not only search for information on any terrorist cells or terrorist acts. According to the proposition FRA shall even collect information regarding "supply crisises, ecological imbalances, threats against the environment, ethnical and religious conflicts, large refugee- and migration movements as well as economic challenges in the form of currency or interest speculation. The thoughts once again returns to Stasi's old surveilance system.

At the same time Håkan Jevrell and "borgerlige" (right wing) politicians assures that the general public has nothing to fear. It is only border crossing traffic that is to be scanned, not domestic sms, phone and e-mail traffic. The catch is just that domestic e-mail also goes via foreign countries. Partly because swedish companies and organiations has servers in other countries, partly because e-mail does not take national borders into consideration. Post between for example Luleå and Malmö can very well go through the US - if there is free capac

Civil disobedience

[j1976]

So far, the best suggestion I have heard for protesting against this law is to simply add fra@fra.se to the CC of every single mail you send. Hell, they want the mail so let's just sent it to them directly. The amusing thing about this is that FRA is a government agency and that this is their official address. By law they are required to register and archive all mail arriving on that address so that citizens asking for a mail later on can get it.

Re:Civil disobedience

[Anonymous Coward]

Just registered it with a few viagra/cialis spam-sending sites... Maybe /.ers can do a few more? Just google "enter your email address" and a spam term, and sign 'em up for "free" information about viagra, cialis, penis pumps, and all sorts of fun!

Re:Civil disobedience

[oodaloop]

Awesome. Better yet, I'll just forward all my spam.

Re:Civil disobedience

[Reziac]

Since they've already snooped all your emails, they already HAVE all your spam.

But it's a good incentive for mailservers to stop filtering spam -- since the more junk in the pipeline, the better for clogging the system. Customers can always filter spam at their mailbox.

Re:Civil disobedience

[oodaloop]

Living in America, I don't think me emails go across their border, but maybe. If they do, they can have another copy. Plus, I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to look at or have any pr0n on a government machine, so I wonder how they're going to handle that.

Re:Civil disobedience

[Reziac]

Don't count on that. Back in the early days of email, someone I knew tracked the path his took. Turned out to go from one end of the U.S. to the other, they were inexplicably but regularly routed through *Singapore*.

As to any hypothetical Pr0n on gov't machines... that's just your tax dollars at work!

Re:Civil disobedience

[oodaloop]

Well, my emails may go through Sweden, but I don't think it's too much to ask that my tax dollars don't.

Re:Civil disobedience

[Reziac]

Good point!

And one has to wonder about lobbying dollars from companies that hawk surveillance equipment....

Rough Translation

[flupps]

Sweden's own Stasi

In two days, Wednesday, is it assumed that the riksdag (The Swedish instrument of government) will give the surveillance service the right to scan all email, sms (phone texts) and phone traffic that pass through the borders of Sweden.
Christoph Andersson is reminded by the surveillance machine in the past DDR - and wonder where the personal privacy is going.

IN THE EASTGERMAN SECURITY POLICE archives exists shelves with fire-yellow red or dark brown files. The combined length is 180 kilometers. Here exists printouts of common east german's phone calls and long lists of different people's phone contacts, right next to a date and time. Especially interesting to the Stasi was the phone traffic that passed abroad the boarders of East Germany.

This gigantic security surveillance system had the task of protecting "the democracy" within DDR against "hostile negative forces" and "terrorism". The threat picture gave the Stasi the right to collect all information about everyone.

Since 1989 the Stasi is but a memory. Despite this is a similar, but even worse surveillance system in the making - this time in Sweden. To accomplish this FÃrsvarets RadioAnstalt (Swedish Defence's Radio Department), the FRA, aquired a super computer, worth multiple millions kronor (SEK - the Swedish currency). It's expected to be more of them in the forthcoming years.

With the help of those machines the FRA will scan through all emails, all sms's and all phone calls that pass through the borders of Sweden. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Just like in the prior DDR is the goal to prevent "terrorism" and deflect outer threats against society.

In practice this is done by the FRA by feeding different search terms into the computer system, both in Swedish and other languages. In addition the FRA will search for strings with randomly chosen words and numbers.

- Cryptography, explains the defense minister's closest man, the secretary of
state HÃ¥kan Jevrell in a video interview shown in the "Digging journalists' seminary" in GÃteborg (Gothenburgh) in April.

In this interview he makes it understood that email with encrypted contents is especially interesting to the FRA. To-be terrorists would not type in plain text where they will hit - and with amount of force.
Sure, encryption systems like PGP is believed to be hard to crack - but with one or more computers in the million-range you can surely decrypt everything from encrypted love letters to journalists' exchange with sources. The latter being protected by the anonymity protection of Swedish law. FRA can thus impossibly know anything about the contents prior to breaking the encryption. Thus creating a catch 22. In practice the law's paragraphs about the source protection are rendered worthless.

Everything needed for the FRA to begin the work is for the Riksdag to pass the suggestion "An assimilated defense secret service". Behind the gibberish title hides a privacy breach that has no equal in Swedish history. The FRA will not just look for information about believed terrorist cells or acts of terrorism. According to the proposition the FRA will even search for information about "Income crisis, ecologic unbalances, environmental threats, ethnic and religious conflicts, large immigrant and emigrant movements and economic challenges in the form of currency and interest speculations". The thoughts are involuntarily drawn towards the Stasi surveillance machine of old.

HÃ¥kan Jevrell and other right-wing politicians ensures at the same time that the common person have nothing to fear. It's only traffic that passes the border that will be scanned, not domestic sms, phone and email traffic. The problem is that domestic email also is delivered through other countries. Partly because Swedish companies and organizations have servers in other countries, partly because email doesn't honor nation borders. The mail between, for example, LuleÃ¥ and MalmÃ, may very we

Re:Someone please remind me...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's Finnish difference?

/. needs a "failureofdemocracy" tag

[plasmacutter]

This story and the many many like it where governments blatantly ignore the public will and go completely unpunished are making graphically clear the failure of democracy.

Granted the modern democracies are representative republics, but I think the continuous jury nullification in lynching cases in the early to mid 20th century already show that direct democracy will never produce a free society either.

Its back to the drawing board.

Re:/. needs a "failureofdemocracy" tag

[freedom_india]

Yup. And the same politicians would get re-elected by the same people who opposed the law.

Re:/. needs a "failureofdemocracy" tag

[magus_melchior]

I think "tyranny" would be a more fitting tag, since it is a clear abuse of power against the rights of the governed.

Everyone that wants to help!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to help us poor desperate swedes.
You can add these email as cc or bcc in every mail you send.
If they want to se every mail that goes thru sweden why not help them :)

Ready to just cut and paste

jan.r.andersson@riksdagen.se ;Magdalena.w.andersson@riksdagen.se ;staffan.anger@riksdagen.se ;sofia.arkelsten@riksdagen.se ;lena.asplund@riksdagen.se ;anti.avsan@riksdagen.se ;gunnar.axen@riksdagen.se ;eva.bengtson.skogsberg@riksdagen.se ;finn.bengtsson@riksdagen.se ;ulf.berg@riksdagen.se ;sten.bergheden@riksdagen.se ;osama.alimaher@riksdagen.se ;anna.bergkvist@riksdagen.se ;per.bill@riksdagen.se ;ewa.bjorling@riksdagen.se ;gustav.blix@riksdagen.se ;helena.bouveng@riksdagen.se ;anne.marie.broden@riksdagen.se ;katarina.brannstrom@riksdagen.se ;mikael.cederbratt@riksdagen.se ;margareta.cederfelt@riksdagen.se ;lars.elinderson@riksdagen.se ;annicka.engblom@riksdagen.se ;hillevi.engstrom@riksdagen.se ;karin.enstrom@riksdagen.se ;jan.ericson@riksdagen.se ;patrik.forslund@riksdagen.se ;inge.garstedt@riksdagen.se ;mats.gerdau@riksdagen.se ;lisbeth.gronfeldt.bergman@riksdagen.se ;rolf.gunnarsson@riksdagen.se ;walburga.habsburg.douglas@riksdagen.se ;bjorn.hamilton@riksdagen.se ;ann-charlotte.hammar.johnsson@riksdagen.se ;krister.hammarbergh@riksdagen.se ;anders.hansson@riksdagen.se ;lennart.hedquist@riksdagen.se ;lars.hjalmered@riksdagen.se ;christian.holm@riksdagen.se ;isabella.jernbeck@riksdagen.se ;bengt-anders.johansson@riksdagen.se ;mats.johansson@riksdagen.se ;jeppe.johnsson@riksdagen.se ;christine.jonsson@riksdagen.se ;ulrika.karlsson@riksdagen.se ;reza.khelili@riksdagen.se ;marianne.kierkemann@riksdagen.se ;anna.kinberg.batra@riksdagen.se ;bertil.kjellberg@riksdagen.se ;margareta.b.kjellin@riksdagen.se ;anna.konig.jerlmyr@riksdagen.se ;olof.lavesson@riksdagen.se ;bjorn.leivik@riksdagen.se ;goran.lennmarker@riksdagen.se ;anna.lilliehook@riksdagen.se ;goran.lindblad@riksdagen.se ;lars.lindblad@riksdagen.se ;ulla.lofgren@riksdagen.se ;cecilia.magnusson@riksdagen.se ;betty.malmberg@riksdagen.se ;goran.montan@riksdagen.se ;mats.g.nilsson@riksdagen.se ;nils.oskar.nilsson@riksdagen.se ;rolf.k.nilsson@riksdagen.se ;sten.nordin@riksdagen.se ;andreas.norlen@riksdagen.se ;kent.olsson@riksdagen.se ;sven-yngve.persson@riksdagen.se ;goran.pettersson@riksdagen.se ;maria.plass@riksdagen.se ;ica.polfjard@riksdagen.se ;marietta.de.pourbaix-lundin@riksdagen.se ;anne-marie.palsson@riksdagen.se ;margareta.palsson@riksdagen.se ;inger.rene@riksdagen.se ;helena.riviere@riksdagen.se ;eliza.roszkowska.oberg@riksdagen.se ;hans.rothenberg@riksdagen.se ;jan-evert.radhstrom@riksdagen.se ;mats.sander@riksdagen.se

Lets fight back! Tor nodes and encryption!

[kandresen]

Whereas once we did this against a few oppressive regimes, we are now battling for our own freedom.

Lets fight back!
Lets give our unused bandwidth for this cause.
Lets set up TOR nodes sabotaging the logging by causing log entries not truly originating from our machines, preventing mapping of our own profile as well as that of those using the network.

Let the unused bandwidth you have paid for come to use for something truly important - our privacy - lets not just talk, but start the fight for our privacy!

Re:Lets fight back! Tor nodes and encryption!

[Nullav]

And some government agency in Sweden can run a TOR node and harvest passwords. TOR only encrypts before and between nodes. They may not know your IP, but they can learn a lot about you by reading emails and forum posts.
The resources would be better spent on encrypting absolutely everything. Rather than setting up open proxies, we should convince server owners to use SSL/TLS anywhere that it would help. If you have bandwidth to spare (most browsers don't cache HTTPS by default), have control over the server, and have a form anywhere, there is no reason not to encrypt.

Re:Lets fight back! Tor nodes and encryption!

[kandresen]

Starting to utilize services such as TOR, FreeNET and similar services are just as risky today as the underground movements against oppression in the past. Of course there are always risks involved fighting abuse done the powers supposed to protect us. I do agree that using SSH/SSL/TSL/VPN/HTTPS and would help with e-mail and other secure data, but it does not promote or protect privacy. We are talking about two different things here, and encryption is only a small part of privacy:

- How does using SSL prevent people for knowing you are visiting your political party's website frequently?
- How about your reading habbits; books, newspapers, the kind of music you listen to, and so on?

It is a lot to learn from the "First they came..." poem by Martin Niemöller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...):
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
--

- Right now it the fight is about the so "terrorists" - a foggy ever-changing group of people we cannot truly define. A group that does not include Osama bin Ladden when fighting in Afganistan for USA, but do include Osama bin Ladden when fighting against the states - or are you really trying to say USA sponsor terrorism...?
- Another group is "Child pornographers" - even in imaginary forms such as Japanese cartoons where no child is abused or harmed - in which case we are protecting who? (are we accepting mind police now?)
- In the USA you may get CIA / FBI on your door for obtaining literature deemed to be bad such as "the communist manifest"
- We are fighting "Pirates" who are robbing "music", "movies", and so on; this group include your copying of your own purchased cd's and dvd's to Ipod's and other units. I am hearing about places (England?) where you already can be charged for playing the music loud outside on a beach, restaurant or other place as you have not bought a license to share the music with anyone else.

Do you believe it will end here? What signal do you need to wake up? Are you waiting for the time they actually come for you? Encrypting your e-mail communication, and other secure information is a good step in the right direction, but it is in itself not enough. We must speak up, but we must also take action and start organizing ourselves.

Re:Lets fight back! Tor nodes and encryption!

[Nullav]

Wow, I half-expected 'Wake up, sheeple!' somewhere in that post.

Starting to utilize services such as TOR, FreeNET and similar services are just as risky today as the underground movements against oppression in the past. FreeNet, perhaps. But TOR is next to useless for preserving privacy on encrypted content and can be even worse for unencrypted content.

I suggested encrypting everything because just having an IP address does almost nothing to help you find the identity of a particular user. The identity of the one holding the IP, sure. But not the username/password and thus you have no one to link the posts to, unless the user hands out personal information in his posts/profile, which there is no technical fix for. Granted, visited URLs will be known, SSL or no, but that can still be quite a list of people. (Well, that's one area where TOR could come in handy.)

This is it Sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is it Sweden. You're on the spot now. Step up, and fight this down. You take this one up the ass and you're going to be doing the anal dance for the rest of your life, and then the next generation will consider it the norm. It will never get better. You have to stop it now, there are no second chances.

YOU MUST DO IT NOW!

What a geek can do

[level4]

What are practical steps geeks like us can do to slow down, if only slightly, this creeping totalitarianism?

1. Many of us are webmasters. Buy an SSL certificate and run your sites through TLS *by default*. Yes it uses more CPU. Do it anyway.

2. Start reminding your friends to use PGP or S/MIME for the email. Start turning up the urgency, week by week, until you finally demand that they do it or you can't talk them by email anymore.

3. Start acting surprised if your friends don't use any other forms of encryption - disk, etc. Don't layer it on too thick. Just enough to start to create a doubt in their mind that they're doing it right.

For us, encryption is normal and everyday (I hope so anyway!). Our tasks is to use our positions as tech "influencers" - either in positions of direct power or in the respect and regard of friends - to discreetly push the theory and practise of encryption and privacy into the normal lives of those around us.

The days grow dark indeed. Just a week ago France became maybe the first large rich country to start systematically blocking websites at the country level. And now this. It's tempting to withdraw into depression and fatalism but these measures will be implemented with technology and can be defeated with it too. Encryption, VPNs, mesh routing - it's all within our reach; even installed on everyone's computers! And it's time for us to do what we can, and start educating those around us to do what's right.

Re:What a geek can do

[Reziac]

The problem is that while all of these methods may promote a thriving samizdat or underground, they DON'T stop totalitarian actions by the government. Indeed, they may even promote further repression, as the government feels threatened by the growth of the underground.

What's needed is not an underground resistance, but rather, a direct reform, or even removal, of those parts of gov't that have proven corruptable. Because otherwise you've agreed to live in your caves forever, with no freedoms except what you can sneak or steal or hide in the dark.

Re:What a geek can do

[peterprior]

"Just a week ago France became maybe the first large rich country to start systematically blocking websites at the country level."

Um - China is very large and very rich :)

Re:What a geek can do

[CreatureComfort]

Love your sig. I lost my 4 digit several years ago. Bad thing is, I was only using three different passwords in rotation back then, but none of them work. *sigh* What I get for trying to be 'ultra secure' by coming up with a new one I guess.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do my best to translate, my english is far from perfect though, sorry.

"Swedens own Stasi"

In two days, on wednesday, the riksdag is expected to give swedish intelligence service the right to scan all e-mails, SMS and all phone traffic that passes through Swedens borders. Christoph Andersson is reminded of the surveillance apparatus of the old DDR - and asks where the personal integrity goes.

In the archives of the east-german security police you find shelfs with yellow, red or dark brown files. The total length totals 180 kilometres. Here are the printouts of ordinary east-germans phone calls and long lists of peoples phone contacts, next to dates and time.
The phone traffic that crossed the borders of east-germany was particularly interesting.

The task at hand was to protect "democracy" in the DDR against "negative enemy forces" and "terrorism". This threat gave the Stasi the right to keep track of everything and everyone.

Since 1989 Stasi is just a memory. Now a similar but even worse surveillance apparatus is being built, but this time in Sweden. For this purpose FRA has gotten themselves a supercomputer, worth many million crowns, according to Computer Sweden. More are expected to be brought in over the coming years.

With the help of these computers FRA is going to scan all e-mails, SMS and phone calls that pass Swedens borders. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Just like in the old DDR the purpose is to prevent "terrorism" and to ward off external threats against society.

FRA does this by feeding different key-words into the system, both in swedish and other languages. In addition to this FRA will search for strings of random words and numbers.

- Encryptions, explains the defence ministers closes man, undersecretary of state HÃ¥kan Jevrell in a video interview that was shown at a GrÃvande journalisters ('Digging journalists') seminar in Gothenburg in april.

In the interview he explains that e-mail with encrypted content is particularly interesting for the FRA. It is unlikely that terrorists will write in plain language where they will strike and how. Admittedly encryption systems, like PGP, are hard to break. But with one or several supercomputers it will certainly be possible to break into everything ranging from love emails to journalists correspondens with their sources. The latter is protected by the constitutions 'anonymity protection'. But it will be impossible for FRA to know what the email contains before the the encryption is broken. this creates a catch-22. In practice this mean that the paragraphs in the constitution about 'source protection' become worthless.

The only thing that needs to be done for the FRA to start their work is that the Riksdag approves the proposition "An adapted defence intelligence service". Behind the meaningless title hides an interity violation without parallel in swedish history. According to the proposition FRA will not just look for information about possible terroristcells or terrordåd (Sorry, don't know how to translate this. A terrorist plants a bomb and it blows up, it's a terrordåd. A suicide bomber blows himself up, it's a terrordåd etc). According to the proposition FRA will also look for information regarding "food crises, ecological imbalances, threats against the environment, etnic and religious conflicts, big refugee and migration movements and also economical challenges in the form of currency and rate speculations". Thoughts of the Stasi surveillance apparatus make themselves known again.

At the same time HÃ¥kan Jevrell and other "non-socialist" / right-wing politicans assure us that the public has nothing to fear. It's only the traffic that crosses the border that will e scanned, not national sms, phone and e-mail traffic. The problem is that national e-mail also goes via other countries. Partly because swedish corporations and organisations have servers in other countries and also because e-mail does not care

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[aliquis]

I doubt it will be used to look for people breaking copyright.

In other news, here's some way to solve the issue:
* http://www.gnupg.org/
* http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
* I feel bad for linking this but atleast they know their encryption: http://www.skype.com/

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[aliquis]

Don't hide who connect to who.

Re:Someone please remind me...

[Anonymous Coward]

He is from a swedish ethnic minority in finland, technically.

I wonder...

[Larryish]

Was this legislation some sort of delayed response to the Julius Baer mess that Wikileaks blew open a while back?

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was Switzerland, not Sweden.

Re:I wonder...

[Larryish]

Oh, o.k.

Guess i'm just your typical ugly American.

This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll try to translate into US politics.

Consider a controversial legislation that would allow the US government to get a copy of all electronic communications that could somehow cross the US border. Because you cannot be sure if the communication could cross a border, the telecoms have to give your government a copy of all communications. (Even more true in a small country like Sweden.)

Now think of this law being proposed again and again, and turned down each time. If you really want the law passed what would you do?

Wait until the eve of the super bowl. Secretly inform the proponents of the law in advance, and then on the eve of the super bowl: Call in congress for a debate and vote on the law by email with one hour's notice. You would be sure to have the majority.

This is what happened in Sweden. It wasn't the super bowl, but an important national soccer match. Soccer is the national sport in Sweden, just as football is in the US.

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey pal, we're not stupid and things of this nature do happen in the united states.

just shut up and like it. people need to get their asses beat in. we've become too soft.

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey pal, we're not stupid and things of this nature do happen in the united states.

So the US congress has ever proposed a new law during the Superbowl with a one hour notice by email to the congress critters, and no public announcement?

just shut up and like it. people need to get their asses beat in. we've become too soft.

Yeah, shut up and like it. I bet this is what the proponents of this wiretapping bill said...

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[plasmacutter]

This does not excuse any MP in sweden who was at the game when they knew this was coming down the pipe from blogs, the media, what have you.

It's not as if the swedish soccer teams are going to storm down their door and nut check them for not showing up to watch.

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[mattwarden]

When did football become the national sport of the US?

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[magus_melchior]

The US already did it, but not the legislature. Had this been tried here and the President opposed it, it would've been vetoed-- though with this administration, they probably would've had a big Nuremberg-style rally along with the signing.

The legislature (Congress), judiciary (Supreme Court) and the public would surely have balked at the NSA installing a secret cabinet in the backbones of the US Internet, so the White House did it by wartime executive order. The problem with this is, it is unconstitutional except in a very, very narrow definition of a wartime "Commander in Chief", i.e. a dictatorship. A much greater problem is that the White House circumvented Congress and the courts because they regarded such consultation as unnecessary, and this is largely the reason why they're pushing for telecom amnesty and fighting to squash litigation using state secrets privileges.

<conspiracytheorist>Since these are likely to fail, these are most likely delaying tactics until Rove can bamboozle those still watching Fox News to vote into power McCain, who can then pardon Bush, Cheney, and the rest.</conspiracytheorist>

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah-ha blah-ha. The voting was scheduled for 17 June a year ago.

Re:This is a bad abuse of the democratic process.

[Anonymous Coward]

like the new "Security Police Law" (Word-by-word translation - this law regulates what police forces are allowed to do) in Austria. They did it in the same manner, they changed the draft 2 hours befor the parlament debate about the law. No one except the Government were informed about these changes (very drastical changes to say at least) and just votet the law through in the middle of the night (i think it was about 11 pm).
The changes they made allowed the police to wiretap mobiles and use IMSI-Catchers + get IPName/Address Data from ISPs _without_ any kind of warrant or control instance (a fax is enough).

Time for a new account, Twitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Us trolls have got you, ha ha. In your face Slashdot.

What is wrong with governments today?

[oogoliegoogolie]

Funny isn't it, but during the Cold war we'd constantly hear how the Soviet Union was spying on its' citizens, and we in the west would never question the "knowledge" and certainty that our freedom-loving governments did not and would not do that to us at any cost.

My how times have changed.

Re:What is wrong with governments today?

[Reziac]

And now instead of an Iron Curtain, we'll have an Electronic Curtain. Oh-so-much-more transparent, but every bit as evil.

Re:It is a great idea.

[arthurpaliden]

That is a great idea. Eveyone should forward all their email to the various govenment officials who want to impliment this process as a way of assisting them in getting direct access to your email. After all they cannot fault you for doing what they want.

Re:Forever because.....

[arthurpaliden]

Just encrypt random noise.

I have a good compromise

[iminplaya]

Let's just wiretap the people that voted for the law. And arrest those who voted against it. Because they're obviously criminals with something to hide.

Riksdag or Diksrag?

[alcmaeon]

The latter seems more appropriate.

Sweden is a socialist state

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden is a socialist state, is it really a surprise? It was only a matter of time, they have been already wiretapping, just illegaly.
Socialism means that human life have absolutely no value, everyone is measured only by his usefulness to the State.

Noble examples of the past - USSR, Nazi Germany, China, North Korea, ...
Almost all of the current world is transforming into socialism hell, without individuality, without any rights, just blind devotion to the impersonal State.

Protip: usa isn't capitalism, usa was capitalism in xix. Now it's socialism too, albeit more liberal than Scandinavian version (at least today).

Condolences

[DJMajah]

Might I on behalf of slashdot, convey my deepest sympathies to the people of Sweden. I have to be off to make a tinfoil hat, because I suspect there will be some people around here who will think this is a great idea and want to see it here. Bye from Australia...

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the source code is not available for Skype, we have no way of knowing that they aren't cooperating with Bush, Sweden, or the RIAA.

Gah! Stupid CSS!

[Penguinisto]

My bad - stupid CSS makes it look like you were replying to my post... damn!

(Taco, FFS, fix it already!)

Re: How to get a huge lobby on your side...

[symbolic]

Cancel your internet subscriptions. Cancel your cell phone accounts. Don't think these companies won't be screaming bloody murder.

Re:It is a great idea.

[aliquis]

"Here, if only you had told me earlier I would have started to forward my e-mails back then and I could have saved the goverment 80 million SEK. Anyway, better late than never. Maybe it can spare you a few CPU cycles, and I guess you are better than a program at finding out my dirty secrets, plans and crimes. Enjoy!

Oh, btw, ofcourse you will occasionally get my forum logins and such aswell, feel free to use them in case I try to hide some secrets away from the public eye!"

Big list of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, but here's a big list of swedish politicians who voted for the surveillance law for spam spiders to find.

jan.andersson@riksdagen.se; sven.bergstrom@riksdagen.se;
ulrika.carlsson@riksdagen.se; staffan.danielsson@riksdagen.se;
lars-ivar.ericson@riksdagen.se; erik.a.eriksson@riksdagen.se;
fredrick.federley@riksdagen.se; annie.johansson@riksdagen.se;
jorgen.johansson@riksdagen.se; kenneth.johansson@riksdagen.se;
maria.kornevik.jakobsson@riksdagen.se; sofia.larsen@riksdagen.se;
lennart.levi@riksdagen.se; per.lodenius@riksdagen.se;
kerstin.lundgren@riksdagen.se; karin.nilsson@riksdagen.se;
lennart.pettersson@riksdagen.se; annika.qarlsson@riksdagen.se;
ake.sandstrÃm@riksdagen.se; eva.selin-lindgren@riksdagen.se;
birgitta.sellén@riksdagen.se; solveig.ternstrÃm@riksdagen.se;
mildred.thulin@riksdagen.se; roger.tiefensee@riksdagen.se;
stefan.tornberg@riksdagen.se; claes.vasterteg@riksdagen.se;
solveig.zander@riksdagen.se; anders.akesson@riksdagen.se;
per.asling@riksdagen.se; tina.acketoft@riksdagen.se;
gunnar.andren@riksdagen.se; hans.backman@riksdagen.se;
agneta.berliner@riksdagen.se; anita.broden@riksdagen.se;
jan.ertsborn@riksdagen.se; eva.flyborg@riksdagen.se;
karin.granbom @riksdagen.se; liselott.hagberg @riksdagen.se;
carl.b.hamilton@riksdagen.se; solveig.hellquist@riksdagen.se;
tobias.krantz@riksdagen.se; nina.larsson@riksdagen.se;
maria.lundqvist.bromster@riksdagen.se; fredrik.malm@riksdagen.se;
ulf.nilsson@riksdagen.se; christer.nylander@riksdagen.se;
johan.pehrson@riksdagen.se; karin.pilsater@riksdagen.se;
mauricio.rojas@riksdagen.se; lars.tysklind@riksdagen.se;
barbro.westerholm@riksdagen.se; allan.widman@riksdagen.se;
cecilia.wigstrom@riksdagen.se; cecilia.wikstrom@riksdagen.se;
christer.winback@riksdagen.se; yvonne.andersson@riksdagen.se;
otto.von.arnold@riksdagen.se; stefan.attefall@riksdagen.se;
kjell.eldensjo@riksdagen.se; annelie.enochson@riksdagen.se;
holger.gustafsson @riksdagen.se; lars.gustafsson @riksdagen.se;
emma.henriksson@riksdagen.se; eva.johnsson@riksdagen.se;
dan.kihlstrom@riksdagen.se; lars.linden@riksdagen.se;
else-marie.lindgren@riksdagen.se; mikael.oscarsson@riksdagen.se;
irene.oskarsson@riksdagen.se; sven.gunnar.persson@riksdagen.se;
desiree.pethrus.engstrom@riksdagen.se; chatrine.palsson.ahlgren@riksdagen.se;
rosita.runegrund@riksdagen.se; lennart.sacredeus@riksdagen.se;
alf.svensson@riksdagen.se; ingvar.svensson@riksdagen.se;
gunilla.tjernberg@riksdagen.se; ingemar.vanerlov@riksdagen.se;
jan.r.andersson @riksdagen.se; magdalena.w.andersson@riksdagen.se;
staffan.anger@riksdagen.se; staffan.appelros@riksdagen.se;
sofia.arkelsten@riksdagen.se; lena.asplund@riksdagen.se;
anti.avsan@riksdagen.se; gunnar.axen@riksdagen.se;
eva.bengtson.skogsberg@riksdagen.se; finn.bengtsson@riksdagen.se;
ulf.berg@riksdagen.se; sten.bergheden@riksdagen.se;
anna.bergkvist@riksdagen.se; per.bill@riksdagen.se;
gustav.blix@riksdagen.se; helena.bouveng@riksdagen.se;
anne.marie.broden@riksdagen.se; katarina.brannstrom@riksdagen.se;
mikael.cederbratt@riksdagen.se; margareta.cederfelt@riksdagen.se;
lars.elinderson@riksdagen.se; annicka.engblom@riksdagen.se;
hillevi.engstrom@riksdagen.se; karin.enstrom@riksdagen.se;
jan.ericson@riksdagen.se; mahmood.fahmi@riksdagen.se;
patrik.forslund@riksdagen.se; inge.garstedt@riksdagen.se;
mats.gerdau@riksdagen.se; lisbeth.gronfeldt.bergman@riksdagen.se;
rolf.gunnarsson@riksdagen.se; walburga.habsburg.douglas@riksdagen.se;
bjorn.hamilton@riksdagen.se; ann-charlotte.hammar.johnsson@riksdagen.se;
krister.hammarbergh@riksdagen.se; anders.hansson@riksdagen.se;
lennart.hedquist@riksdagen.se; lars.hjalmered@riksdagen.se;
christian.holm@riksdagen.se; isabella.jernbeck@riksdagen.se;
bengt-anders.johansson@riksdagen.se; mats.johansson@riksdagen.se;
jeppe.johnsson@riksdagen.se; christine.jonsson@riksdagen.se;
ulrika.karlsson@riksdagen.se; reza.khelili@riksdagen.se;
marianne.kierkema

Dig out those Latin textbooks

[Reziac]

Bah, just write in Latin, or some ancient Chinese dialect, or anything that will take a lot of effort to find a translator for.

There was a famous Cold War story about a father and son, one in Soviet Russia, the other having escaped to the West. Both spoke Latin well. When they'd get together on the phone, they'd pass all the political news in Latin. By the time the state snoops found someone who could understand them, they'd already finished with the forbidden topics and gone on to mundane subjects.

Re:Dig out those Latin textbooks

[raynet]

Lucky for them that Soviet Russia at that time didn't seem to have tape recorders.

Re:Dig out those Latin textbooks

[Reziac]

This was back around/before 1960, and apparently not every phone system was set up to be taped. Also remember back then tape recorders were exceedingly expensive, inclined to be cranky, and in the Soviet economy, consumables like blank tape were sometimes flat not available. But warm bodies with functioning ears, those they had in abundance.

I would think

[crakbone]

that to stop this dead in its tracks all the Swedish public would have to say is "Hey look they are doing it in the United States already"

Re:I would think

[I cant believe its n]

The proponents did actually use the US as an example (look, they are already doing it).
---
I did suggest we should take up waterboarding as our national sport, but for some reason this was not a well liked suggestion.
(You can be sure the world is fucked when it is common for people to know the name of "a popular way of torture")

^_^

[Cynic.AU]

Gunpowder, treason and plot, my friend.

There will be a resurgence of the anarchist movement. Only violent upheaval can stop this ongoing bloodletting of freedom and privacy.

(Hello ECHELON)

EU needs to show what it stands for

[ulash]

The European Union needs to get its act together. I know these days the governing body has more than it can deal with (with the failed referandum in Ireland and all) but it needs to at least open discussion about gross violations of privacy like this. Using "Ode to Joy" as your "march" does not mean anything if you don't act in the face of violations of a basic freedom like right to privacy.

How can I block Sweden out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beeing a Norwegian I wonder if I can make a rule in my home firewall to block all traffic to/from Sweden? Beeing that Sweden is our closest neighbour I'm sure much traffic goes to/from that country.

How does this affect Finland?

[Lupu]

From what I've understood, a recent major blackout in e-mail services was a direct result of the state owned ISP transferring servers from Sweden to Finland. It was done in the verge of this wiretapping law to avoid legal complications on the ISPs part. As a result, much of the e-mail traffic in the whole country were affected when other ISPs were routing mail through these servers.

Additionally, much of the Internet traffic going in and out of the country is going through Sweden. This looks pretty alarming for Finnish citizens...

80% of Russian internettraffic goes through Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

80% of Russian internet traffic goes through Sweden. http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.168493

"..according to well-informed sources this is the main reason for why the bill has been passed."

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[Novin]

No it doesn't...but if you in addition to this also choose an ISP that shovs all their traffic encrypted out of the country and let's the trafic exit from another country, you're OK. Swedish ISP Bahnhof has plans to do this (link in swedish). http://www.bahnhof.se/privat/news.php?open=28

Missing politicians

[Exanon]

Just in case you didn't know, there were 67 politicians missing from the vote. These were spread on both sides of the issue. If only 6 of the politicians that were against the law would have shown up for 10 minutes and voted against, this message wouldn't be caught in the FRA system as I press submit.

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[Tomas_Bakke]

well, piratebay.org.cn is still available.

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[Bega]

Interestingly, I'd like to know how this affects things over here in Finland, since a huge portion of our internet traffic is coming through Sweden.

Spam them.

[getuid()]

fra@fra.se

Put them on any pr0n list you can find (c'mon, slashdotters, i know you can find some :-)

With 50-90% of the world's mails being spam, and the geeks of the world united in gathering humongous pr0n ressources for a good cause, I'm pretty sure that pretty soon their Teraflop-machines will be overwhelmed filtering out all non-v14gr4 mails in the first place :-)

(If you want to be really evil, teach spammers how to encrypt mails... ;-p )

Suggestion

[Tomas_Bakke]

SSH Tunneling:

me@ikeabox:~$ ssh -X -C me@norwegian.server
me@norwegian.server's password:
Velkommen til Norge
me@norwegian.server:~$ iceweasel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol

Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments

[I cant believe its n]

We are listening to your objections
Kind regards FRA - Sweden

This is just so horrendous

[Cannelloni]

This is the end of democracy and what we used to call "the free society". I strongly object to this development.

I wish everyone would add this to their email sigs

[Cannelloni]

bomb bombing terrorist al-quaida torture islam muslim prophet's beard holy war monty python jesus allah john cleese muhammed fawlty towers evil great stan little stan ketchup gas

Postfix

[caluml]

Just append

always_bcc = fra@fra.se

to main.cf for Postfix.

abuse of holidays

[SgtChaireBourne]

...

Wait until the eve of the super bowl. Secretly inform the proponents of the law in advance, and then on the eve of the super bowl: Call in congress for a debate and vote on the law by email with one hour's notice. You would be sure to have the majority.

This is what happened in Sweden. It wasn't the super bowl, but an important national soccer match. Soccer is the national sport in Sweden, just as football is in the US.

It's also gearing up for midsummer. In many ways, it's the largest and most important holiday of the year, if for no other reason than it is the epicenter of summer vacations. Nearly everyone, without exception winds down and does nothing serious starting a few weeks before and on until Autumn.

So many, if not most, are already gone for the holidays. Those that aren't are thinking about it and/or slacking. Those not in either of the preceding groups are watching the game. There's not a better date that could be chosen to avoid scrutiny and oversight. So much for democracy in Sweden. Next up, Finland, Denmark and Norway...

Let's flood it with encrypted emails

[tertrures]

So... what's the best way to install email encryption support in gmail?

Preferably a tutorial for non-geeks that i could pass along to everybody i know.

Blocked is sometimes a (very) temporary thing

[chris_7d0h]

Revised and re-voted within just a couple of hours should be pointed out.

The instigators of this constitutional violation had done their homework and were armed with the appropriate fallbacks (contingency tactics) including revised paragraphs and buttons to press to get the political party whips flying so as to eliminate any self-thinking representative from diverging from the party flock. That is, get the slav... ahm. dron... shee.. I mean elected congressional representatives in line for a second vote on a revised legal proposal. Focus was clearly to just get it through without having it properly reviewed and disclosed to the public, thus the prepared amendments.

Everyone but FRA and the party leaders of the ruling council was against this motion including the opposition, the secret service (SÃPA), the legal establishment, the journalists and not to mention the people of Sweden. Still the mission was deftly executed, I must admit, forced through in record time not even breaking a stride when it was rejected in the morning. Well prepared and executed and kudos goes to the evil masterminds of the plan for a "job well executed".

This is a sad day but one which hopefully has opened up a number of important questions regarding the extent to which Sweden claim to be a democracy. Even your average dumbed down person on the street has started to realize some of the implications of STASI-like surveillance. Other questions which have arisen as part of this fiasco is what value having named candidates on the ballot really has, when at the end of the day those people will still be threatened into following the party line regardless of the opinion of those who hand-picked them.

So what now? If you have a need of communicating with people or organizations in Sweden, require of your Swedish counter part to use encryption for ALL communication. For any company having information infrastructure in Sweden, please consider moving it at least as far as to Finland (an adjacent neighbor with as good an Internet infrastructure as Sweeden has) where this kind of mass surveillance is prohibited. The ISP and phone provider TeliaSonera is already in the works of doing this and that should provide a cue for the rest regarding the gravity of this decision.

The government has all but admitted it intends to use this new tool for corporate espionage as well, to get at inside-information regarding interest changes etc. Not a good situation for corporate interests, unless you're the highest bidder and thus gain more inside information than what you loose to you competitors using the same machine.

As to the comments regarding external threats, well that's just pertaining to the analysis phase. The FRA will gather EVERYTHING from the channels / protocols they deem of interest and will LATER analyze that data during the activity defined as signal surveillance for whatever they're missioned to search for in THAT context.

What hasn't been widely discussed is the fact that FRA has a number of interests which can issue orders to them outside "signal surveilance", including the police, the ruling council of the government, other branches of the military as well as certain private interests. These work orders are executed based on the SAME data being intercepted as part of the "surveilance" directive (I.e. all data). In the future more interests will likely be able to get at the data stored by the FRA and given the amount of people having access to this data, when leaks start becoming more prevelant the floodgates simply are no more. (As an example, the road charging system hadn't even been completed before the police came knocking on the door wanting to make use of that info, eventhough not permitted by current law. Think this will be any different?).

PS. The FRA has ILLEGALLY performed surveillance for many years in areas prohibited by law but that's been constrained to signals in the Ether / air. This new legislation will REQUIRE all ISPs to clone their packets and route the cloned traffic to FRA for storage and later analysis. That's a HUGE scope change and the impact is hard to fathom!

Not it is time to get organised

[Anonymous Coward]

All information you need is on http://www.fralagen.se/

Finally a Spam-filter w some processing power

[HorzaSe]

At last! I see the Government will help me with my spam-problem. I suppose they'll have to filter it to avoid taxing the patternmatching-computerfarm. Still it's good to know the government takes an interest in ordinary peoples problems.

HTTPS channel for Slashdot, please!

[chris_7d0h]

An entire additional nation now needs to be able to post information to Slashdot without risk of reprisals from the government or corporate interests. As such I would like to emplore the Slashdot administrators to enable SSL as an alternative to un-encrypted HTTP traffic for reading and posting to this site.

I am fully aware that SSL will increase the resource use of the site, but if you make it a feature that must be enabled in a user's profile, it wouldn't be a default and thus the performance impact should be manageable. As we all know, anything requiring "opt in" will mean only a fraction of the total population will use it.

If you can spare the CPU-cycles, a good service would be something akin to Google's, where you enable SSL for certain (surveiled) IP-ranges where as Google uses it to "i18n" their pages.

really

[unity100]

not bad

Corrections

[LeftOfCentre]

The European Court of Justice is an EU institution, and has nothing to do with the European Convention on Human Rights. What you're probably referring to is the European Court of Human Rights.