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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).
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
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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'
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.
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.
It was blocked earlier, they made some cosmetic changes and voted on it again.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.