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Wiretapping Bill Passes Swedish Parliament, 143 to 138

Posted by timothy on from the henceforth-it's-orkbay-orkbay dept.

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).

9 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    Right?

    Hello? Anyone there?

  2. I foresee some interesting torrent developments. by Rod76 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Die First, Then Quit
  3. I got an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I got an idea by RingDev · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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
      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  4. The register says rejects????!!!??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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?
  5. FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org by bo-eric · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --

    -- Free speech is only free if your time is worth nothing.
  6. Re:So... by init100 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:So... by init100 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. This is a bad abuse of the democratic process. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.