Slashdot Mirror
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).
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!"
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
there has to be at least one country out there that cares about the people, right?
Right?
Hello? Anyone there?
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
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.
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.
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.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
or am I confused?
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'
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.
Maybe it is time to move to China where my rights are secure..
"I find your lack of faith disturbing"
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.
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.
...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.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
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.
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.
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.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.
There is exactly zero (0) chance the social democrats will remove this law. After all, it was their idea from the beginning.
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.
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.
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"
\u262D = \u5350
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,
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.
Umm... you are aware that the nazis ain't exactly what you'd call left wing, right? Just checking...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
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.
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.
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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 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.
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.
Must be nice to trust one of your parties... man, that's gotta be sweet.*whistful sigh*
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.
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.
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)