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