Swedish parliament passes surveillance law
Well, this is me bitching about my own country for a change. Tonight, the Swedish parliament passed a controversial (to say the least) surveillance bill. From the Wikipedia page: will give the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment the right to monitor traffic at all internet exchange points for traffic which enters or leaves Sweden in the hunt for terrorists. Telephone companies in Finland have expressed their worry about the referendum, as it will make it illegal for them to transport international telephone conversations via the Swedish networks.<11> Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, wrote about this: By introducing these new measures, the Swedish government is following the examples set by governments ranging from China and Saudi Arabia to the US government’s widely criticised eavesdropping programme. Do Swedish citizens really want their country to have the most aggressive government surveillance laws in Europe?<12> Finnish Sonera is currently (as of 5th june 2008) moving their e-mail servers out of Sweden to avoid letting FRA wiretap the finnish population. Juha-Pekka Weckström, Senior Vice President of TeliaSonera Broadband Services Finland said "We decided to move Sonera's e-mail services back to Finland in order to protect the privacy of our Finnish customers. After the migration, e-mails sent from one Finnish Sonnera user to another will not cross Finland's borders at any stage."<13>. Also Swedish Telia, the partner of Sonera, has transferred Swedish customers from Finnish to Swedish servers, to avoid internal e-mail from crossing the border. News reports from Sweden's state broadcast network <14> and other sources<15> report that FRA have in fact been conducting potentially illegal eavesdropping on Swedish citizens for a decade. According to the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment's General Director, Ingvar Åkesson, they destroy the data collected after eighteen months, but they confirm that they have in fact been collecting information not just on foreigners but also on Swedes as the presence of Swedish search terms used on the data would indicate. Illegal wiretapping Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish pirate party recorded an mp3-conversation<16> with Anders Wik in 2007. Anders Wik, at that time employed at FRA as chief of the general directors staff and unknowing that Rick was recording the conversation, said that the organisation was already conducting illegal wiretapping on phone conversations. Anders Wik also said that proposition 2006/07:63 only had the purpose of making their ongoing wiretapping of phones legal. The mp3-recording was made public at a demonstration in Stockholm the 31th of May, 2007. Computer Sweden<17> was the only Swedish newspaper to write about Rick revealing his conversation with Anders Wik. Anders Wik says in the article that he has no disbeliefs in that Rick's recording is authentic. Max Andersson, representing the Green Party has because of Computer Swedens article demanded an investigation in the matters<18>. I can't f***ing believe this. What happened to the country I used to live in? Do we really want to be in the illustrious company of China and Saudi Arabia and the Bush junta? I thought my respect for our current government couldn't go any lower, but I was wrong. F***ing wankers. :evil:

This worries me too. Better be careful what we say.... Unfortunately I'm not sure that my lot are much better in this respect...

According to this site, FRA would only be permitted to tap into communications through pattern analysis and key word searches, and would not be entitled to target specific individuals. That doesn't appear to infringe on personal liberties.

But doesn't that depend on the level of effective supervision of the agency by judges and legislators?

I feel very unhappy about increasing governmental observation and monitoring of civil society, both at home and abroad. Tapping communications (whether emails, SMS or telephones) at random is, IMO, unacceptable; it's a fishing exercise and it's intrusive. Legitimate observation, as far as I am concerned, is an interception of communications ordered by a court, and directed at specific individuals or companies, not data harvested on a large scale from the general public. I have absolutely no time for the trite notion that if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear, as governments themselves increasingly decide right and wrong via legislation, and have IMO too little regard for civil liberties. We end up with the sickening situation whereby goverment scrutinises our lives in great and merciless detail to assess lawful and unlawful behaviour, but ignores its own laws at will.