Sweden boycott time
Childish maybe, but it's all I can think of. No Ikea or Volvos for me.
Sweden this evening voted in favour of its controversial snoop law, after the proposal was amended earlier today. Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America's National Security Agency. A total of 143 …
for privacy, democracy and civilisation as we know it. This is not the start, it has already been happening without our knowing about it. 1984, about 24 years late, but we are getting there. Last one to leave the planet turn out the lights...
Paris - well, she hasn't got a lot of privacy has she?
oh ya, China "blocked" sites that they didn't like, the same in the middle east (mostly p0rn though). Now in Sweden, you are allowed to call anyone, visit any website and email anyone..... just be careful, everything is being recorded, and even if you do post "anonymously" they *will* know who did it, they'll even how many times you checked your post (even if you closed the window without posting). They will have to ability to profile everyone, heck even your mother will not know as well as the government will.
they will only record things that pass through their boarders? Considering how the internet works..... this will include the communication with the doctor and lawyers. And if there are any hubs in Sweden, then that will include communication that is simply "passing" through Sweden.
the freedom to fly have been taken away.
Sweden being part of the EU, I fully predict that it's only a short while before all the other well to do governments in Europe contribute funding for a database of EU citizen's information. Not some tin-pot little collection databases scattered hap-hazardly all over the place, but one nice big, fat pan-European, EU funded Ministry of Information db with EVERYTHING in it!
Let's hope they put EDS in charge of putting it in, then at least it might stand a chance of being total crap and never working properly before I step into my grave!
I remember learning in school in the 1970s that Sweden was a 'half-democracy', which I didn't understand at the time being far too young. However, having lived in Sweden these past 20 years, I now know what was meant. Up to the mid-1970s at least Sweden was in practice a one-party - the Social democrats - state with state controlled news media and a secret police registering people's political views ( the infamous Information Bureau ). Even as late as 1987 the Social democrats talked seriously of banning private TV parabolas to prevent the locals from receiving non-sanctioned TV broadcasts.
People my age get a shocked look in their eyes when I suggest this, but it often results in cackles and a "you've hit the nail on the head" from older people.
On the other hand my parents live not far from a nice echelon ground station, so I'm not going to get upset about this. At least the Swedes are being open about it all, which we should give them credit for.
Hello and welcome to our new listeners in Sweden.
I would like to apologise for the comments I made about pickled herring and your government's parentage. I've always been a big fan of your pornography and low-quality export furniture. Honestly.
..So please don't forward that email to my boss where I called him a pointless, retarded waste of amino acids. Thanks.
So we can expect Broon to take a fact-finding holiday (sorry, visit) together with the gorgeous, pouting Jacqui, and then steamroller this through Parliament (assisted no doubt by bribed Ulster Unionists and Lib-Cleggs) before the electorate throw him out next election.
Much more of this, and even we Brits won't wait for an election.
"Remember, if you aren't a crook (and don't use online banking or credit cards), you've got nothing to hide!"
If only Anne Frank had known this. Then she could have been out playing with all the little Hitler Jugend kids in stead of hiding in that little room for all that time.
Doing business with Swedish companies may be risky as the secret intelligence will sell any information of value that they acquire. The FRA (Swedish equivalent of the NSA) will do business not only with other governments/intelligence organizations but also with companies, selling your information!
A request. Can you at the Reg. please install SSL protection on the site? I don't fancy the idea of having my government/FRA/NSA/highest bidder to read my posts.
No, this is not @Nick
Just wondering if this kind of legislation won't fall at the European hurdle? I mean, isn't this law infringing on my privacy. I don't live in Sweden, yet I have no way to control in what way data is routed once it leaves my PC. Now I run the risk that private (and not private, I don't care which) ends up in the hands of the Swedes, and worse, in the hands of the US govt and/or (other?) hackers/nasty evildoers?
If the land of the Pirate Bay can accept this, then the rest of us are well and truely Fucked!
Liberty/Freedom/Privacy will be terms that future generations will only read in History books - at least until those History books get censored too.
Time to move to a slightly more tolerant region... like China...
If used properly this could lead to a half-decent democracy. Assuming it's used properly, designed properly, maintained properly and policed properly.
It'd be a far lower-level democracy where people can be assigned a vote- or even better a number of votes based on their qualifications/experience in that field- for every little task/choice/law that will affect them.
Also where peoples wishes and beliefs can better be respected- for example people who've registered as being against GM foods being prevented from buying or using them and people against animal testing being prevented from buying or using any product that used animal testing or is derived from animal-tested knowledge / products.
Pacifist? You're automatically excluded from being called up to fight in a war. You may, however, be stuck with some of the "clearing medical waste", "carcass transportation" etc duties.
Don't want to see this "sick filth" of pr0n? Then you're immediately banned from buying it or going to registered "sick filth" websites.
Preaching Hate of the UK? Then you get a free aircraft or ferry ticket out of here to your next-nearest point of ancestry and a ban from ever returning. It's not an extradition, just a rapid and forceful "government-doing-what-you-wanted".
So everyone could be better catered for and not have to put up with things they didn't like. It would get rid of a lot of any perceived privacy outside the home but could respect your physical privacy inside the home. Not quite a utopia, but better than what we've got at the moment.
And then it'd be hijacked and screwed up and we'd be back in the mess we're in ATM.
Good for you sweden asssuming you're going to use these powers properly.
Look you have to understand that today's terrorists, they're not the same terrorists we knew from when we were kids. No, then they had bombs and guns and killed lots of people, but *todays* terrorists they are so much stronger than previous strains, they have bombs and guns and crash planes like before, but now they also have eMail too.
They're even very much stronger than in 2001 when a blithering idiot of a President took no action at all in response to warnings of an imminent terrorist attack. That is why this super-spying law wasn't implemented in 2001, or even 2002 when he invaded Iraq, ...
Sweden faces a never before threat to its crisp bread, a threat that REQUIRES it monitor all it's citizens for every communications they make. And this conveniently happens just after the FRA has installed the worlds fifth biggest parallel supercomputer and after the EU killed the right to privacy by signing off on the data retention declaration.
You see the reason for it, is NOT because the technology is there and the creeps that always want this sort of stuff are newly empowered by the attack on privacy rights in EU, *NO*, not at all, it's a direct response to the terrorism Sweden faces today to it's national bread product.
Of course now that the Swedish defence dept has this legalized, no politician would ever disband that committee for fear of those people turning on them and revealing their secret communications. So it's a one way jump into the hole.
Well unless the ECJ annuls the Data Rentention Directive, in which case the right to privacy in the EU is restored and Swedes can overturn this in the European court. Which thankfully is stacked with judges that do not have their secret communications monitored by the Swedish military.
There's no way for me to prevent my data traversing swedish networks as once my router's handed the packets off they're at the mercy of everyone else's routing?
Not that it probably matters much.. don't the yanks already sniff everything on their networks anyway? I'm sure far more of my data routes through them than sweden... google, facebook, for a start.
"Remember, if you aren't a crook (and don't use online banking or credit cards), you've got nothing to hide!"
So I take it you are happy to post your personal finances on the net? After all, if your company uses any sort of computer system to handle payroll, then that data will probably end up passing through a swedish router sooner or later, and once it does, the world can find out what you earn.
Your credit card details? Sooner or later, some shop you use will route their transaction request via a swedish server. (Not deliberatly, they have no control over the routing of internet traffic) and viola, your private data becomes public data.
Perhaps a journalist you respect is trying to uncover corruption in government in your country, a country with strict rules about bugging etc. (so obviously not Britain then), all the government has to do is 'ask' the telecomms operator to route some of the switching traffic related to calls through Sweden and hey presto, instant, legal, bugging.
Of course, you are not worried by any of this because you are an innocent man, with nothing to hide. What do you need privacy for?
that democracy died a loooooong time ago..when your belt has been cut off, your pants forcefully dropped and then you've been bent over, i suppose it is natural to accept with resignation, a good buggering...erm bugging.
and to think i was praising liberty in Scan-dinavia in a discussion the other day. well strike me over the head with a microphone....
Yes, it's a bad law even if it improved very slightly in the last couple of days. However it still limits them to looking for stuff related to organised crime and/or national security. And no, obviously they won't store everything, only certain parts which match some kind of pattern. If this analysis turns out negative, they have to delete the info ASAP.
@ Oxymoron of the week: There will be at least two control organs: one will be an own agency whose mission is to check up on how FRA uses their new powers, and one will be a committee with representatives from the parties in parliament, and hence represent the Swedish electorate.
@ Really bad...: You have any source at all for that ridiculous claim that they'll sell the information? Sure sounds like a bunch of FUD to me.
..."limits them to looking for stuff related to organised crime"...
By who's definition of "organised crime". According to IFPI bittorrent networks are "organised crime".
Almost anything can with the right amount of legal twisting be misrepresented to give them an excuse for listening in. It's not about having a real reason, it's about being able to excuse listening in afterwards. No real oversight except that some politicians and a greased agency will read the reports _MADE_BY_THE_LISTENING_PEOPLE!_ on how/what they recorded in the past 3 months.
There's your nightmare. I say that this is sufficient reason to cut all fiber optics crossing the swedish border. Isolate the world from this police-state.
//Svein
Proponents of the law say nothing will really change, since the surveillance has been made illegally anyway. I presume this means that those who ordered the illegal snoop will be prosecuted. Hmm, or maybe not. Maybe this law made yesterday is valid since several years?
Being one of those who voted the current government in, I feel extremely cheated, but as has been mentioned in other comments, going for the opposition will do no good, since they were the ones who originated the law in the first place.
However, after the first attempt failed, several hours of hard work to spell the word STASI differently, made a new law that passed. Now we are assured that our constitutional rights are not at jeapardy at all, since any information found that is concidered legal must be destroyed immediately. Of course those who couldn't care less about the previous law will tread very very carefully not to cross the boundaries set by this one.
I won't hold my breath
"And no, obviously they won't store everything, only certain parts which match some kind of pattern."
This sums up the problem quite nicely: scan the data from some million people, you'll get some _very_ suspicious patterns. Too bad, the statistical chance to find the one real nutcase is quite low, but we'll still feel safer if you lock away a Mr suspicious or two!
I'd like to believe that my government does all the spying and interrogating in our (the societies) best interest -- maybe just like my granddad believed his government locked away the jews for all our best interests ?! Vote for freedom early and often, so you won't have to plant bombs (filter alert!) in the seat of Swedish government (FILTER ALERT!) later. Take it as the German lesson of the day
The last time I was on a National Express East Coast train with the free wifi, I went to Google.com and was presented with the "local" version, www.google.se. On checking, I was accessing the Internet through nsabfw1.nsab.se. Does this mean, therefore, every time you surf on National Express trains that your data is being horse-traded since your point of presence is in Sweden? I'm not sure I like that.
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid access to our site from your country is disabled. We don't like the idea of all our data being intercepted and cached at your borders, and as a result such have chosen to withhold service.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused
"
.htaccess available on request.
Well, what FRA will do is to require all telecom/internet providers with outside lines out of sweden to connect and send a realtime-copy of all their outgoing traffic. Then route this information through their supercomputer. Ofc, now they have petitioned for ANOTHER supercomputer, as they feel they need it with the increase in cryptology use... they also want to hire another 250 people.
I think a lot of people missed the fact that I said I disagreed with the law. That doesn't mean everything said against it is true.
To Svein Skogen, the writing limits it to "organised crime that could threaten the stability of the state", one example was that if they figured out someone was smuggling drugs they wouldn't be able to use that, unless they were doing it to finance a terror attack on Sweden.