A political smokescreen. Bill will pass.
Unfortunately the bill was only (cosmetically) amended and WILL PASS LATER TODAY. (Jun 18th)
What actually happend was that those key members of parliament where were likely to vote against the proposition were put under enormous pressure by their parties and presented and at the last minute presented with a third option: Return the proposition to the parliamentary defence committee for amendment and agree to pass the amended bill.
It turns out the amendments had already been prepared and will be added later today. A complete sham and political play to keep the governing parties from a serious krisis. There are no changes to the extent of the bills proposed wiretapping, merely added instances of outside evaluation.
The amendments:
* "Datainspektionen", the data security commitee will have the added duty of monitoring the surveillance from a privacy perspective. Their report will be consideret att the year 2011 evaluation of the law.
* Another external group will be appointed to monitor privacy and integrity issues. Their members will be appointed by the government.
* An Ombudsman for matters of integrity and privace of Swedish citizens will be appointed
* "Försvarets underrättelsenämd"- previously both monitors and the ones to give surveillance permission, will be split into two indendent committees.
* The government will be required to consider matters of integrity and privacy when issuing directives to FRA.
* Surveillance against a specific individual must be ratified by one of the above commitees. (which one is unclear)
However the main issues still remain:
* All communication across swedish borders will be wiretapped
* The laws compatability with Swedish and EU constitution is still questionable
* Aquired information can still be traded with international security agencies, such as the NSA
* The definition of what "external threat" will imply is unclear as it still encompasses cultural and ethical conflicts, economic threats, ecological threats, IT threats and more.
* Encryption and obfuscation render it largely ineffective for the purpose of catching terrorist or organized crime networks.
Now it's up to us to monitor the monitors and hopefully void the bill at the next election.
If you want to help: Ask your company if it can have its communication going through Sweden now that any and all may be wiretapped. Economic loss will get even polilticians thinking.
Send some encrypted files over to us in Sweden. That'll give FRAs new world no.5 supercomputer something to do.
Liberty is heading down the creek in a speedboat, pull the brakes now!
/Patrick R