Wiretapping Bill Passes Swedish Parliament, 143 to 138 326
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).
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Right?
Hello? Anyone there?
I foresee some interesting torrent developments. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments (Score:3, Interesting)
I got an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The register says rejects????!!!??? (Score:4, Interesting)
or am I confused?
FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:FRA holds the 11th place on top500.org (Score:4, Interesting)
I got my free S/MIME certificate from Thawte today, for encryption of email, and so did all my co-workers.
Re:Sad sad sad day (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I got an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not even in Sweden (My great-great-grandfather was kicked out for marrying a Norwegian lass), but I think Mr Reinfeldt might like to know about my emails.
All of them.
Every day.
Including system notices.
Sure, my emails aren't that great in number, but what if a couple hundred people were to do such a thing? A couple thousand? Hundreds of thousands?
-Rick
Re:Wha? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Civil disobedience (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in New Mexico there is water shortage, if not actual drought, and municipalities govern the use of water during the hot and dry periods. This does not strike me as "big brother", "left", or "right", but as a pragmatic compromise because for every environmentally conscious person of any political bent there are a few more who will attempt to install new lawns, run sprinklers during the day, and water sidewalks as much as they do plants. I think the thermostat example you bring up falls closer to the water use than to totalitarian regimes, and is not a political issue, but a practical issue.
I think it is dialog, and good communication in general that is breaking down in political/governmental conversation attempts. Why is this? What political party stands for not telling other people how to live period? What political party does not pander to religious groups when making laws (indecency, substance abuse, etc)? I don't see it, but wish that I did. I feel like I am an old time conservative in economic and environmental policies, and a progressive when it comes to social agendas. And by social agendas I mean laws that govern how people live their private lives like same sex marriage, drug use, etc. You know, the ol' moral majority crap.
This is a bad abuse of the democratic process. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Dig out those Latin textbooks (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a famous Cold War story about a father and son, one in Soviet Russia, the other having escaped to the West. Both spoke Latin well. When they'd get together on the phone, they'd pass all the political news in Latin. By the time the state snoops found someone who could understand them, they'd already finished with the forbidden topics and gone on to mundane subjects.
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
And as for your statement that "The opposition (the previous administration) used a law that enabled them to defer a decision for one year", that was done by the green party + the left party + the christian democrats. To refer to that as "the opposition" seems weird, since one of them are part of the current administration and the list excludes the biggest party of the opposition.
"The opposition" includes the green party, the left party and the social democrats. As for the social democrats I have no suggestion for why they chose to vote now, at least none that seems more likely than yours. But as for the two other parties, you have to consider their recent "no" in light of that they are the ONLY parties who have opposed this law all the way through the process. Maybe they really didn't want the law passed?
^_^ (Score:3, Interesting)
There will be a resurgence of the anarchist movement. Only violent upheaval can stop this ongoing bloodletting of freedom and privacy.
(Hello ECHELON)
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Interesting)
You obviously misunderstood my point. I did not excuse passing bad laws because the current opposition created it, I just observed that this bill would likely have been passed regardless of administration, simply because it was supported by both the alliance and the social democrats.
I read in several articles that this was done by the social democrats, the left and the greens. If I was wrong, I'm sorry for that.
Re:I foresee some interesting torrent developments (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's flood it with encrypted emails (Score:2, Interesting)
Preferably a tutorial for non-geeks that i could pass along to everybody i know.
HTTPS channel for Slashdot, please! (Score:3, Interesting)
I am fully aware that SSL will increase the resource use of the site, but if you make it a feature that must be enabled in a user's profile, it wouldn't be a default and thus the performance impact should be manageable. As we all know, anything requiring "opt in" will mean only a fraction of the total population will use it.
If you can spare the CPU-cycles, a good service would be something akin to Google's, where you enable SSL for certain (surveiled) IP-ranges where as Google uses it to "i18n" their pages.