Swedes take to the street to fight domestic spying
When I was in Sweden last weekend, everyone was up in arms about the new Swedish proposal to empower the national spy agency to listen in on all phone calls and network transactions that "cross the border" (due to the way Swedish telcos manage their tariffs, this would include virtually every mobile phone call, whether or not the speakers were in Sweden at the time). The vote on this takes place tomorrow, and the Swedes are pissed. From Slashdot:
This Wednesday at 9am the Swedish Parliament is voting on a new wiretapping law which would enable the civil agency (FRA — Defense Radio Agency) to snoop on all traffic crossing the Swedish border. E-mail, fax, telephone, web, SMS, etc. 24/7 without any requirement to obtain a court order. Furthermore, by law, the sitting Government will be able to instruct the wiretapping agency on what to look for. It also nullifies anonymity for press tipsters and whistleblowers. Many agencies within Sweden have weighed in on this, with very hefty criticism, e.g. SÄPO (akin to FBI in the US), the Justice Department, ex-employees of FRA, and more. Nonetheless, the ruling party block is supposedly pressuring its members to vote 'yes' to this new proposed law with threats to unseat any dissidents. After massive activity on blogs by ordinary citizens, and street protests, the story has finally been picked up by major Swedish news sources. The result will likely be huge street protests on Wednesday. People have been completely surprised since this law has not gotten any media uptake unitl very late in the game.Link
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For people who can read swedish, the site to go to for info on opposition is http://stoppafralagen.nu
Tomorrow morning at 8, people are urged to show up at the parliament, "Sveriges riksdag", in central Stockholm.
There is also a ton of coverage at http://thelocal.se , as their tag says "Swedish News in English". Most of those articles have the header "BIG BROTHER SOCIETY?".
Me thinks the Swedish parliament have put the cart before the horse on this one. The masses must be primed with a domestic act of terror first.
Now it seems the vote on "Lex Orwell" *may* be referred back to the defense committee ("Försvarsutskottet") and would in that case be postponed.
In that case, they'd make some minor adjustments to the proposal in order to appease some of the MP:s of the ruling right wing parties that might otherwise go against their respective party lines and vote "nej" tomorrow.
Welcome to George Bush's Ameri.... oh, wait. Never mind.
It was referred back but the changes are cosmetic. Hundreds of people have gathered outside the parliament, chanting to stop the law. Has never happened in calm Sweden. 85-90% of the people have consistently answered NO to the law in web polls in all the big papers. ALL editroial pages of large newspapers have urged parlaiment to say NO, independently of political color. I have worked day and night the last month to stop this lunacy and lobby through all my contacts. We almost made it. The bloggers are a real power now. But only a miracle could change the outcome now. I wonder what will happen in next election. The governemnet has alienated a large fration of people who voted for them.
echos of Stasi life in East Germany (and many of the other Communist regimes) that we were told were all evil not least because they would spy on their own people diluting their personal freedoms.