Swedish journalists march on Parliament to oppose wiretapping bill
Danny sez,
Sweden's parliament is about to vote on a law that would legalize a massive data-mining wiretap on all its cross-border traffic: scooping up millions of innocent communications and feeding them to a shady, military government agency, the FRA, that most Swedes had not heard of until this week.Link (Thanks, Danny!)Tech-savvy Swedes have been campaigning against this law for over a year, but it's only now that the general public have heard about its provisions. It will only take four MPs to vote down the bill, but Sweden's normally calm parliamentary procedure has been riven with strong-arm tactics from the leading parties (one rebel MPs was in tears as she was pressured to take a fake "compromise"). Now it looks like the law will pass.
The vote happens tomorrow (June 18th), the Swedish Federation of Journalists has called on all writers to march on parliament, and are asking the international media to cover this story before the "Swedish Spywall" is raised.
See also: Swedes take to the street to fight domestic spying
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A speech was given by the Muppet Chef, but no transcript has surfaced.
The parliament voted this morning to postpone the vote, to have time to alter the text of "Lex Orwell" in a way that would appease the few right-block (the ruling block of parties) mp:s who might have voted against their party line (which is "Yes, we love Big Brother").
Now it seems the vote will be in parliament in the autumn (fall) instead.
@mannakiosk -- do you have a link for that? All the reports I'm getting still say that the vote will be this afternoon or evening.
The new, improved proposal will stress that privacy is really important and there will be a committee that will oversee the FRA:s work of spying on all the citizens.
The committee will be able to propose changes which will be handled in the spring of 2010 (if this law passes in the first place in the autumn).
In my opinion, watching the watchers is not in any way sufficient in this case. Once the big brother machine is in place, the purpose may ... "start sliding".
What's the term for that?
(I think I've seen the social security numbers in the US used to illustrate this concept, where they first say that it won't be used for anything else, they get the practice in place and then they add more nefarious uses.)
I can't find a link to any resource in english about that the vote to postpone the vote has been taken and passed, but here's an article about postponement from last night (published 00:17), when it apparently already was clear that this would happen.
http://www.thelocal.se/12504/20080618/
Sorry.. That link didn't address what you wanted to know at all, did it?
I got the "postponed till autumn" from text-tv: http://svt.se/svttext/web/pages/100.html (Swedish only. Maybe a webtranslator can help?)
That's the frontpage of texttv, the article is (at the moment) on page 106 and 107, but as time goes by, there will be another story on those pages.
This is a better, more static (I think) link to the same story as I saw on text-tv: http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=22620&a=1176656&lid=puff_1176777&lpos=extra_2
(I apologize, I need to get some more html-markup skills.)
English language coverage here:
http://www.thelocal.se/
Yay for Google Translate. Also, is that teletext news? In which case, double yay.
I'd heard that it had been sent to the Defence committee, but the activists I've spoken to are concerned that the law still might come up for a vote this evening. Stalling until the Autumn is good.
Even more so for the United State's own "Lex Orwell", FISA reform, which is still rumbling around Congress. Latest rumors say that a "deal" is imminent -- even though the any deal will likely still equal blanket immunity for telecoms
It seems the "postponed till autumn" is *not* correct. They will debate and (may) vote tonight.
They referred the thing back, but haven't changed the text of the bill itself, just added that they will propose adding/changing the text in the autumn in order to get more protection of privace into it, as I understand it.
In english: "Snoop law vote to go ahead".
Representatives of opposition parties have criticized the rushing of the referral and saying it's just for show.
An opposition MP of The Left Party of Sweden, Alice Åström, has reported the government to The Committe on the Constitution, ("Konstitutionsutskottet") for their handling of this proposal.
The website of the parliament (riksdagen.se) says debate, deciding whether to vote tonight and then voting on "Lex Orwell" (well, they don't use that term) will commence 19:30 tonight (About an hour and a half from now).
Live mpeg stream: http://ripa2.riksdagen.se/live/live1/stream.mpeg
I'm watching it in VLC.Now they're adjourned and showing a lovely view from the outside. The parliaments session will start in about 20 minutes, but, as I understand it, the interesting proposal will come up about an hour later.)
Bah... that stream is going nowhere. I guess they haven't had as many people watching before.
The vote is in. Lex Orwell passes. 143 Yes, 138 No, 1 abstain.
I'm off to download pgp, tor, freenet, off-the-record for pidgin IM and what have you.
The bastards voted yes. *turns on encryption*
a little background for non-Swedes please? Why is Sweden plunging into fascism? What is the bogeyman they are using to justify this?
I don't know. They say it's the terrorists. In a tin-foil-hat-mood, I'd suspect certain prime minister of sweden wants to fellate some even more powerful ruler of the earth, but I don't know.
The excuse is something like "to stop terrorism and predict external threats to society". No further specification than that.
As en exile Swede, I can only pity the poor people in Sweden who are now facing a completely totalitarian e-state. The Swedish Government has made its electorate dependent on electronic communication. Already 50+ years ago, Sweden introduced a unified system with "personnummer" (vaguely similar to social security numbers elsewhere), that are the key to ALL INFORMATION about each individual (from the cradle to the grave... sorry recycling plant).
I can assure you all that in a short while we'll see the Revenue Commissioners "collaborating" with the spies. Or, the State sponsored spies and informants might start to sell the information to commercial corporations, to finance more eavesdropping.
This is what the Swedes call "trygghet" (feeling safe).
and how many terrorist acts have happened in Sweden in the past fifty years?
Perhaps not "terrorist acts" per se, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Lindh
This does tend to provide fuel for proponents of increased public "security".
#22: Yes, those murders have, oddly enough, popped up in this surveillance discussion. It's very probable that neither of them could have been averted with the massive wiretapping. At least the Lind murder was committed by a disturbed loner.
Both could have been averted had the politicians had their bodyguards with them. I'm sure top politicians are more careful in Sweden today.
Hmm... I shouldn't have said "oddly enough". That would imply I'm surprised fascists use broken logic in their fear mongering.