e-Revolt in Sweden over new Eavesdropping Law

Jesper

Wed Jul 02 03:10:59 -0700 2008

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One of Swedens largest newspapers put a form on their site where readers could send a message to those who voted yes in the parliament. Every message was sent to all 148 of them. This means only around 7,000 protesters actually wrote something, not one million.

e-Revolt in Sweden over new Eavesdropping Law

Simon Rosenqvist

Wed Jul 02 07:24:27 -0700 2008

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The Military Radio Department in Sweden has been watching signal and radio communication from other countries since the second world war, to enhance military security and defend the country against external threats. With the rise of the internet, such methods have been less efficient, and thus they want to be given the ability to also survey cable bound traffic.

The proposition would force internet service providers to route traffic through a few nodes where the department would fetch and decrypt all information. The information who passes their computers, and who are shown as interesting by a system of automatic searches, will then be committed to manual search by hired personnel.

What has enraged most of us in Sweden is that every citizen will be under surveillance, in order to counter unspecified "threats", and that there are no way we can ever know if someone is listening to our mail or MSN communication, or reading our SMS. My personal opinion is that, while I understand their reasoning, this is a too far reaching proposal, and one that in itself is a crime against the human rights.

 

The first line of criticism is that the center-right movement here, who compared with the US ideological scale rather should be labelled as social liberals, have betrayed their own principles with the proposition.

The government is built upon four parties. The Centrists, the People's Party Liberals, the Conservatives and the Christian Democrats. Of these four parties, the first two are the most liberal, and both of these parties have a large internal mandate to work for "integrity and privacy".

As the full extent of the proposition became more broadly known many party members and sympathizers to the government, especially within the Centrists and People's Party, began to fight an internal battle against the proposition.  This criticism manifested in a call for the members of the parliament to vote against the party line (a very rare event in Swedish politics).

Despite the enormous pressure from the government, one of the PMs voted against the proposition. However, as the right-center movement have an advantage of seven PMs over the opposition, the law still passed.

It should be noted that the Social Democrats, while opposing the law in public, were one of the parties to orginally support the law, and are likely to support a somewhat modified version if they were to gain power. It should also be noted that the youth wings of all parties oppose the law. The only parties that oppose it are the leftish Environmental Party and Left Party (former communist party).

 

The second line of criticism comes from a broad range of internet blogs and people, especially young people. I would say this is mostly a battle between generations. The young, technically adept people look at internet communication with the same eyes as the older generation view ordinary letters and phone calls.

They are also aided by almost all types of massmedia who also are opposing the law. The major newspapers and TV-companies have been watching the battle with interest, and are quite biased in the criticism of the law.

 

At the moment the protest are still at large, and the Centrists are still trying to take care of their own revolt movement, the Centrist Revolt, who has launched a web page of their own and argues that the party leadership has betrayed the party's own programme.

Exactly where this will end is impossible to say, but the protests demonstrate the massive powers of the Internet when it comes to mobilization, and will surely give many citizens an increased appetite when it comes to defend certain values in public.

 

    Simon Rosenqvist, Hässleholm (south of Sweden).

e-Revolt in Sweden over new Eavesdropping Law

President4242

Wed Jul 02 11:47:00 -0700 2008

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Heck, this happened in the United States, I'd write a little auto-emailing script to all of our federal legilators- randomizing the output- and run it in the browser of every unused computer at the local library.

e-Revolt in Sweden over new Eavesdropping Law

haeger

Wed Jul 02 13:14:34 -0700 2008

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I wouldn't put too much faith into Social Democrats Mona Sahlin either, the law was originally a Social Democratic idea that the current government somehow adopted.

This just shows how politicians all love to monitor us, right wing or left wing.