The Swedes should be grateful they don't have Ulster Unionist MPs their government can bribe to help foist draconian measures on their population.

Otherwise they'd just have to slip 'em a few pickled herring and the odd peerage and they'd happily shaft everyone.

The law will be passed this afternoon, there were just some minor amendments about having a few new government agencies (consisting of ex-politicians) that will overview the snooping. So we will have a new law in a few months that spies on inhabitants without any suspicion of any crime committed.

This will affect you and other people in Europe and the world since your traffic just has to be transmitted through Sweden and that happens quite a lot. I therefor (as a Swedish citizen) urge you to boycott all Swedish products and be very clear about the reason for why you do this. This is the only way that you can send a message to the Swedish politicians that this is something that you dislike.

So in essence, show solidarity with the opressed Swedes by not buying our products.

...there's a country filled with liberal politicians who value the privacy of the citizen. As a bonus, it's rich, clean and apparently peopled by well-educated, multilingual supermodels.

What a contrast to New Labour's image of Britain.

I really have to learn Swedish...

Look at Simon Watkins presentation to Home Office

http://www.fipr.org/sfs6/watkin.ppt

It's clear from page 13 that the intention is to remove the restrictions on data retention that parliament put in place. UK Parliament added "for the purpose of safeguarding national security” or crimes related to that. In order to resolve 'disparity concerns' the proposal now is to "to develop route for retention for all crime". i.e. expand it from national security to every thing.

The discussion points talk of Government taking sides with any company, if the public sue companies over their privacy rights.

So if you send your kids to a school, it would allow the local authority to have a look at your telephone bill to see where you usually call from presumably to determine your catchment area.

Perhaps if a CCTV operator sees somebody dropping gum while using the mobile phone, he can go look at the records for that local area to see who was calling from there at the time. Normally it would not be allowed because the operator would see many such phone calls of innocent people and this would be a use too trivial to remove their right of privacy....

Oh course once you accept it, it becomes ASBO country and anyone can have a look just like DVLA data. So a shopping malls bans mobile phones, and when a private security guard sees someone on the CCTV using a mobile phone, he gets the records from HMGov and sends the person a fine at their home.... just like parking tickets now.

Once the EU accepted the principal of pre-emptive surveillance of citizens without suspicion they opened the door to this sh*t. It nullified the privacy right. So they should go back and cancel that directive.

Look at the dates on that presentation and it's clear that Blairs push for the data retention directive was not in response to a new terrorist threat, the push for surveillance even predated 911. It was the flawed nature of the man himself, not the nature of the problem to be fixed.

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

There is currently in the news a big uproar over a "suspected terrorist" Osama's right hand man being let out of jail in England. He may be a terrorist but he scares me a lot less than the gov't as he is working outside the law to take away our freedoms. These idiots in power work inside the law to slowly take away all our freedoms in the name of freedom.

Long live Guy Fawkes.

The law hasn't been rejected, it was just sent back to the working group that wrote it for minor adjustments. They're planning on voting on the adjusted proposal again later today, and it looks like it'll pass that vote.

The changes that are being added is another layer of checks instead of fixing the fundamental problem: instead of just allowing surveillance of those suspected of breaking the law, -everyone- will get snooped on.

Another big change from before is the allowed uses of the surveillance. Before, the goal was to prevent a military invasion (from Soviet, although it wasn't explicitly stated). Now the goal will be to prevent "external threats" in general, and it will be up to FRA to determine what is included in this scope.

One big reason for the law change, according to some, is that it will allow FRA to gather a lot of information from general Internet traffic that is routed through Sweden and pass it on to other countries' intelligence agencies, e.g. CIA. Since a lot of Russian Internet traffic flows through Sweden, we'll be back to when Sweden was USA's spy on Russia's border. It is also assumed that FRA and other Swedish agencies have already made such deals and need the new law to be able to hold their part of the agreement, which would be the reason for the heavy-handed handling from the prime minister.

Finally, it's been observed that this is a system that would make Stasi green with envy. If or when a party like the nazis or the communists come into power, they will have a perfect system for tracking down dissidents already in place and ready for use. How helpful of us. Oh, and speaking of which: surveillance orders given directly by the ministers bypass the checks put into the system to prevent abuse. Not very good checks if they're bypassed, are they?

is there any? or any threat of it? really?

... in Swedish. Nobody can decipher that crazy stuff.

PS: Mig förmiddag som lurar precis dig enfaldig gås.

You know what this means?

WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

Slick operators and their opposites are quite aware of where IT is at and what IT is Capable of.

I predict a large and profitable growth in the industries of data sharing and dark fibre -with some fibres being darker than others.

"All communication across Swedish borders will be wiretapped"... though with specialist sub-mariners and their magnificent machines -any data can be made to become 'across Swedish borders' it seems possible? And what's a bit of lag, when what IT is carrying and where IT is going is most Interesting.

The West-side city of Göteborg currently building flats and High-tech businesses as fast as it can in the land of very fast internet connections -100Mb for domestic flats in some places.... Serious investment in IT. Wow, there must be a big Backbone around here somewhere. I wonder where the money came from. Intentional back, scratching? Oj då, fy fabian!* how spooky can IT get? Perhaps the SWF would know about the flow and what investment is all about and who will end up paying for IT? http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/feb/18/moneyinvestments

Thank Heavens and the Angels and Goddesses among the Clouds** and their fecund and QuITe Delightful blessings.

*(polite and mildly humorous version of a Swedish swear-word).

**Something which is quite open to aVery Man and his double Dogs and CAT5 for them to rap to / holler at, Virtually.

a little bit over an hour ago. so they might be watching right now!

"Thank Heavens and the Angels and Goddesses among the Clouds** and their fecund and QuITe Delightful blessings."

trackSuit is amanfromMars!