A recipe on how governments can get new legislations through:
- Present proposed law a few days before voting
- Ignore protests from the people, both in real life and Blogosphere
- if by some chance you actually listen to the people, change the legislation so it means the same thing, but just look different
- Hope people forget…
One of Sweden’s most debated news the last week have been a legislation which allows FRA(Försvarets radioanstalt), a Swedish administrative authority to track and store ALL of the digital communication. That includes every SMS, Mail, Web traffic and more, for every one in the whole country. People have protested, and many big IT companies are now avoiding to invest in Sweden.
Yesterday the Swedish parliament voted for the legislation to come into effect 2009. I have been in chock this whole day… this just feels like the beginning. Funny enough it seems the initiator of the legislation been playing to muchMetal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty and got influenced by Arsenal Gear and thought it would be a great idea to copy the concept! So the government can gather and “control” information for their own benefit. Not that they would talk about it, but they certainly create the possibilities from them to strengthen their own power. At the same time as they establish a system to scan and store all digital traffic, they could institute who will or will not be scanned. Theoretically they can chose and control so the people behind the system and the people with authority over it, isn’t bugged.
I can somewhat understand how the authorities want to protect (its their job) the country and its citizen, but to what price? Who have most to loose, regular people or people with power and fortunes? I would speculate those with power, still regular people have much to loose to, but don’t have to be afraid in the same way. Those with power only worry about themselves, to not loose that power and all the richness they bring. I don’t think they actually care about regular people and their safety. Like Michel Moores movie Bowling for Columbine:
The basic for terrorism:
In one modern definition of terrorism, it is violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating fear.
If a government need to bug the whole country, the terrorist and badguys (including regular criminals as well as financial criminality) have succeeded. And little tiny Sweden! I don’t see any need for such a drastically measure. Yes, security is important, but not to the cost of personal integrity! The same way as profit must never precede human value or ethicist. It wouldn’t surprise me if this decision have made the Swedish underground hacking movement (if it exist?) angry, and they already working on ways to crack this system or find ways around it. The news are already reporting of ways to bypass this new system through encrypted software.
I could (probably not) accept the new legislation, if it weren’t by the way they handled the whole situation…