Or have servers there. Why? Well, the Swedish parlament look set to vote through a law that gives FRA (Swedens NSA, basically) the right to do surveillance on all electronic traffic crossing Swedish borders. Yes. All. Really. They do really intend to survey ALL electronic traffic, looking for what is called “external threats” (i.e. terrorists and such).
So, if you send email to a Swedish server, this email will be read by a machine to see if it matches certain criteria, and if so, it might be read by somebody at FRA in the end. This is the rights that are being given to an organisation that has illegally done this kind of surveillance within Sweden for ten years. And this is a move supported by around 80% or the parliament. Yes, really. Of course, only 50% will actually vote for it because the social democrats, who’s law it really is, is now in opposition and votes against everything out of principle.
The law has been by Googles expert in questions like this been characterized as not having any place in a western democracy. I agree.
I am so amazingly happy that I have moved from that country.
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Wow, I’m disappointed to hear that. My impression was that Sweden was very progressive. Not everything is as it seems.
And practically all danish internet traffic is routed through Sweden, so thank you very much swedes! Facism 2.0
Spanky: “Progressive” in Sweden means socialist. So, you are kinda right.
Max M: Congratulations, Denmark…
How many (more) countries can we move from?
Many?
I’m not sure I understand the question.
Let’s all move to Spanky’s island, outside the U.S.’s and EU’s reach, and drink rum all day!
Actually, it’s a part of EU, as it’s French.
But with enough smart people, we could probably secede.
I’ve wanted to start a little liberal country for a long time….
[...] coming in or going out of the country under surveillance (fellow Zopista and Swede Lennart Regebro has written about this as well). This is, by far, the most drastic law in this respect and I’m literally speechless. [...]
Right on, brother! Let’s make a new country. History has shown that such a thing has always turned out to be peaceful… NOT
Btw, I’ve written about this topic as well now: http://philikon.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/the-scandal-isnt-swedish/
Yes and when they’ll realise that terrorist would use cryptography they shall forbid it.
Then discovering steganography they shall forbid images, vidéos and all sort of binary files in mails…
Well, these guys have done this for a long time, and know about cryptograhpy. I don’t think they actually are out for terrorists, or content. I think they just want traffic data that they can exchange for other information with the USA.
They used to have Soviet data in the cold war to do this with, but now they don’ have anything. I bet it makes them feel small and insignificant. Hence this.
I am surprised to hear that this is not already the default case in most countries. Well, at least in Hungary we have a relatively new law that bids all service providers to host a “blackbox” provided by the national security agency. What these boxes actually do is not known, but they have the capability to record and archive any traffic, including email.
I really think that we’ve passed this law by upper pressure, if it was EU or US policy that we needed to follow, I am not sure.
That’s horrible, you don’t even know what our NSA does and listens to. That’s worse than Sweden, in a way. This stuff needs to be stopped before it spreads.
[...] Lennart Regebro também desabafa no blog dele. “I am so amazingly happy that I have moved from that country.” [...]