THE LOCAL: With just a week to go before the Swedish parliament is expected to pass a controversial wiretapping law, Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge urges people to do all they can to block the legislation.
On June 17th the Swedish parliament is set to vote on the introduction of a new "signal surveillance" law.
What the law means is that all telephone and internet operators will be forced to attach a large cable to the state's supercomputer, where the state will be able to keep a record of everything said in telephone conversations, surfed on the web or written on the internet.
The law can best be described by the more explanatory term "general surveillance". Instead of just criminal suspects having their phones tapped, now everyone will be tapped via their phones, emails, web surfing, faxes etc.
But the state won't keep a record of everything. First it will scan all phone calls, emails and so on, in real time. Anything that is "considered interesting" on the basis of 250,000 search criteria, will be saved for further investigation.
All our phone calls, emails and surfing habits will be observed by Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt - FRA), which is why the proposed legislation is known as the "FRA law". Sweden's New Wiretapping Law 'Much Worse Than the Stasi' >>> | June 10, 2008
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