by Oscar Swartz

Hello world! (Also published on my Swedish main blog). This may be one of the last messages to be sent from Sweden before the Parliament forces all the big Internet and Telecom providers to send a copy of all their traffic to a state run surveillance central. Without any rational reason for it. Vague arguments about terrorism. Sweden is not faced by such threats and to abolish freedom of communications is not a solution to political problems in other countries.

Swedes will never be able to communicate again without a copy being sent to the state of all the traffic that passes our borders. That is a large part of what we do. Our whole lives are lived on the net today. So the state will have a direct line into our lives.

The Swedish Journalist’s Federation has now called every journalist in the country who can make it to personally turn up at the parliament to beg the MOPs to vote NO! This is an unprecedented manifestation in Sweden.

The law was a sure thing to pass until only a week ago. Bloggers and activists have worked for months against it but mainstream media has not seen the significance of the law until the last week. We, the netizens, have now managed to whip up a firestorm and the law will probably be turned down with a very slim margin althouh 85-90 % of the people are against having their communication copied to the state and are against the law.

The Swedish people is now glued to the TV screens, frighetend by the speeches they hear from half the contry’s politicians.

We are hopeful, since the NO-sayers still stand strong. But they need all support they can get. The Journalist Federation’s manifestation is a last effoert to instill faith in them. The soon-to-be-heroes need all supprt they can get.

UPDATE: The ruling parties, that are supposed to be primarily “liberal” (in a European way), have managed to do cosmetic changes that satisfies some of the fiercest critics who will now vote for a compromise. They did not have the guts to say NO to their own party bosses. The deeply anti-liberal principle stands in the compromise: All our communications will be copied into a state surveillance central.

Full article here…