The Betrayal on Democracy
–Yesterday I was all worked up about this thing, adrenaline pumping, my veins became bigger, that is I had a lot of things going on in my head at that moment, and I just wanted to spit it all out. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to finish it in time, instead I ended up eating a lot of food and preparing me for yet another monotonous workday. However, I decided that at least I could try to finish the article today, since today is midsummer eve, a terrific Swedish holiday with a lot of early potatoes, herring and booze (well, maybe not for my part, but at least for everyone else).
–So, yesterday (read: “two days ago”) it finally happened, the Swedish parliament decided to betray its people.
–By approving a bill to allow the Swedish military to monitor all telephone calls, text messages, emails and much much more, that crosses the Swedish border, Sweden moved one step closer to becoming a Surveillance Society á 1984. Försvarets Radioanstallt (FRA), roughly translated into the National Defence Radio Establishment, does not need to have a valid reason to monitor ones activities, the bill just allows them to do so if they feel like it. The permission includes all transfer of information, that is, all file-sharing and access to websites included, so if you have accessed this blog from Sweden, you can be sure that FRA already knows about it…
–The reason for the new law is to protect Sweden from “outer threats”. With outer threats means all the terrorists that threatens Sweden. I don’t know with you, but last time i checked the Swedish neutrality have been in effect for at least 200 years, so a terrorist threat seems very unlikely. This morning (In Swedish) the leader of the Center Party got interviewed about the new law in which she ranted a lot about national security and how terrorists might want to attack Swedish infrastructure, important buildings and so on. The best parts is when the interviewer tells her that experts states that the new law won’t have any deterrent effects upon terrorism and she says “well, you could say that” or when she is asked to define the “outer threats” and she answers with, i quote, “major industries and terrorists”.
–The most important constitution of a democratic society is hereby threatened, the freedom of speech. By adopting the FRA-Law all anonymity have been thrown out the window and used to pick up the broken glass. Almost all communication that travels within Sweden today now and then takes an excursion to an adjacent country to improve the transportation speed, which forces all contact with the press to be performed mouth to mouth in order to avoid the bugging of the state.
–And the worst thing yet, it’s not only the military that will be able to access all the information, but also the government and “other authorities”.
–The proposition got approved with only a marginal difference, 143 for, 138 against, 1 abstained, 67 absent. For those of you who’s not familiar with the Swedish political parties we could sum it up by saying that we have two blocks, the right (consisting of four parties, called the alliance and is currently in power) and the left (consisting of three parties now referred to as the opposition). For the law to been overruled only five members of the right wing would have needed to vote against the proposition; however, unfortunately for us only one dared to do so. Some of those who voted for did not do so because they thought it to be right, they thought about their future. By voting against your party’s will you’re immediately going to get ostracised and, furthermore, you’ve lost the trust of your party leader, that is, your political career (in this party) may be over. I’m certain that there are people in our parliament that don’t believe in bugging and monitoring, but they were to afraid to show their true sides; instead they decided to go with the flow and skip all thinking. This produces a problem, by having someone else do the thinking for you you can’t really accomplish anything, and if it’s so you’re especially not fit to become a politician.
–But maybe I’m being too naive, maybe this isn’t such a big deal at all. Why would I feel threatened if the state only wants to protect me? If I commit illegal deeds, then I should be convicted for it, right? The answer is both yes and no, If i perform illegal activities sure I may deserve a punishment, but it is not enough to justify the initiation of a surveillance society, it’s more than enough that you can track someone down by the GPS in their cellphones!
–So what can we do now? There’s currently a lot attempts right now, some more serious than others, to
ravel the new law. If you’re from Sweden, or are familiar with the Swedish language, my best advice would be to read this and this. If we can’t get a change now we will hopefully get it on the 19th of september, 2010. If you’re from some other place, well, then there is not much you can do but sit by and wait. Eventually we will win, there’s only a matter of time.
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