Filed under: Privacy, Sweden | Tags: Försvarets Radio Anstalt, FRA, Paranoid, Privacy, Swedish Government, Terrorism
For my loyal readers that are not from Sweden, FRA is the government agency that will do the eavesdropping.
As most of you, swedes at least, know it will soon be legal for the government to look at everything that is sent by wire and that is crossing the national border. Everything! The once so free state of Sweden has gone all out Gestapo on us. well maybe that’s a little bit dramatic, but it’s a step in that direction.
Even if this would to keep us safe from all possible threats against us I don’t think the slaughter of the personal integrity would justify it. But if that was the case I could by the argument, but as every one who has thought about this for more than 5 minutes realise that everyone who wants to stay “beneath the radar” will do so with out any problems. The “only” trafic that FRA will be able to see will be the traffic generated from average Joes, that don’t have the knowledge or the will to make sure that no third-party looks at what they’re writing. Luckily one of Sweden’s biggest newspapers posted a list of how to cipher your traffic so that every should know how to do it by now.
The worst part of this mess is that the ones who voted for this law should know that it will be useless against terrorism and everything that they say that they are trying to stop, or they are utterly incompetent. So either the people in charge are will use this law for something else than what they say it’s for or Sweden is run by nimvits. In either case it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
If they really wanted to keep us safe from terrorism and other threats to the nation here are a few tips on what they should do:
1. Start reading all the snailmail, I mean it’s actually possible to send a bomb this way.
2. Cut all connections to the world around us, if we can’t communicate we can’t get the idea to build a bomb, right?
3. Control and censur all media channels, same reason as number 2.
4. Start patrolling the borders, maybe some sneaky terrorist decides to walk across from Norway, Finland or take the boat to our //irony ahead// great country, //end of irony// and we can’t let that happen can we?
5. Ban everything that is explosive and all sharp objects, bye bye soap and fishing hooks.
So now we should be safe, right?
On a last remark I saw this interview with one of the party leaders this morning, and she kept repeating that not everyone in the world is nice and want Sweden well, and that is a good insight. But I can’t understand how she failed to recognize that not all government employees are good and won’t look into things they aren’t supposed to look into. The ultimate irony of all this would be if FRA were infiltrated by a terrorist and they used this system to keep track of the Swedish government.
