Solid Block of Ise

(I’m not sure if I’m back to writing or not, but I just can’t hold my anger and frustration about the latest political madness that’s been approved here in Sweden. Beware that there will most likely be plenty of foul language ahead.)

As surely anyone in this country (and even outside of it) knows Sweden yesterday passed the so-called “Lex Orwell” law, aka the FRA-law.

To say that this is stupidity on such a grand scale we’ll need a new tool and unit to measure it is quite an understatement. Personally I feel like I want to go to the swedish parliament and bitch-slap the shit out of every single one of the morons who voted yes for it. I also want to smack the living jeezus out of the wankers who weren’t even there, in this case some 60+ people.

Every single politician except one lone hero followed the party-line of voting for it. This is to all of you who voted yes: YOU SUCK, you’re a bunch of goddamn cowards and are not worthy to smell my shit!

So, why is this law such a bad thing? Well, I’m just going to list the tip of the iceberg here.

* It’s incredibly vague. The law talks about “yttre hot” (Swedish for “outer threats”) but makes only half-assed attempts at defining them. The old boogeyman called terrorism is waved in the face of everyone who doesn’t immediately nod their head off, even though Sweden has never been a target of terrorism. For any swede to think Sweden is a target for terrorism is ridiculous hubris. Sweden is such a neutral country that in comparison Switzerland seem like an extremely opinionated nation.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Do they really think that there’s something like one huge cable going in and out of the country? Go to some lame website like myspace and I guarantee you that the traffic passes in and out of the country through at least seventeen different pipes.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Yes, I know I said it once already, but it’s such a big issue that it deserves to be mentioned twice. Provided this law will be used to track those vaguely defined “outer threats” then the assumption is that terrorists use standard email, never encrypt anything and don’t use any codes at all. Seriously, how much of a failure as a terrorist do you have to be to be dumb enough sending emails with things like “are you going to place the bomb at the presidents car today”? If you did, you wouldn’t last as a terrorist more than five seconds before you accidentally shoot yourself in the face.

Which leads me to…

* Since the threat of terrorism is purely symbolic the only purpose for this constant wiretapping will be to keep track of domestic threats. And since the law is so vaguely formulated you can bet your sweet patootie that everyone with money, power or a government job will want access to the logs and contents. The first ones will of course be the mediamaffia, who will happily corrupt anyone they can in order to keep fighting for their “rights” or some bullshit like that. Not to mention that the anonymity for whistleblowers or informants will be completely gone. No one will ever again question authority, because they can no longer be sure who reads the logs. Additionally, to even mention the phrase that “innocent people will have nothing to hide” is plain idiocy. Even if you’re “innocent” you will change your habits if you know that you’re being supervised. And innocence is highly flexible. Who knows what will be defined as innocent in ten years? What is a minor crime today might be punishable by death in a decade, thanks to the fact that the government can keep constant watch on everyone.

* The fact that this law even passed makes me think that the yes-voters can be classified as one of three kinds of politicians:

1) The coward who doesn’t dare to oppose the party-line.
2) The moron who doesn’t know better.
3) The dangerous one who actually wants to implement a totalitarian state where the citizens are under constant surveillance similar to the former East Germany (DDR). The one who welcomes it, since he or she is safe knowing they’ll be more equal than the rest of us.

So what are my thoughts on all this?

My emotions are quite clear. I think this law is a frontal assault on democracy. While I don’t think that we will live in an Orwellian dystopia within the next week, I am scared that the slow erosion of democracy has started.

My emotion around all this is more Animal Farm than Nineteen-Eighty Four, but the concept is the same. A sham democracy. A faux democracy. A democracy only in name, bolstered by lofty sayings and using television and media to blind the public and keep them sedated.

I’m afraid that Sweden is started down the slippery slope towards a totalitarian government, just like old DDR or various other countries around the world, such as Belarus or even Saudi-Arabia.

License

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Sweden License.