Even though General-director of FRA has pointed out its impossible, the afghan defense is still used to try and convince the public that the FRA needs a copy of all digital traffic crossing the borders of Sweden. One of the latest proponents to get a letter to the press published is the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces Håkan Syrén. Apparently Swedish C-130’s operating in Afghanistan need the FRA to keep themselves safe from SAM’s and what not. Now to be fair, our Supreme Commander could be interpreted to be saying, he needs the FRA, not necessarily, the new law. And true, there are reasons to moth ball all of FRA, their systematic disregard for Swedish law being one of them. But this is still only secondary to stopping them from copying and filtering all Swedish Internet traffic. So unless Mr Syrén wants to step up and enter the debate for real, he should keep his tidbits of “wisdom” to himself.
Rumors are 80% of Russia’s Internet traffic passes through Sweden. So you can see the great importance of this new law…. Maybe I should stop talking to my friend from Russia. He’s actually trained by their intelligence offices as some sort of network admin…. But then again I have one friend who works as a security guard at a Finnish airport, another one who works as a security guard at a Swedish air port. Yet another friend who has a masters in chemistry, and one who did his conscription tour in the military as a programmer, and several who worked with different kinds of explosives. I know this guy who works as a chef at a consulate, and I recently applied for a job at a nuclear power plant. How many terrorist plots can you make of that?
While summers in Sweden, and probably most other countries means news drought, this summer has the FRA debate, and sadly for our government it just wont die. Specially troublesome this week I think since it saw the opening of the annual Politics week in Almedalen on Gotland. Reports are that around every corner there is someone asking someone else about this new law. It’s also reported that theres a lot more talks on the FRA issue going on behind the scenes. Its the hottest topic bar none, but the right wing parties are doing their best to gracefully dodge the issue.
Of note is when Maud Olofsson, leader of the Centre party shot herself in the foot claiming that there are no laws in Sweden protecting civil liberties. Mrs Olofsson is apparently unaware of the Swedish constitution. We already knew our prime minister hasn’t read it when he claimed all power emanates from the government. The club just keeps on growing.
The Purple Flagship 