After weeks of small articles in the middle of the newspapers, the major media in Sweden has finally started reacting to what's happening in Sweden right now.

In short, the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt - FRA) has proposed a modernisation of the Swedish laws on tapping communication to include e-mail, fax and SMS. The word is that they will only controll communication that passes the Swedish border.

That sounds all sweet and dandy but as all computer nerds know, just because you're e-mailing to another Swedish address doesn't mean the message stays within the country, it's very likely it will make a trip through servers standing in another country (there are cases when e-mail has made a trip around the globe before reaching destination). And then we have all swedes with an e-mail account at Google (gmail), Microsoft (hotmail) and other foreign e-mail services, they will automatically be part of the flow that gets filtered.

A lot of people have reacted and there are a number of sites and lists where this is discussed, protest signature are collected and so on. Some polititians are hard pressed to follow party lines (and vote for the law) on one hand and their voters (who have protested the law) on the other. I feel for them, mostly with pity, and I hope they will have the courage to make the right choice!

In the mean time, should this law come through and get implemented, I'm making myself ready to make FRA's job as hard as possible, by strongly encrypting my e-mail if possible (hey, you, if you're a known recipient, get yourself a PGP or X.509 key and cert and gimme the public part, mmm'kay?), include random words or randomly encrypted strings to trigger their machinery, and generally be as much a pain in the nether regions as possible. As far as I know, I won't be alone doing this.

Links to articles and discussions:

http://www.stoppafralagen.nu/
http://www.thelocal.se/12428/20080613/ (for english speakers) http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2502&a=794124
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article2692498.ab
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/1.1200063/080616-stoppa-fra-lagen
http://www.expressen.se/debatt/1.1200067/fra-lagen-hindrar-fria-forskningen (shows how the proposed law can inhibit research)
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_1369317.svd

Let's just hope this law doesn't come through...

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