Stop the Tyrant

Jingle.se has published this image in protest against the Swedish minister of justice Thomas Bodström.

In my most humble opinion, this man is the most grave threat against the liberties of ALL EUROPEANS. Bodström was one of the greatest proponents for the data retention directive, and in the local state debate, he has even more wild ideas that would scare any true supporter of liberty and democracy.





Also, in other news, the Swedish goverment is preparing a proposal that will redirect all wire-bound telecommunications that cross the Swedish border to the FRA (the Swedish version of the NSA) head quarter. They in term will filter ALL E-MAIL and other electronic traffic, that is sent abroad, and in this case, abroad is as always defined as not in Sweden, this mean that any messages you send to friends and family in the EU, in Norway, the US, the Japans and other places, will be monitored. Allthough, while the FRA stated that they will delete any love mail caught in the filter, this deletion still relies on the fact that a human operator reads it and decides that it is not a terrorist message.

Time to get serious about encrypting e-mail.

Eat that Tony!

Mr. Blair who placed a lot of presteige in getting an agreement for the Unions budget between 2007 to 2013, have now after he handed over the precidency to Wolfgang Schüssel, received a major setback. The parliament overthrew Tony Blair's budgetary proposal with 541 votes against 56, plus 76 abstentions.

Blair's budget was to cut down Union spendings by 4.13 %, and this in a time of enlargement. The Union will also annex at least two more states during this time frame, maybee more.

The defeat of this budget is a welcome one.

Bibliography
Euronews

DRM, No Thanks!

Everyday, we vote with our money. I usually have this in mind when buying stuff, but not everyone do this. In order to vote with your money, you have to state your reason for not buying the thing, otherwise, the producer will never learn what they did wrong.

Now, this is for the music industry (presently occupied with annihilating themselves): I herby pledge that I will never, ever buy a CD with DRM. Nor will I buy music online with DRM, except if there is a way to disable the DRM without loosing quality in the process.

You can pledge the same here

EP Approves Data Retention

The EP approved the data retention directive, with amendments laid down by EPP and PES. This is a dark day for the Union and the liberty of Europeans. I suggest that all those who voted for these parties will think both once and twice when the next parliamentary election is held.

The directive will call for retention of data under a period between six moths and two years. A monitoring organisation such as this has not been seen since the fall of the Berlin wall.

What is life without liberty I ask. What is the next step in this horrifying spiral? When will people wake up from their dream and finally realise that liberties that we take for granted are being eliminated one by one?

I for one am extremelly displeased with the ongoing development, a sad day indeed.

The Fate of Europe is Decided Today

Today within a few minutes, the parliament will vote about the draconian dataretention directive. Bodström (the Swedish minister of justice) who is one of the brains behind the proposal has whith his accociates in the council made the groupleaders for EPP and PES position them for the proposal. There is a clear oposition against the proposal in the EPP, among others have Charlotte Cedersköld clearly shown her oposition.

It is wrong when the state regulates what data and for how long it is to be stored. Perhaps it is reasonable that the police can query for existing data, but this is not the question treated in this proposal.

The directive that Bodström say that in order to query for the information, the suspected crime has to be valid for an European arrest warrant. Which does not only include serious crimes such as terrorism, murder and trafficing, but also filesharing and other minor offences.

If the parliament opposes the directive, it will be an important point made against the council's undemocratic methods. And if Bodström & co would choose to bypass our elected parliament by screaming out "third pillar", it will be made even more clear that the council lacks in democratic legitimacy and how much the Union's constitution would have been.

In Sweden, the disposal of Bodström must be priorotised, everything else come on second place and I would have made a deal with the devil himself in order to get Bodström, the greatest enemy against liberty in Europe, fired.

Merde!!!

More on the draconian data retention directive planned have surfaced. Apparently the parliamentary committee on civil liberties approved a preliminary version of the comission's directive. The directive after the committee's amendments is certainly better than the horrifying draft directive that the council made available a few months ago; but really, this one is not nice either. But it do give right to compensation for the ISPs, although the compensation will come from taxes, so it's a real waste of tax payers money.

Interesting now, is that the entertainment industry has lobbied the parliement in order to get access to the data that is supposed to help combat terrorism and organised crime. Though, their attempts were luckilly in vain.

I believe that I have stated this before, WE DON'T WANT NO STINKING DATA RETENTION LAW!!!

What should be done is the more sane and sensible things such as making way for a European FBI, simplification on information transfers between law enforcement agencies across Europe. And as far as the traffic data goes, yes, I think it's a good idea to allow access to existing traffic data across borders state borders, but forcing the ISPs to store more and additional data than necessary is despicable. Especially the manner this is introduced and the council's actions so far.


Bibliography

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/25/data_retention/
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39238422,00.htm
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/24/2243246&tid=123&tid=141

Massive Support for the United States of Europe

A poll conducted by this blog have just shown that there is a massive support among the European population for the creation of a federal Europe.

The poll showed that 71.3 % of the European citizens supported the idea of a federal Europe. Only 28.7 % opposed the idea. Among the aliens, i.e. non EU citizens, the support was virtually non existant. 100 % of the non EU-population rejected the idea. While the reason for this is out of the scope of the poll, it is my guess that these people have not seen Europe in its true glory.

Though, it is expected that even these people will change their views on the topic in due time.

ELDR members support the fascist-directive

In Sweden, members from the ELDR and the EPP, have agreed to support the fascist-directive that the Swedish minister of justice, Thomas Bodström (along with his Irish and British counterparts) has been pushing for.

The members of the ELDR and the EPP that I am talking of is the national parties Folkpartiet (ELDR) and Kristdemokraterna (EPP). More specific, the EU-committee of the Swedish parliament discussed the directive and the minister managed to persuade the committee after removing web and chat traffic from the logged data. The two other ELDR and EPP member partys (Centerpartiet and Moderaterna) did not support the directive.

ELDR member Carl B. Hamilton, stated that "as a liberal I have to protect the citizens against stately intrusions into their privacy, but I also have to protect the citizens against terrorists".

That is actually true, but the means that Mr. Hamilton decided to support are not proportional in any way. What would be reasonable and proportional as I see it is for example be to make sure that police from one state can query (through Europol) and receive communications records from another state. Demanding that the data is to be stored for several years is not.

The minister (from the PES party) made a statement about how they wanted to trample on individual privacy for those suspected for involvement in criminality. When a reporter asked him about all the innocents that would be pulled in to this, the minister replied that no one had to worry about intrusions into their privacy unless they are suspected.

Well, of course, no one have to worry a bit because a democratically elected government is inherently good and un-evil. The 1933 elections in Germany proved that without a doubt...

Bibliography
SVT (sv)