Swedish Parliament passes “Big Brother” surveillance bill

Though there have been conflicting headlines in the paper, it appears that Sweden’s parliament yesterday has indeed voted on a law that legalizes the monitoring of citizens’ phone calls, text messages, e-mails, and Internet use without a court order.

Tech-savvy Swedes have been campaigning against this law for over a year, but it’s only now that the general public have heard about its provisions.

According to ars technica, “a number of small changes have supposedly been made to the bill, critics are still unhappy with its breadth. One Ars reader who alerted us to the situation said, “Democracy has died in Sweden today.”

[ars technica and boingboing]

”

(via textually.org.)

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