Via CBC.ca -
The Swedish government proposed a plan Thursday that would give a domestic defence intelligence agency far-reaching powers to monitor e-mail traffic and phone calls crossing the nation's borders, without a court order.
The National Defence Radio Establishment currently has the power to listen in on military communications but needs a court order for any other surveillance.
'They're going from fishing with a hook to fishing with a net.'
—Par Strom, New Welfare Foundation.
The new proposal, which requires parliamentary approval, would allow the agency to use data-mining software to search for sensitive keywords in phone and e-mail communication passing across the country's borders.
"This is about mapping situations so that we in Sweden will be able to fulfil what is one of the most central tasks for a government: protecting the country and its own citizens," Defence Minister Mikael Odenberg said.
Critics say the government's promise to limit the monitoring to international communications will be impossible to enforce.
"They're going from fishing with a hook to fishing with a net," said Par Strom, a spokesman for the New Welfare Foundation, a civil liberties think tank. "We are crossing a very fundamental border."
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Why does this sound so familiar?
Perhaps they should install microphones on the street, collect that information and then data-mine it for security issues.
How do you say "Big Brother" in Swedish again?
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