Big Brother Comes to Sweden

New surveillance law has country partying like it's 1984
By Paul Stinson,  Newser User
Posted Jul 13, 2008 1:01 PM CDT
Big Brother Comes to Sweden
Under the anti-terrorist legislative package known as the 'FRA law,' Swedish intelligence will have the right to intercept all foreign cable communication, including emails, telephone calls, faxes and text messages. The measure has drawn firece local reaction and comparisons to the Stasi, East Germany's...   (Shutter Stock)

Don’t believe the hype: “Sweden is no cuddly liberal democracy,” writes Nathalie Rothschild for Spiked, berating her home country for “introducing the most Draconian surveillance law in Europe.” Known as the FRA law but nicknamed "Lex Orwell" by opponents, the legislation gives intelligence agencies the right to intercept all incoming foreign communication. “Emulate Sweden? No thanks.”

Sold as a measure to "map external threats," the legislation, Rothschild argues, is “driven by a sense of paranoia, suspicion, and a desire to rein in people’s liberties just in case.” Designed to fight “an entirely phantom threat to Swedish safety,” the law is “a more explicit version of the illiberal, precaution-obsessed anti-terror laws being instituted in America,” she argues. (More Big Brother stories.)

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