Two not-so-nice highlights of my RSS feeds:

First, from Edent (via BoingBoing) that got stuck in a “stop and search” checkpoint (video in both links):

A Londoner was stopped by a London Transport Police officer under S.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and had the presence of mind to whip out his video camera and record the officers tearing through his stuff. They officers admitted that they had no suspicion of him, no reason to search him and told him he’d be arrested if he refused. [...]

So that is what you do in a democratic country. Nice.

And second, from Emily Feder at Alternet that got detained by US DHS returning from Libya:

[...] No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility. [...]

Lovely. Just lovely. It’s a good thing they’re safe from terrorists now though…

*shrug*

From IPTegrity.com and Monica Horten (via HAX (Swedish)):

Annexe 1, Point 19 amendment to the Authorisation Directive has been deleted and replaced with an alternative text, that paves the way for ISP filtering at the framework level of EU law.

Annexe 1, Point 19 of the Authorisation Directive was an amendment which meant that EU governments could place copyright enforcement as a term of doing business for ISPs. In principle, it’s a good thing that it has been deleted. What I am concerned about, is the possible interpretation of the text that has replaced it.

The deletion was voted through by the Industry, Research and Energy committee (ITRE) on July 7th. In its place, there is a new text, which refers to another amendment - Article 8 - point 4 - g. This amendment refers (via another linked amendment) to co-operation between ISPs and rights-holders. I have now been able to analyse it, and as I suspected, it means more or less the same thing as the original amendment. It just says it in a roundabout way, instead of saying it directly, as the original one did.
[...]
This is an appalling way to make laws. Amendments, hidden within a long text on a different piece of policy, suddenly switched at the last minute before a vote, in such a fashion that no-one even knows they are there.

It would be comical, if it wasn’t so serious and if it didn’t mean the difference between a free or a restricted Internet.

Bolded by me, as I kinda recognize this from somewhere else… Oh yeah, it was when the Swedish gov. & Parliament tried to sneak through our massive wiretap law… :/

Are these guys sharing ideas or is it the same coach?

Anyways, in short, some of the effects of this law would be:

* Make it possible (but not mandatory) for member countries to force ISP’s to block filesharers.

* Recommend ISP’s to change their EULA’s to enable arbitrary disconnection of filesharers (without possibilities of appeal)

* This in turn forces ISP’s to monitor all traffic flowing through their network to identify potential filesharers. That is, they’ll be mandated to do surveillance of their customers.

And we’re worried about FRA and government surveillance, imagine this done by a private company with no public scrutiny whatsoever.

I wonder how happy the ISPs will be over having to act as police, prosecutor and judge. It’ll also create some “interesting” legal problems for them.

In the law-text there are also loose formulations that an ISPs customers should only be given access to “lawful content“. This could be interpreted that they are only to give users access to data that is expressively stated as lawful. As HAX notes, this is probably not the politicians intentions but it might be the real effect and then all information on the Internet will have to be classified

Hehe, I’d love to see that database (or even the supercomputer that is going to hold it)

The resistance (Swedish link) is being organized and the Swedish delegate Christofer Fjellner (from the Moderate party) is holding a press conference on the 27th of August in the European Parliament. The Speakers are:

* Jon Karlung, CEO, Bahnhof AB, Sweden
* Niels Huijbregts, Public Affairs, XS4ALL Internet bv, Netherlands
* Monica Horten, University of Westminster, Communications & Media Research Institute, UK
* Eddan Katz/ Gwen Hinze, Electronic Frontier Foundation, USA
* Jeffrey Lawrence, Director Content Policy, Intel Corporation
* Nuria Rodriguez Murillo, Legal Officer BEUC
* Levi Nietvelt, Economic Officer BEUC

Apparently, this conference has not been very popular with the French and some other regulation-happy countries. It is very nice to see a Swedish politician actually stand up for a free internet for a change.

Large portions of this post has been directly translated from HAXs latest blogposts (1|2) in order to spread this information as much as it’s possible.
I hope it’s OK

As an example of the free and diverse nature of the internet the MP3 blog “Meadow Music” has now launched an english version of their site complete with free (free for real, hard links) downloads.

I previously linked to them in this post.

From Meadow Music:

There is no longer any higher authority who decides what music should be presented to the public and how. Those who write the terms of the world of music, are no longer the record companies, the newspapers, the TV channels, the publishers, the radio channels or any other single participant.

Then who does?

Well, it’s you and me, all of us that listen to music, create music, sing, dance and love music. Everyone can be a part of creating the world of music we want, by ourselves or together.

And you just got to love some of the bands presented

The lawyer Robin Lööf has reported the Swedish mass surveillance law to the European Commission.

From TheLocal.se:

Lawyer Robin Lööf believes the law — which allows the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt - FRA) to intercept all calls, emails and phone text messages crossing Swedish borders — to be in clear breach of fundamental rights governing the movement of goods and services in the European Union.

Lööf told Sweriges Radio that if a lawyer who happened to be in another EU country wanted to represent someone in Sweden, then their communication could no longer be considered confidential.

It will be interesting to see how the commission acts on this complaint…

Others writing in english about this here, here and here.

Another rap song about the swedish mass surveillance law and the associated Radio Defense Agency (FRA) has been released freely in the internet tubes.

This time it’s the rapper Promoe (and the band he’s a member of, Looptroop Rockers), and the song’s name is “Den ljusnande FRAmtid” which translates to something like “The brightening future”. Makes more sense in Swedish though

It’s a great song and there are more on Promoe’s Myspace page, and it’s all in english. More general info can be found on Wikipedia.

If you do not have an Myspace account you can download the .mp3 here, from Looptroop Rockers.

Niceness

Yep, just when you thought they could not sink any lower they actually did.

The Prime Minister emerged (!!!) this weekend and stated something like “We need to wiretap all swedes so that we can gain intelligence on what goes on between Russia and Georgia”. More or less anyways…

People are suffering and he’s using them as an empty argument (that can’t stand argumentation for three seconds) for pushing a wiretapping law on local citizens. Yet another WTF-moment for me.

He also discussed the falling economy and gave some teasers on his stimula-packages that would make things much better. Kinda reminds me of N.E.R.D.’s song “Lapdance“:

I’m just straight ill
Ridin’ my motorcycle down the streets
While politicians is soundin’ like strippers to me
They keep sayin’ but I don’t wanna hear it…

Oooh baby you want me?
Oooh baby you want me?
Oooh baby you want me?
Well you can get this lap dance here for free
Now you can get this lap dance here for free
Well you can get this lap dance here for free
Oooh baby you want me?
Now you can get this lap dance here for free

Anyways, it’s time for some “what’s behind it all”-truth from our gov…

Yes, I realize that I sound like a paranoid person, but that’s what they’ve turned me into

Also, I’m having a hard time finding english references to his statements as “The Local” did not mention them. Swedish newspapers has published them and I’ve also watched the live-feed from the speech. If you want the swedish references drop me an e-mail or comment.

UPDATE: Minister of Defense, Sten Tolgfors, appeared on radio this afternoon (SR (Swedish Radio) 11 August 08) and did the same “We need to wiretap all swedes so that we can gain intelligence on what goes on between Russia and Georgia” number. Makes me sick…

I’m getting seriously sick of stuff like this.

WTF people. A former fascist government that controls and censors information. Hrrm… well… maybe not “former”.

And even more tiring than this is seeing them being ridiculed time after time after time. Please realise that you are trying to mess with some of the most skilled service providers in the world (also pictured above). I mean, Latvia or Georgia could not withstand the Russian attacks on their servers, but PRQ has been able to hold the site Kavkaz Center up against the same DDoS attacks.

They are also, besides The Pirate Bay and The Piracy Bureau, hosting Wikileaks and has been able to hold that up under the juridical pressure that has been applied from both governmental and private institutions.

A DNS hack or blocking an IP will not, I repeat, WILL NOT stop The Pirate Bay.

When will “they” learn that information wants to be free? The internet is an extremely free medium and as long as the internet still exists the freedom of information will persist. There’s some logic for you.

And this step, stopping a legal market distribution channel just because it’s also used for supposedly illegal stuff… Well that boggles the mind. The moment that the Swedish government tries to control my media and consumer channels I’m gone. Especially if the government owns the share majority in the country’s largest “legal” ones.

Italy, ACTA, FRA, NSA and royal idiocy… Once again - Where will it stop…

This is old news but I just heard about it, and it’s just sick. Haven’t UK politicians ever read 1984 (by George Orwell)?

They might as well call this system “Automatic Crimethought Detector”. It’s not efficient and has a lot of false positives/negatives that will lead to unnecessary spending on investigating innocent people. My guess is that the system itself is not very cheap and the ROI is probably extremely low.

I agree with the criticism put forth in the article:

For the Conservatives, shadow work and pensions secretary Philip Hammond said Gordon Brown’s obsession with a complex welfare regime was the real reason why so much was lost to fraudsters and cheats.

He said: “This government’s reaction to every problem is yet more Big Brother technology. Given that £2.6bn worth of benefits were overpaid last year alone, it’s disappointing that this re-heated lie detector initiative is the best it can come up with.”

Why do the western communities keep implementing systems that do not belong in an open society? Why? Haven’t we learnt shit from our history and great thinkers? Obviously not.

… and now it’s the government party’s own politicians and youth organizations that’s joining the opposition.

Why o’ why don’t they just let go? External pressure perhaps?

Hrmpf…

The Swedish parliament open on the 16th of September and large-scale protests is being planned by several independent organizations and political parties.

It’ll be interesting to see how this ends as the opposition is very strong. That is, if the Prime- or Defense-minister does not interfere directly (which is STRICTLY forbidden according to Swedish-law) I can’t see any other option than that the law is dropped.

The Government no longer has a majority position in this issue inside the parliament and as such it should be voted down by the opposition and the delegates that has switched opinions about the law.

An IBM press-release announces that they have joined forces with Canonical (Ubuntu), RedHat and SuSe/Novell in order to bring an alternate desktop solution to the market.

From the press-release:

“Citing shifting market forces and the growing demand for economical alternatives to costly Windows and Office-based computers, the four leaders sense an ideal set of circumstances allowing Linux-based desktops to proliferate in the coming year. Linux is far more profitable for a PC vendor and the operating system is better equipped to work with lower cost hardware than new Microsoft technology.”
[...]
“The four leaders are working with their local business partners in markets around the world to build and distribute a pre-loaded PC offering that features IBM’s Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/occs-overview/) including Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony and Lotus Sametime; the Linux operating system of each distributor; and software applications and installation services from the local partners in each market. The final product will be branded by the local IT firms that bring it to market. In addition, customers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators have the choice of developing applications using Lotus Expeditor based on the open source Eclipse programming model.”

This fits in great right now as the economy is turning down and if CTO’s can cut license costs a bit, they will.

In my opinion, this is not one second too late and hopefully this initiative will open companies eyes to the world of Linux and “free” software.

Meanwhile, Microsoft dyes hair orange to cheer SQL Server 2008 release. Good luck with that.