Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey

In March, the Swedish minister of Defense, Odenberg, put forward a highly debated proposition for a new law, commonly known as the FRA law. The law includes passages about allowing certain forms of “eavesdropping” on traffic such as e-mails and phone calls. The proposition stated that the material searched through will not be stored and that it will be searched for certain key phrases only.

While Odenberg states that this law is proposed to safeguard the integrity of individuals and that there will be checks to ensure this, critics are less than thrilled.

One blogger is comparing the proposed law to Nazi-Germany and other dictatorships. He suggests that people should send a copy of all their private e-mail correspondence to the Defense ministry, both to prove a point (that is more or less what the law wants to do, in his opinion), which could be a problem for the servers if enough people did it, and to be a nuisance, as the ministry has to save and file all inbound correspondence.

Does this blogger have a point? Well, I think he does. The Nazi-Germany argument is a bit hard for me to relate to, because I deem it pretty unlikely that my e-mail will be read by anyone using it like that, even if similar things have happened before and are happening in other parts of the world. I think that his other reasons are a bit better.

Bottom line is this law is an intrusion in some way. I don’t think it is very likely that any normal person would suffer from the law, other than a feeling of being watched for some. However, I think the argument is a bit backwards: instead of people having to discuss how the law makes them feel violated, I’d like some rock solid proof, or even statistics indicating that the law would actually help.

For catching terrorists, the law is pretty ridiculous. A keyword based system would be extremely easy to fool. A friend of mine occasionally sends e-mails to China. Just replacing words like “orphanage” with “O” does the trick, and the e-mail gets through. I doubt terrorists would be more careless than my friend. And if this is the intended use of the law, catching terrorists, I think it is unethical to put it in force. Clearly the benefits of the law would then by far be outweighed by the possible intrusion into people’s integrity.

Knowing This, Knowing That

Can't help but think, when reading this blog entry, about all the interesting this the US government could do with a list of every perscription drug a person ever bought, apart from what it's actually needed for.

With a Little Help From My ISP

Integrity is an initiative (initiated by Bahnhof) that ISP's and web hotels can be a part of, saying they won't shut down websites or volunteer informations about their customers unless obligated by the law. The initiative has its roots in the declaration of human rights, articles 12 and 19.

Gossip Makes the World Go Around

I watched the movie ‘The Queen’ just the other day. It’s a movie about Queen Elizabeth, and the death of Lady Diana plays a major part in it. One of the first things that pop into my head when I’m thinking about the concept of ‘integrity’ today is therefore the personal life of celebrities. Diana was more closely watched than most celebrities, and definitely more than anyone in Sweden. Pictures and stories about her and many others with her have been in gossip magazines for ages now.

A while back a friend told me about a forum she reads every now and then, a gossip forum about Swedish celebrities. I got the link today so I had a look. Threads you can find there are ‘Who is the financier with the champagne?’ (debating what financier it is who bought a very, very expensive bottle of champagne according to an article in some newspaper), ‘Celebrities you have done drugs with’ and many other similar threads. There are also links to several gossip blogs.

So, what am I trying to say here? It’s basically the same argument that you’ve most likely heard before: is it right to gossip?

From an ethical point of view, you could argue that it is. The gossiper could claim to be a believer in hedonistic utilitarianism: the amount of happiness from the people who enjoy hearing the gossip will be larger than the amount of sadness from the person the gossip is about. Many other people would follow other ethical rules, for example saying that it’s not ok to encourage the paparazzi and that even celebrities need some space. Myself, I read the gossip pages in magazines at times, and I click on links every now and then to pages with gossip. But I can’t say I think that it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, and I beat myself up about it.

On a side note, what I also think is interesting in the case of that forum, is that the people being gossiped about would have a hard time suing someone for libel. First of all, it’s ‘just gossip’. But every now and then, a gossip magazine has to make apologies to celebrities for printing things about them that weren’t really true. On a forum such as this one, that’s still read by a considerable amount of people, it’s much harder to get that apology. There is a law, the ‘BBS law’ (1998:112), which could possibly be applied. It more or less states that the person in charge of an electronic bulletin is responsible for making sure that inappropriate material is removed. This is, however, something that’s first and foremost used in cases of forums distributing child pornography or copyrighted media, not libel. As a result, people can gossip on forums such as this one to their hearts’ content, and can be pretty liberal with the truth. The joys of modern technology.

Oh, and I’m not posting the link to that forum. That’s the least I can do to feel a bit more ethical about this!