Gio Takahashi
06-17-2008, 10:33
When planning the 9/11 attacks, the twenty al-Qaeda members involved referred to the plot as ?The Big Wedding? and to the hijackers as the ?brothers? attending the wedding.
Seven years on from the attacks that killed over 3,000 people in New York and Washington, the Swedish government is ready to present a new surveillance bill to parliament for debate on June 17th that it hopes will help prevent a similar tragedy from happening in Sweden.
A vote on the measure is planned for June 18th.
If passed, the new law will enable Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (F?rsvarets Radioanstalt - FRA) to scan all the outgoing and incoming communication crossing Sweden?s borders.
The legislation will also require all telecom operators in Sweden to bring their systems into line with FRA?s surveillance system.
But is FRA likely to catch any actual terrorists or international criminals in this vast net?
Waheed Mujdeh, a senior Taliban-era official from the Afghan foreign ministry and a long-time acquaintance of Osama bin Laden, tells The Local he is sceptical about the potential efficacy of the Swedish law.
?Why do bin Laden and [his accomplice] al-Zawahiri take the trouble to send tapes to the media rather then call them? They know there are technologies that can trace people?s location and therefore they avoid it,? he explains.
Mujdeh argues that by far the best way to infiltrate terrorist groups and learn about planned activities is to act swiftly on insider tips.
?I have never encountered a situation in which al-Qaeda operatives have planned an attack over the telephone. Even if they did, they would never say it directly. They will always have code words,? he says.
Under the terms of the draft bill, an FRA supercomputer would be able to use a hi-tech key word search system to listen in on a phone call between someone in Sweden and a friend in the Middle East.
The computer could, for example, pick up the mention of a big wedding in Stockholm. If the agency suspects that the call is more sinister than it first appears, FRA would then be in a position to flag the Swede?s telephone number and record all his future calls, as well as any calls coming into Sweden from his Middle Eastern friend.
The new bill would then allow Swedish authorities to be ready to pounce when the Swede?s friend lands at Arlanda airport from the Middle East to attend the wedding.
But opponents of the legislation wonder: how will FRA be able to determine if the planned ?wedding? is the sort with flowers and cake, rather than a cover for death and destruction?
Moreover, what will happen to all the extraneous personal information captured by FRA?s enhanced powers of surveillance?
While FRA says it will destroy any non-essential information it gathers, the promises have done little to allay the fears of the bill's critics.
P?r Str?m, privacy ombudsman at the independent New Welfare Foundation, is enraged by the proposed legislation, which he refers to as ?Lex Orwell? and regards as little more than a tool with which to invade the privacy of the general public.
Continued at Source (http://www.thelocal.se/12370.html)
Seven years on from the attacks that killed over 3,000 people in New York and Washington, the Swedish government is ready to present a new surveillance bill to parliament for debate on June 17th that it hopes will help prevent a similar tragedy from happening in Sweden.
A vote on the measure is planned for June 18th.
If passed, the new law will enable Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (F?rsvarets Radioanstalt - FRA) to scan all the outgoing and incoming communication crossing Sweden?s borders.
The legislation will also require all telecom operators in Sweden to bring their systems into line with FRA?s surveillance system.
But is FRA likely to catch any actual terrorists or international criminals in this vast net?
Waheed Mujdeh, a senior Taliban-era official from the Afghan foreign ministry and a long-time acquaintance of Osama bin Laden, tells The Local he is sceptical about the potential efficacy of the Swedish law.
?Why do bin Laden and [his accomplice] al-Zawahiri take the trouble to send tapes to the media rather then call them? They know there are technologies that can trace people?s location and therefore they avoid it,? he explains.
Mujdeh argues that by far the best way to infiltrate terrorist groups and learn about planned activities is to act swiftly on insider tips.
?I have never encountered a situation in which al-Qaeda operatives have planned an attack over the telephone. Even if they did, they would never say it directly. They will always have code words,? he says.
Under the terms of the draft bill, an FRA supercomputer would be able to use a hi-tech key word search system to listen in on a phone call between someone in Sweden and a friend in the Middle East.
The computer could, for example, pick up the mention of a big wedding in Stockholm. If the agency suspects that the call is more sinister than it first appears, FRA would then be in a position to flag the Swede?s telephone number and record all his future calls, as well as any calls coming into Sweden from his Middle Eastern friend.
The new bill would then allow Swedish authorities to be ready to pounce when the Swede?s friend lands at Arlanda airport from the Middle East to attend the wedding.
But opponents of the legislation wonder: how will FRA be able to determine if the planned ?wedding? is the sort with flowers and cake, rather than a cover for death and destruction?
Moreover, what will happen to all the extraneous personal information captured by FRA?s enhanced powers of surveillance?
While FRA says it will destroy any non-essential information it gathers, the promises have done little to allay the fears of the bill's critics.
P?r Str?m, privacy ombudsman at the independent New Welfare Foundation, is enraged by the proposed legislation, which he refers to as ?Lex Orwell? and regards as little more than a tool with which to invade the privacy of the general public.
Continued at Source (http://www.thelocal.se/12370.html)