by: Tom Corelis
Yar! Pirates takes a shot at Sweden’s shiny new wiretapping laws
A new, recently-approved Swedish wiretapping law angered The Pirate Bay earlier this week, and the site’s administrators have decided to fight back. The Pirate Bay administrator Peter “brokep” Sunde, writing in his blog, announced that the site will be adding SSL encryption to its list of features for all visitors, and a VPN-tunnel system for Swedish visitors that will soon be rolled out worldwide.
More importantly, however, is The Pirate Bay’s attempt to organize a global internet ban against Sweden.
“Yes, that’s right!” wrote Sunde. “We want Sweden to be banned from the Internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers’ integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”
The law in question, approved by Swedish parliament on June 19, allows the FRA (National Defense Radio Agency, In English) to monitor all national phone, e-mail, and web traffic for the purposes of National Security. The bill was passed by a narrow majority – 143 to 138 with 1 abstaining – and became law despite heavy criticism by journalists, bloggers, lawyers, and the Swedish intelligence agency.
“We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law,” wrote Sunde. Speaking in an interview with TorrentFreak, Sunde noted that “we have many aces up our sleeves and we’re gonna use them. No worries.”
“Trust me, this war is not lost,” said Sunde.
“Democracy is reliant on the transparency of power, not the transparency of citizens,” said Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, speaking in an interview with The Local earlier this month. “All places where the opposite has been the case - where it has been impossible to examine the powers that be, while citizens lack any right to a private life - have been really nasty places to live.”
