Queen of Covert Surveillance Upset Over Covert Surveillance

Following the revelation earlier this week that the U.S. had for more than a decade systematically monitored Norwegian citizens they considered to be potential security risks, it has now been revealed that they have also spied on Swedish residents. Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle and pictured left, said the U.S. activities in Sweden and Norway "seem to be similar" and that "it seems as though we haven't been fully informed and that's not good."

You're quite right, Minister Ask. But whatever the U.S. did or did not do, they limited their monitoring to specific persons of interest. Ask and her cronies fully supported the FRA law, a Swedish law that authorizes the State to wiretap – without a warrant, mind you – all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses the borders of Sweden.

Every single person that lives in Sweden and uses the Internet is being monitored, all the time. Every time you do a search on Google or buy something from Amazon or watch a video on YouTube, or make another blogpost on Blogger, you are being treated by the Swedish government the way the U.S. government treated people they deemed to be threats to national security. To me, that speaks volumes of how little respect Minister Ask and her friends really have for our civil liberties.