A million times "no!"

You are of course familiar with the UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights.. but just as a quick reminder, amongst other things it says…

…Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world….

Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

and...
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

The proposed “FRA law” in Sweden will mean all traffic in cables crossing the border will be copied and then monitored electronically. Traffic matching specific filter parameters will be inspected by FRA staff. Copying and electronically monitoring all traffic are both surely arbitrary interferences in privacy and correspondence?

In Sweden monitoring of an individuals communications is permissible only following a court decision proving evidence of criminal activity. Ingvar Åkesson, FRA’s director, in a reply to a newspaper article by a member of parliament suggests that automatically monitoring all my traffic without first proving the need before a court is OK, because they are not involved in looking for criminal activity (it is only surveillance) and they are going to do it to everyone - and anyway Swedes don't need to worry because they're mainly interested in looking at foreigners.

I’m sorry, but infringing my right to privacy without grounds is not acceptable.. and doing it simultaneously to millions of others does not make it more acceptable. Nor does the fact that you don’t catch anything in your filters worth investigating make it acceptable to monitor me just on the off-chance. That you choose to do this to foreigners over whom you have no legal jurisdiction cannot make it better - that's the kind of thinking that leads to Guantanamo...

Bearing in mind that this law will affect millions of people that don’t live in Sweden and are not Swedish I would just like to stress that last part.

“Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

Ingvar Åkesson.. that includes you!