It’s been almost two weeks since the controversial surveillance law that would let FRA (Försvarets Radioanstalt/The Defence Radio Establishment) the right to mass-bug all cable transmitted communication was voted through by the Swedish parliament. The storm of protests disappeared as fast as it appeared only a few days before the election in the parliament. Two weeks ago this law proposal was on everyone’s mind and today it seems forgotten by most people. The newspapers don’t write about it anymore and in IT-related newspapers you see articles like how will it affect you and what can you do about it instead of how do we get rid of this law once and for all.

So, how will it afftect me? You may think that since you’re sending an e-mail to your friend in Sweden you’re traffic doesn’t leave Sweden, but it’s not like that. I for one is a customer to Bredbandsbolaget one of the more popular ISP’s in Sweden. Not very long ago Bredbandsbolaget was bought by Telenor and since then all traffic is routed though Norway.

A traceroute to SUNET’s (Swedish University Network) website www.sunet.se reviles that the traffic is passing the boarders at two times to get to it’s destination.

[root@lust ~]# traceroute www.sunet.se
traceroute to www.sunet.se (130.239.8.25), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  * * *
2  195.54.119.229 (195.54.119.229)  18.998 ms  18.929 ms  19.341 ms
3  ti3109a211-pc3.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.201)  20.212 ms  20.388 ms  20.059 ms
4  ti3109a210-vlan2.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.197)  20.175 ms  19.612 ms  19.711 ms
5  ti3097a210-pc4.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.193)  20.430 ms  20.000 ms  20.206 ms
6  ti3097d320-ge2-0-0.ti.telenor.net (146.172.91.245)  19.638 ms  19.459 ms  20.439 ms
7  * * *
8  ti3002b300-ae0-0.ti.telenor.net (146.172.105.94)  19.573 ms  19.163 ms  19.397 ms
9  c2sth-ge-4-2-3.sunet.se (130.242.94.217)  19.678 ms  20.434 ms  20.148 ms
10  a1sth-ae5.sunet.se (130.242.82.210)  19.905 ms  19.264 ms  19.660 ms
11  umu-g.sunet.se (193.11.0.226)  29.557 ms  29.569 ms  29.250 ms
12  adm-te.gw.umu.se (130.239.0.209)  29.346 ms  29.409 ms  29.824 ms
13  mit-sr01-te.gw.umu.se (130.239.0.162)  29.210 ms  29.048 ms  29.487 ms
14  wsunet.umdc.umu.se (130.239.8.25)  30.004 ms  29.986 ms  29.559 ms

The network 146.172.x.x is based in Norway which means that between jump 2 and 3 my traffic is passing the boarder to Norway and between 8 and 9 it’s passing the boarder again on it’s was back to Sweden.

Same goes for one of my favorite websites Linuxportalen:

[root@lust ~]# traceroute www.linuxportalen.se
traceroute to www.linuxportalen.se (213.180.84.59), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  * * *
2  195.54.119.229 (195.54.119.229)  19.488 ms  19.045 ms  19.421 ms
3  ti3109a211-pc3.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.201)  19.956 ms  20.362 ms  20.386 ms
4  ti3109a210-vlan2.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.197)  20.192 ms  19.875 ms  20.164 ms
5  ti3097a210-pc4.ti.telenor.net (146.172.74.193)  20.482 ms  22.322 ms  25.670 ms
6  ti3097d320-ge2-0-0.ti.telenor.net (146.172.91.245)  19.819 ms  19.875 ms  19.223 ms
7  * * *
8  ti3001b300-ae1-0.ti.telenor.net (146.172.105.26)  19.846 ms  34.587 ms  20.670 ms
9  fre-peer1-link.se.telia.net (217.209.228.145)  20.170 ms  19.764 ms  20.224 ms
10  hy-c5-link.se.telia.net (81.228.75.146)  21.508 ms  20.470 ms  20.195 ms
11  vs-b-c5-link.se.telia.net (81.228.72.46)  22.092 ms  21.957 ms  34.464 ms
12  oer3-c1-link.se.telia.net (81.228.79.231)  28.085 ms  27.607 ms  27.532 ms
13  ks-d4-link.se.telia.net (81.228.72.183)  30.503 ms  30.215 ms  30.423 ms
14  incitus-tic-114561.k.se.telia.net (195.67.200.34)  30.585 ms  30.244 ms  30.273 ms
15  213.180.69.37 (213.180.69.37)  30.511 ms  30.898 ms  30.312 ms
16  vz-0012.s.ipeer.se (213.180.84.9)  32.688 ms  31.229 ms  31.296 ms
17  linuxportalen.se (213.180.84.59)  31.519 ms  31.273 ms  31.012 ms

These two examples of traffic passing the boarder twice even though it’s destination is within the country is no special cases, all traffic in this network is routed though Oslo, Norway. That’s why I’m taking a stand and switch ISP to one who cares about my personal integrity, Bahnhof.

“Bahnhof vägrar följa FRA-lagen” – Bahnhof 2008-06-16

Today is a sad day in Swedish history, with 143 against 138 votes in the parliament the controversial law about bugging everyone in Sweden was forced through. Despite heavy protests and demonstrations from the people the parliament decided to vote through a law that are violating the constitution at several points and the European Convention of Human Rights.

You’ve already read my opinions on this matter so I leave it to that…

Early this day when the controversial law that would enable FRA (Försvarets Radioanstalt/National Defence Radio Establishment) to bug every telephone call and Internet activity cross-border the newspapers are predicting the law proposal to go through in the election. Unfortunately the most enthusiastic person in the parliament against the law seems to have given up and in the evening he made a statement that he would accept the law if some changes were made.

These changes included that Datainspektionen (The Swedish Data Inspection Board) will review FRAs work until 2011 and a committee of people from the parliament to controll FRAs activities from outside. Both Datainspektionen and the committee will be working out of a personal integrity perspective. At this point it seems like these small changes will make bugging of everyone in Sweden a reality even though it’s still not sure that this law is supported by the constitution or the European Convension of Human Rights.

The people have spoken on this matter, there are hundreds of blogs out there bringing up the subject and I still haven’t found anyone that speaks for the law. It’s been awfully quite around this law proposal up until a few days ago when blogs discussing the subject begun to pop up everywhere and in a matter of a day this law proposal went from coldest cold to super hot and every newspaper wrote about it of the front page. Earlier today I heard that Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter both had 13 (thirteen!) articles about the law proposal and FRA.

What would have happend if all these people didn’t write about it on there blogs? Would the newspapers even write about it so everyone could know what was going on? This law was supposed to be quietly forced through without to much attention ’cause they knew the people wouldn’t approve. Take a stand for the people and protect the legal security and personal integrity by voting against this law proposal.