Yesterday, while on a train ride home I got asked on my political views since I am wearing a pirate party keychain.
Well, I explained to him that yes, my vote will go to the pirate party. And the person more or less exploded in my
face demanding to know how I could vote for a “one-issue party”. Well, then came a nice little diatribe about stealing
artists material, freeloader, etc etc etc.
I let him ramble on for a while and simply stated that I couldnt care less
about filesharing. Filesharing is not the reason for me to leave the more
established parties, the issue that I want to adress is the personal integrity
breaches that now occurs daily, that foreign monetary interrests are more
or less able to dictate domestic laws and that the swedish government actually
bends for those demands.
He then pretty much looked like I had hit the back of his head with a board,
completely stunned. It was as if he did not understand what I was saying.
A “pirate” sympathizer who did not want the free, albeit questionable, “right”
to download whatever he wanted from the web.
I gave it a few seconds of thought and formulated the answer like this:
Would you mind if I stopped the mailman before he reached your mailbox,
took your mail, opened it, copied it for future reference and then put it back
in the envelope and slid it inside his mailbox. Of course he was outraged, Noone has the right to read his mail of course. My thoughts around here was “he is taking it, hook line and sinker” so I pressed on.
If you where talking to your wife on the phone, would it be OK for me to have a hidden device and
sit somewhere else just to listen, and to be able to file the entire conversation, no matter what
it was about so it will be stored in some archive just incase you will do something later on?
He started to get confused again, so he told me: Of course not, but what does that have to do
with the pirate party?
I then explained the FRA law, IPRED and ACTA agreements. And of course, he dragged out the 2
arguments that seems to be the last saviour for those defending these idiocies: But what if I dont have
anything to hide? Well.. You wouldnt mind someone videofilming you and your wife then?
My point is, what someone think is private varies, but you have to have a common limit on what
is OK to look at. We have just given the government to treat the entire swedish population as
potential terrorists and now, any communication that is not face to face can be monitored,
dont you see a problem with that.
I could see uncertainty slowly creeping up on this poor man but I had my steamengine puffing now
so I pressed on.
Your kid probably uses facebook, MSN and a wide variety of other social tools, are you OK
with someone knowing all about your daughters/sons conversations online, no matter on how an
embarrasing subject? You know, if I followed you around constantly for a few weeks, always noting
down what you did, you could call me into court and slap a restraining order in my face with ease
and the court would approve, and I am pretty sure that you would, however you have just told
the government that “Hey, its ok, follow me and my family” in the same way, albeit online, and whats
worse, is that its leaning more and more towards that uncontrolled, (or should i say overcontrolled?)
profit organizations will have the exact same permission.
On top of that, BOTH government has promised, word for word, that these new laws will not be used
to persecute young people and alienate the entire youth population, yet, this is exactly what has happened.
They havent “caught” anyone that makes money on filesharing (There still isn’t anything that shows that the
founders of The Pirate Bay” earned their money on filesharing.) And those that HAVE been fined for it
has mostly been students and we all know that students are the same as the rich people… or maybe not.
At this point, I could actually see this man squirming in his seat and then came the surveillance supporters
try at “Ace” card. “Well, it can stop potential terrorists”
Now, I will use a technique that I actually despise myself, one of the ruling techniques so used by Göran Persson,
But do you honestly think that either Blondinbella, Agda at the nursing home, or for that matter will plant a
bomb somewhere and do you seriously think that IF terrorists use the internet for communication, that
will happen through MSN? I dont think so, we are probably talking about 256 bit AES encrypted VPN
tunnels, wich pretty much are impossible to break, and then on top of that, some other type of encryption
just to be on the safe side, and by the time the government has FINALLY cracked the encryptions, the
victims will be buried and the survivors have all recovered as fully as possible, so what good is it?
Ever seen a fish on land? I did yesterday.
It appears that I was talking to a pretty high placed politician in Örebro Län. I wont tell you whom,
but now atleast, I know the ignorance that is displayed by politicians firsthand. Good to know.
Sheesh
