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Sweden is on the verge of passing a far-reaching wiretapping program that would greatly expand the government’s spying capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country.

So far, hacks from the mainstream Swedish press seem to be on holiday, so news about the proposed law is woefully hard to come by. That leaves us turning to this summary from the decidedly left-leaning Swedish Pirate Party for details. We’d prefer to rely on a more neutral group, but that wasn’t possible this time. According to them, here’s a broad outline:

The En anpassad försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet bill (which loosely translates to “a better adapted military intelligence gathering”) gives Sweden’s National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) direct access to the traffic passing through its borders. Now remember, we’re talking about the internet, which frequently routes packets though multiple geographically dispersed hops before they reach their final destination.

This all but guarantees that emails and voice over IP (VoIP) calls between Swedes will routinely be siphoned into a massive monitoring machine. And we wouldn’t be surprised if traffic between parties with no tie to the country regularly passes through Sweden’s border as well, and that too would be fair game. (For example, email sent from a BT address in London to Finland is likely to pass through Sweden first.)

[..]

“The funny thing is when asked what do you want to look for, [backers of the bill] don’t really specify what they’re interested in,” he continued. “It’s a very broad bill. They basically can interpret whatever they like.”

I’m sure this will make Sweden a lot safer… right?

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If I needed reassurance that this man is the most formidable force in American politics today, his speech tonight confirmed it. It was shrewd – with an artful positioning on Iraq. It was graceful – with respect for McCain’s service and Clinton’s tenacity. It was brutal – in turning around McCain’s Iraq visit meme to domestic economic woes. It was patriotic – in its evocation of Gettysburg and the Second World War. It was outer-directed: not for Obama the recourse to self-satisfied identity politics of the kind used by the Clintons because they often have nothing else. It was moving. I thought I even saw some suggestions of tears as he remembered his grandmother. It was also rhetorically more powerful than McCain – not by a small amount but by a mile. Put McCain’s speech against Obama’s – and this was a wipe-out. Not a victory. A wipe-out. Rhetorically, they are simply not in the same league. And if the contrast tonight between McCain and Obama holds for the rest of the campaign, McCain is facing a defeat of historic proportions.

One more thing: with McCain’s and Clinton’s speeches, you could not forget the politics of it. With Obama, you forgot about that at times. You actually lifted your eyes a little and believed a little and hoped a little.

Yes, he can. And anyone who under-estimates that will regret it.

Feel free to compare:

Obama:

Clinton:

McCain:

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Internetproviders (ISP’s) moeten een actievere rol spelen in de bestrijding van piraterij van films, muziek en software. Ze kunnen zich niet beroepen op hun vermeende rol als eenvoudig doorgeefluik van informatie.

[..]

Volgens de NVPI zijn maatregelen onontkoombaar geworden. Films, muziek en software zijn online op zo grote schaal ‘gratis’ verkrijgbaar, dat het voor de sector onmogelijk wordt om een legale online markt te ontwikkelen, schrijft de organisatie.

Goh, wat gek dan dat uit ander nieuws van vadaag blijkt dat anderen daar geen moeite mee hebben. Wellicht zijn jullie gewoon te incompetent voor de markt. Misschien dat je dat is moet bekijken voordat je probeert de markt geforceerd naar je hand te zetten.

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THIS horrifying picture shows the moment a US man apparently drunk and asleep ploughed into cyclists on a bike race – killing one and injuring at least 10 others.
Driver Juan Campos, 28, was charged with killing Alejandro Alvarez, 37, along the highway near the US-Mexico border.

Authorities said the wreck happened 15 minutes into the 34km race yesterday between Playa Bagdad and Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

Campos, who police claimed was drunk and asleep during the incident, said he was an American citizen living in Brownsville. The US Consulate could not immediately confirm that.

Thank you, anonymous donor!

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So Clinton, in her speech, once again mentioned the URL of her website, while the URL was all over her podium.

You go to her website, and you’re met with a petition they’re asking visitors to sign:

I’m with you Hillary and I’m proud of everything we are fighting for.

If you “sign” it, does it go to a “thank you” page? Of course not. It goes straight to her contribute page.

Money. That’s why she’s staying in. To squeeze her hardest core supporters of the cash necessary to pay off her personal loans to her campaign.

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When discussing the many adverse effects of religion with a believer, one statement almost inevitably enters the conversation: “Most Christians are good people.” The believer will surely acknowledge that many people have committed awful acts in the name of religion. Perhaps they weren’t “real Christians.” Perhaps they were simply misguided in their actions. Regardless of the reason, they are the exception and certainly not the norm. You might expect that I, as an atheist, must disagree with this statement. However, I do not. Most Christians are good people.

[..]

Unfortunately, the Christian cannot agree that most atheists are good people without adding an important qualifier, at least implicitly. The qualifier is comparative in nature, placing Christians on a pedestal above non-believers and believers from other religious traditions. The atheist may be good, but he/she cannot possibly be as good as the Christian. The atheist or the person from a different religion may be good in some sense, but he/she is still going to hell to be punished for all eternity. The Christian bible is quite clear that persons who do not believe in the Christian god are not equivalent to those who do in many ways. Their fate in the afterlife will be very different.

This is what I mean when I say that religion is inherently divisive.

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NBC News’ Richard Engel, who in April was promoted to chief foreign correspondent, has written a book, released today, about the years he spent reporting in Iraq. The book is titled War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq, and it contains an explosive interview with President Bush. The president makes several controversial, some might say shocking, statements (from Muckraked):

“‘This is the great war of our times. It is going to take forty years,’” [Bush told Engel]. “Bush said in forty years the world would know if the war on terrorism, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, had reduced extremism, helped moderates, and promoted democracy.”

- Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast:

“I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”

Read more from Bush’s interview with Engel here.

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It’s official. Obama has won the Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidency. In response, McCain has launched a “verbal sortie” against him and the media has already begun disecting Hillary’s campaign.

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Bruce Haggard, an election commissioner in Faulkner County, Arkansas, is baffled by a problem that occurred with two voting machines in this month’s state primary elections. The machines allocated votes cast in one race to an entirely different race that wasn’t even on the electronic ballot. The problem resulted in the wrong candidate being declared victor in a state House nomination race.

“I don’t understand how it could possibly happen,” Haggard told Threat Level.

Well, Haggard, that’s probably because you’ve been living under a rock the past decade?