

Dear Prime Minister Cameron - oyvind
http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Dear-Prime-Minister-Cameron--7289954.html

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robotmay
This will hopefully signal a trend of newspapers other than The Guardian
standing up against privacy issues (I've no doubt it's already happening
outside the UK, but there's a language barrier for me in reading them). In the
UK we're pretty much stuffed: most of our papers are owned by powerful people
(i.e. Rupert Murdoch) who pretty much control who stays in power, and they're
likely avoiding talking about it so as to gain favours later on. As far as
I've seen all the other papers are either ignoring the NSA/GCHQ story or
actively attacking The Guardian. I've no doubt that the government will
completely ignore this message, but I'm really grateful to see the issue being
raised outside the UK.

I'm starting to wonder if our only way out of this mess is via EU
intervention. The tories and their supporters will cry foul, but the EU is
supposed to stand for a lot of freedoms and it'd be nice to see it being
enforced. Whether the EU as an entity would stand up to the USA though,
remains to be seen.

~~~
jacquesm
Most EU governments have lots of egg on their face. I don't think the EU as a
whole will do anything. Maybe a couple of individual states but the EU as a
whole? It would surprise me. They should, after all there is the EU DPD which
is violated in just about every way imaginable here.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive)

But I don't think it'll happen.

~~~
14113
The germans are the economic titans of the EU, and from the coverage I've seen
the population (both young _and_ old) have seemed pretty outraged by the NSA
stuff. I don't think this'll translate into EU policy, or even German policy
very quickly, but I do think it'll turn into a lot more support for more
liberal parties, and more anti-American parties, which could swing Germany,
and possibly the EU.

~~~
c1sc0
Don't forget that it's election season over here in Germany. Privacy is a
talking point that resonates well with the population given Germany's not-so-
distant past. It's good to see it on the table, but I'm very skeptical
anything will come of it post-election ...

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parley
I hope this isn't HN karma suicide, but as pleased as I am (as a Swede) that
one of our better newspapers is participating in this, I wish they'd spent the
time to rid it of spelling errors and grammatical errors. I think I can be
excused for mine in a HN comment, but they can't for theirs in a public letter
to the British PM. Other than that, good job.

~~~
gruseom
You Scandinavians have it rough—your English is so often so close to perfect
that the tiny imperfections that remain stand out. [1]

When I studied Russian there was an older student whose mastery of the
language was so brilliant that native speakers assumed he was Russian.
Unfortunately, his 99.9% mastery left room for 0.1% errors, and these were the
kind of errors a native speaker would never make, so they sounded odd to
Russians. Instead of recognizing him as a brilliant student, a lot of people
took him for an illiterate (literally "grammarless") Russian and wrote him off
as an idiot. A foreign accent has its advantages!

[1] In case it's not obvious, this being the internet and all, I'm
complimenting you and I'm envious.

~~~
parley
Thanks. My guess would be that not dubbing TV and movies to our native
languages contributes somewhat. Personally, I just played too much video games
as a kid.

That's an interesting anecdote about near-perfect mastery having downsides! I
can provide a different one but on the same theme. I saw a documentary a while
back in which an immigrant sadly explained that if she made her absolute best
effort to adapt and speak Swedish, she would get really crappy service in
stores and such because of her accent and grammatical errors. If, instead, she
spoke English (which she commanded better) she would get excellent service
from everyone who were more or less racing towards her in order to be polite
and service minded (although that's presumably for mistaking her for a tourist
instead of an immigrant, letting their politics shine through...).

~~~
robotmay
I've wanted to learn a second language for years, and Scandinavian languages
are really interesting to me; the benefit being that Danish/Norse/Swedish all
have a lot of similarities, so it'd help when learning multiple languages. I
also have a lot of interest in the Norse countries as a whole in terms of
history and craft. Unfortunately I find it damn near impossible unless I'm
actually in the country whose language I'm trying to learn. My only hope now,
I suspect, is to find some subtitled English shows (or Scandinavian shows
subtitled in English) on the Swedish TV streaming sites :D

I really do wish other countries would export more of their own language media
to the world. English/American TV shouldn't be so dominant. The only time I
get a chance to watch foreign language TV is usually in hotels, where you can
guarantee there will be German channels!

~~~
Amadou
I think you'll find a bunch of stuff on the pirate bay. Off the top of my head
I can think of these Scandinavian shows and movies that are all at least
decent if not great:

Trollhunter // The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (trilogy) // Let the Right One
In // Cold Prey [Fritt Vilt] (trilogy) // The Bridge [Bron/Broen] 2 seasons //
The Killing [Forbrydelsen] 3 seasons // Kon-Tiki // Dead Snow // Headhunters
// Easy Money [Snabba Cash] // Norwegian Ninja

~~~
robotmay
Thanks for the suggestions! The only problem I have with Scandinavian TV is
that it's -so dark-. Most of those are semi-horror or crime shows, and that's
far from a bad thing but it's hard to watch a lot of it in one sitting :D

And Norwegian Ninja sounds amazing.

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kalms
The version on Politiken:
[http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE2057284/documentation-r...](http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE2057284/documentation-
read-the-open-letter-to-david-cameron-here/)

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riffraff
for people like me who have no idea what this is about, can't really
understand it from TFA, I presume this would be the "events of the last week",
please correct me if I'm wrong

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-security-
sn...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-security-snowden-
britain-idUSBRE97K0G920130821)

~~~
protothomas
That's part of it but mainly this -
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-
greenwald...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-
guardian-partner-detained-heathrow)

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wtil
Nice way to earn some free publicity I suppose.

