As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce.
Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline?
It's in cases like this that I wish that the EU was something better than what it is. If they want to enforce such federal level supremacy, why let the US pressure individual states?
As another Swede, 100% agree. For another example, look into how Sweden treated Raoul Wallenberg who courageously saved 100 000 Jews in Budapest during WW2. I can highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Wallenberg-Marton/dp/B005X8V19S/
Sweden is great in lots of ways, but that attitude in combination with Sweden's often holier-than-thou attitude towards other countries is really hypocritical.
PS. As an aside, I remember when I studied mathematics in Stockholm a few years ago and there were FRA posters for cryptography internships on the wall. It seemed intriguing, if it wasn't for the employer. DS.
Yes, of course! It reminds me of the times when you criticize something (in this case your country) and the other person replies with "then why don't you go somewhere else?". This portrays an adversarial relationship between the populace and the country, much like a consumer<->business, where you vote with your wallet. But I don't want another country to outcompete Sweden, I want Sweden to be better.
But this does also raise another issue I forgot to touch on: How are we supposed to have a (representative) democracy when we first in 2013 [1] find out what the passing of "FRA-lagen" (proposition 2006/07:63) in 2008 was really about?
Some quick Googling says that Raoul Wallenberg died at the hands of the NKVD and that Sweden had nothing to do with it. What exactly do you think the Swedish government did to Raoul Wallenberg? Where can I find more information on that?
The EU discourse is complicated, but in short: US interests and EU finances do not currently allow Europeans to develop a voice independent of NATO; and without a shared defense policy independent of US, there is little space for a shared foreign policy that can push back on this sort of topics. Ironically, what could change this state of things is the antagonistic US/UK isolationism currently on the rise.
I don't think it's ironic. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Alexandr Dugin (an ultra-right wing thought leader that seems to heavily influence Russian military thinking) explains how to make Russia a superpower once again. Putin is reportedly a big fan.
Dugin outlines a playbook that is chilling in its real world implications today. For example, he advocates propoganda aimed to have Britian leave the EU, the invasion of the Russian speakung parts of Ukraine, US to become anti-immigrant and isolationist and the ceeding of certain islands bacj to Japan to improve Russian relations and weaken Japan's reliance on the US.
I doubt that such cooperation is actually the result of (at least overt) pressure (and couldn't find anything in the article implying it). I think it may be the result of some more subtle mechanisms.
First among them is simply that there's nothing wrong with the data collection in the first place, and that the US/NSA is on your side. I'm rather uninformed about Swedish politics, but a generally positive view of the US is shared almost universally among the European elite. Many have studied in the US, binge-watched The West Wing, or simply see the positive role the US has played in Europe over the last 70 years. The only exceptions I can think of are France and some left-of-left-of-center parties.
Secondly, for someone working on or leading such efforts it's tremendously flattering to be noticed by the NSA. It may seem strange to think such basic emotions could influence policy, but I'm absolutely certain that there are people, from the actual programmers up to and including ministers, who love being invited to whatever the NSA version of WWDC is, and that they can influence policy.
I don't quite understand this lapdog argument. For obvious geopolitical reasons, Russia is an existential threat to Sweden (and Finland, where I'm from, as well as many others of its neighbours) and seeking support from other major powers - the USA, and European integration - is quite natural because USA is not an existential threat to Sweden specifically. (EU is perhaps a little bit more so, particularly with some of the highly idealistic policies it has been up to).
In WW2, what should Sweden have done? Looking from the place that lies between you and Russia, I think the Swedish policy was the wisest it can adopt and it succeeded very well: keep out of the war, keep up the defenses, do not antagonize anyone enough to test those defenses. And I appreciate the support Sweden gave to my country which was actually at war against the clear threat to Sweden, USSR, and and the endgame, against the has-been threat of Germany during Lapland war.
The cablegate diplomatic leaks showed that the relationship between the US government and the Swedish government - regardless of which block is in power - is basically that the US says "Jump!" and the Swedish government asks "How high?".
Zero pushback. There's a huge difference between respecting a larger country and aiming for amicable relations vs. being a complete doormat.
Regarding Sweden and WW II: If Sweden shouldn't have been a "lapdog" -- which side of the war should it have joined? With Norway or with Finland? Not a simple choice, neither now nor at the time.
And regarding USA today:
Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. (Not even USA. :-) ) So it is arguably in the Swedish interest to help all democracies be as strong and informed as ever possible.
That said, I doubt the reason Sweden is such a handmaid to US interests was so philosophical, of course. Every country do realpolitik and lies shamelessly about it. We don't know what the US paid (hopefully not just bribes to Swedish politicians, old hatt/mössa style... :-) ).
Edit: These comments really jumps up/down in votes. :-)
Sweden always claims to be neutral, but the open secret is that Sweden is protected by NATO in case "someone" = Russia invades. Such protection costs, but since it's a secret, there can be no public debate about the price and if it's worth it.
So each elected government gets to negotiate the protection payment themselves, and the whole reason for the FRA law was to legally increase and secure the amount of sigint that could be collected and handed over to the US. The whole public debate over that got really weird, because the executive branch was SUPER INSISTENT that the law got passed, but couldn't argue for it, because the actual reason was secret.
Does covertly overthrowing a democratically elected government, installing a dictator only to later invade count as two democracies going to war? Otherwise it sounds like a very big loophole and one the US uses all of the time.
Uh? What examples [of deposing democracies then invading when the dictator becomes too oppressive] exist after the cold war?
Edit: Point is, there was a war of influence in the cold war; dictators played Soviet/West against each others for support. E.g. South Korea and Taiwan became democratic after the cold war, to not risk being ostracized.
Yeah, even Reagan (Grenada & Panama) and the Bushes (Panama & Iraq) pretty much installed democracies.
The world is slightly different after Kissinger left office (Argentina)... realpolitik is really more of a Euro-Russian thing than a US thing. Although that could change again with the new president.
You mean the US's middle East policy hasn't been driven by realpolitik? That it was idealistic? Why the has the US propped up so many dictatorships? Saudi Arabia?
I think most people believe their own country's propaganda. :-)
In Sweden, since that is the subject, we really used to be naive and trust what we were told.
Some of the typical characteristics you saw, all the way back to before written history, is that we are group oriented and do what we were told. This made for a high trust society, which is probably what made the place work.
But no more, the society elites are really destroying this trust now.
That the democratic world supports Saudi A is an extreme example of realpolitik, of course. We need stability in that part of the world.
>> Bushes (Panama & Iraq) pretty much installed democracies.
I would use the word "democracy" pretty loosely when it comes to Iraq.
A consistent insurgency with widespread sectarian violence and much of the Sunni population not taking part in the elections, it was hardly what anybody would deem a "democracy".
Not to mention banning the Ba'ath party, which, while it had ruled under a dictator, nonetheless had the support of much of the population, who were disenfranchised as a result.
>In June 2003, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority banned the Ba'ath Party, and banned all members of the party's top four tiers from the new government and from public schools and colleges, a move which some criticised for blocking too many experienced people from participating in the new government. Thousands were removed from their positions, including doctors, professors, school teachers and bureaucrats. Many teachers lost their jobs, causing protests and demonstrations at schools and universities.
A revolution is scary, the dice are thrown in the air and you have no clue how they fall. It didn't go well in Libya, so far.
But mainly Putin and his employees seem to think that it was bad to support an uprising to get rid of the previous junta in Libya (and they are probably mostly upset because Gadaffi was a good customer).
And about Syria -- how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians have the Assad regime bombed/tortured/etc to death?! That ought to weigh heavily on Obama in the history books.
(Regarding Iraq, I do believe in that it was an honest attempt, but of course it is hard to go to a functional democracy in half a generation. The spectacular failure was extreme, of course...)
Revolutions are reasonably predictable, after all, history rhymes.
From my point of view I would agree that Libya was better off with Gaddafi. Gaddafi was negotiating a surrender with free elections but Hillary Clinton blocked it because she wanted him dead and needed to boost her foreign policy resume. She then bragged about it afterwards. Libya is unlikely to recover in a meaningful way for the duration of the modern islamic uprising - which will be a very long time.
Syria was, is, going to be a massacre either way. We are much much better off to have Assad winning. Obama's support of Al Nusra / ISIS in their fight against Syria / Russia resulted in much greater destruction, suffering and loss of life that what would have happened without Obamas help.
Why the US is pushing so hard for an economic war / proxy war / shooting war with Russia is pretty complex and out of scope for this response. But as Noam Chomsky would say; modern states maintain power either by force or by propaganda. As a democracy we get the propaganda.
To round it out; Iraq was created by the British with the intent of making an easy to control failed state. Hence why their borders make no sense. The British have a long tradition of this and are very good at it. The fact that Iraq failed and keeps failing should be of no surprise to anyone.
I have clearly done none of what you accuse me of. I have never said, or even implied, that Russia is an innocent party. Nor have I suggested that US blunders excuse Russian war crimes.
I consider Russia to be an oppressive, dysfunctional, dictatorial regime. It's citizens are drinking themselves to death with depression.
I am more critical of US policies for the same reason George Orwell focused his writing to be critical of the left; obvious fascism is obvious. You are probably already aware of it so there is little point in me reminding you. Perhaps I could have done a better job in letting you know that I know about Russia and Syrias shortcomings. I assumed that would have been self evident.
I'm an America loving American and consider my belief system to be a mix of Noam Chompsky, Christopher Hitchens, Ron Paul, Bertrand Russell, and Nigel Farage... which is eclectic to say the least
That was yet another long list of extreme claims without references!
Edit: No references in the answer to this, as expected. (I can only blame myself for arguing with what looks like an extra account created to troll people someone don't agree with.)
(At least about modern, mainly international, politics -- what the Brits did before WWII seems quite irrelevant to anything by now.
Edit: WWII started almost 80 years ago for <vulgarity>'s sake, there is some time limit when even people in the Middle East have to stop blaming GB...)
The idea that British pre WWII history is irrelevant betrays your ignorance. Considering that Britain is the most recent world power to collapse, there is much that can be learned from them.
Also consider that we are entering a time that is quite similar to the pre-WWII era. For example; the modern hate speech laws being used against nationalist are making the nationalist more popular not less. This is basically a repeat as to what happened when Weimar Republic (Germany) used similar hate speech laws to jail the Nazis.
Ha ha ha ha, perhaps I have better things to do than provide you with particulars. Especially when my assertions are easily searchable. I'm guessing you're a member of the spoon fed generation.
I comment on topics that interest me and I cycle my account on a regular basis to preserve anonymity - which, for reasons, is important to me.
The idea that time makes someone less deserving of blame is nonsensical. The idea that people should simply get over past wrongs, especially WWII, will only serve to invite repeat abuses.
It is also impractical, as past wrongs are very effective tools for propaganda and thus will be evoked whenever convenient. A good example is China use of the West's involvement in the Opium Wars to stir up anti-western sentiment. Similarly they use the Rape of Nanking to stir up anti-japanese sentiment. This is to lay the groundwork for a future war with the US. These past events are very relevant to our future. And asking them to get over it isn't going to work.
What ought to weigh on your mind and on Obama's are the "many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians" that the "moderate Islamist" we're supporting have killed and tortured.
And do keep in mind that without the interventions in Libya and Syria, Europe would not be dealing with the immigration crisis it's facing now.
To start with, 30% of the 2015 asylum seekers in Sweden were from Syria -- so that is not really the reason for the flood wave. The politicians opened the gates, it was possible to get to West Europe.
The consensus is that the Assad junta is responsible for much more death/torture than even ISIS. They have the ability to use barrel bombs and artillery on civilians.
> Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others.
The Democratic Peace theory has always been bunk: even when it was formulated, for any definition of democracy restrictive enough for the claim "Democracies don't fight wars with each other", the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero.
Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensible than it was previously.
The US went to war with Mexico. Or, more accurately, Mexico went to war with itself, and the US supported the secession bloc well enough to legally adopt it.
Then the US went to war against its own secession immediately afterward.
Mexico, the United States, and the Confederate States are (were) all democratic republics, and their constituent states are all democratic republics.
And does it have to be a shooting war? Because democracies wage economic wars against each other quite frequently.
>> the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero.
There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?
>> Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensible than it was previously.
Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -- and Jugoslavia fell relatively quickly into a civil war. How does that reflect on democracies?
(Are you defining "democracy" as "one free election, no power changes after consecutive free elections is needed"? That is hardly how the term is defined, last I checked either the democracy or the democratic peace theory.)
> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?
There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than the ratio of democracies to countries.
> Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -
Uh, Yugoslavia split from the Soviet bloc in 1948, and Tito died in 1980.
I know a lot of scholars count Serbia as a democracy, but it wasn't until 2001. Milosevic was a classic post-soviet Eastern European autocratic strongman. While Serbia had a parliament, electoral fraud was rife.
Milosevic's popular support was likely around 10% at the end. The country was governed by a weird coalition of financial interests that made up a ruling class of a few tens of thousands of people - many ex-communists.
In terms of success as a kleptocrat, Milosevic is only beaten out by Suharto, Marcos and a small number of others - he likely stole in excess of a billion.
That said - the Balkan wars do present another case of democracy v democracy at war as at some points Croatia and Bosnia (the Muslim canton) were at a state of war yet both were democracies (altho also arguably ruled by strongmen).
AGAIN: You claim that Yugoslavia was democratic before the civil war, since you claim that exact Balkan war (?) is a counterexample to the claim that democracies don't wage war.
How many free elections did they have? :-) How many free transfers of power did they have? :-)
(The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)
EDIT: I am NOT going to comment on Dragonwriter's answer to this and for a THIRD TIME ask for references about how Yugoslavia and Serbia are stable democracies that have been doing transfer of power after free elections AT THAT TIME PERIOD. :-( I am disappointed over a 30+K karma account for this bullshit.
I hope that Sweden got a renewal on its lease on the nuclear umbrella, hopefully long enough to increase its own operative military capability. This would be a win for both the US (capable bilateral partner/buffer zone in area) and Sweden (less likely to be strongarmed into uncomfortable positions). Is that too much to dream of?
I think it serves to remember that even though Sweden is tiny compared to the US and NATO, its capability locally during its prime in the 80s was much more than NATO could bring to that theater.
I find the pressure Sweden was exposed to by the US to ram this legislation through making us literally spy on our neighbors appalling.
Sweden was at the time threatened with being delisted from a US preferential trade list if it did not comply.
As a result of bowing down to the US, Sweden is now complicit in the crimes of the US. The global spying, the drone killings it leads to, the increased pressure Russia finds itself under (and has to act out against).
Russia is getting tonnes of flak for basically doing some hacking. They're just a useful distraction from the massive civil rights violations by the US government now people are starting to become less amenable to the "AGAINST TERRORISM!!!" theme.
It's pretty disheartening to know that the Swedish press won't touch this with a 10-foot pole; they're busy digging/drumming up the "good ole" Russian Scare from the 60s/70s right now amidst the sabre-rattling coming, frankly, largely from the West.
EDIT: The link covers an incident where one of FRA's planes were shot down in 1952. Everything were successfully covered up for more than 50 years, and a lot of the reports are still unavailable. The FRA _really_ likes to not talk about themselves, more so than many other intelligence agencies.
The FRA claims that the now 65 year old reports could still pose a threat to current operations.
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
"Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes under the command of William C. Rogers III. "
I thought we were talking in the context of Russia V west at the moment and examples of aggression (which it's not hard to argue Russia is out of bounds). Your cited incident is truly atrocious and it sounds like the captain was a known tool in the navy too.
Yes. Unfortunately any "team" gets embarrasing supporters. However, both sides (pro/anti) should by now agree on the need to HAVE a military of substantial size. One side, to credibly stay out of NATO. The other, to credibly expect an application be granted.
> However, both sides (pro/anti) should by now agree on the need to HAVE an military of substantial size.
What seems to be happening is that priority is given to projects that benefit certain companies, rather than increasing military capabilities. Investments are made in platforms such as Gripen[1], A26[2], Visby[3], PRIO (licensed SAP system) rather than giving priority to training and maintaining personnel. The mentioned projects are relatively expensive and low volume and there are a lot of people in the armed forces who would rather see the focus shifted from those projects to the armed forces. Unless you're air force or navy and get to play with new toys, I guess. Meanwhile, the army and the amphibious corps are less happy.
It is not likely that we'll see the size needed for quite some time.
This is what is happening. I still hope (maybe in vain) that the rest will ramp up too and that will build political clout for the army and the civil defence that will need to be rebuilt. But it's not surprising that the first initiatives would be money heavy corporate spending. After all, the last couple of decades, "government doing military duties" has increasingly translated to "selling fortifications cheaply and spend time with industry lobbyists". The toys are nice but we need boots on the ground. And civil defence. Do I repeat myself?
Switzerland spends half as much as Sweden on its annual military spending as percentage of GDP (also less in absolute terms), and they can credibly stay out of NATO, so why couldn't Sweden? Geographics? I don't buy it.
Also, if Sweden wanted to join tomorrow morning, they would have the application granted after lunch the same day. NATO has been salivating at the thought for decades now, and considering Sweden's military is already running on NATO standards, its officers take all the NATO courses, and the military partakes in all major NATO war games, it's not ridiculous to say that for all intents and purposes, Sweden is basically already a member, just not officially.
The pro-NATO side's argument tends to be that since Sweden's already basically a member, at least it should have voting rights by the merit of being an official member. That's their top argument IMO.
Joining NATO would be a massive provocation towards Russia that I don't think neither Sweden nor the surrounding nation states would benefit from. I'd rather not choose sides in a Second Cold War, since either side in such a conflict would be rather contemptible. Now, it's pretty clear "we" already did, however.
> Switzerland spends half as much as Sweden on its annual military spending as percentage of GDP (also less in absolute terms), and they can credibly stay out of NATO, so why couldn't Sweden? Geographics? I don't buy it.
I think you should go look at that map again and think about the strategic value of Sweden vs Switzerland.
There are five other countries on the Baltic Sea for whom that is their only ocean access, Russia's northern ports may not be open year round, and their Black Sea ports are behind the straits of Bosporus, Dardanelles, and Gibraltar.
Sweden and Turkey can both make naval operations more difficult and expensive for Russia, particularly those operations it might prefer to keep secret. Switzerland isn't exactly a place you might ordinarily want to go through on your way to somewhere else, unless you really like climbing over mountains (or digging under them). Militarily, it's almost always easier to go around Switzerland than through it. So you would only ever attack Switzerland if they, specifically, had something that you wanted, or were threatening your flanks or rear.
Sweden-Denmark, Egypt, Panama, and Turkey, and to lesser extents, Malaysia, Canada, and Spain-Morocco-Gibraltar all preside over strategic bottlenecks to aquatic vessels. They have huge strategic value.
>> sabre-rattling coming, frankly, largely from the West
Uh, the Western democracies have started to do wars in Europe for territory? :-)
After Soviet fell, the NATO forces (and the neutral countries) in Europe melted away; the US/Canadian units in Germany went home and so on. This changed after Russia started to rebuild and do wars.
Edit: This was about the new "sabre rattling". Long, long after the Balkan horrible tragedies. (And I'd really argue if the "West" rattled any sabers there, but it isn't relevant anyway.)
FRA made a deal with an entity called Krigsarkivet, a Swedish national archive for military history, to store data they collect in and around Sweden. For like, future research. Naturally they couldn't store this data within the Krigsarkivet's existing archives, so K had to open an archive on FRA's premises. Because this was for future research, the deal was that they were, you know, just to store the data and be done with it. Of course, that's not what happened at all. Instead, they're actively maintaining the archive, meaning that they're effectively using the "for future research" K archive as their own XKeyScore.
The most interesting point to me here is the Carl Bildt Internet freedom part.
> When Bildt was asked at a forum on Internet freedom in 2013 how he reconciled these two views, he explained that Sweden was doing surveillance for a good purpose. “There is a difference between good states and somewhat less good states,” he said.
I guess the new C-Lion1 cable is the reason why Finland is now changing legalization to allow monitoring, intelligence, snooping, espionage and offensive action. Basically looking to have NSA like capabilities legally and hack anyone anywhere, just as US does.
Weekly magazines often appear in doctors offices and in mailboxes of consumer home subscriptions many days before their ascribed "newstand date." (newsweek, time magazine, national geographic, the economist... )
Note the qualifier "ISSUE," which would hint that it's not a daily.
For weeklies, editors probably have their print runs prepped for the publishers a few weeks in advance, with some variable slots left ambiguous for flexibility, in case they want to pre-empt a soft story with significant breaking news.
This piece doesn't seem to be a run up of current events, like the latest Trump tweets or whatever active shooter incident du jour. It's really a research piece that probably took several months to compile, edit and sweeten. Figure the broad strokes and the idea of the article were crafted over the summer, maybe.
Don't they have any editors? "Over the following weeks and months, Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s global surveillance efforts, and in particular its bulk data collection program, called PRISM," has been known to be wrong for a few years now. This calls the rest of the reporting into question.
Pretty much everybody in Silicon Valley knows how wrong Snowden was about PRISM. Unlike The Guardian, The New York Times interviewed actual engineers and got the story correct from the very beginning.
In particular, the information is collected by the FBI and is not bulk collection of all their data but targeted Section 702 collection of certain users' data, as I said above.
I don't understand why you're being downvoted, considering this one fact:
PRISM was ran on a budget of $200,000/year.
This may be enough money to put together and maintain a sad-looking web portal that lets you make requests for user data against Google, Apple, and Yahoo's legal compliance departments.
This is by no means enough to do bulk data collection for billions of users. (That was the domain of the other hundred-odd programs that the NSA runs.)
Or, perhaps, we could apply Occam's razor, and assume that they don't have a single program (With no documentation besides 15 power-point slides) that mass-slurps all user information from 12 major IT companies...
And instead, attribute that 50 billion budget to the other hundred-odd projects, all of which are targeted (This one attacks Google, this one attacks Apple, this one hosts >50% of TOR relays in the United States...)
Edit: The PRISM slides themselves. [1] Ah - I was wrong by 2 orders of magnitude - it's 20M/year. Still chump change, compared to how much a broad surveillance project for all these companies would cost.
Look at slide #7. It describes what PRISM does. Interfacing with APGOFAMS is a tiny portion of it. Given how government works, it's unsurprising that the vast majority of that $20 million/year is poured into the bottomless pit of middle managers who live in the upper part of the chart.
As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce.
Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline?
It's in cases like this that I wish that the EU was something better than what it is. If they want to enforce such federal level supremacy, why let the US pressure individual states?