FRA ACT OPPOSITION MUST NOT LOSE FOCUS

One of Sweden's largest newspapers, Expressen, published a remarkable op-ed on Sunday. It was written by Stig Bergling, a man who committed high treason against Sweden as a spy for the Soviet Union. For his atrocities against his own country Bergling was given the rank of colonel in KGB - a rank he held while climbing to prominent positions within the Swedish army.

To publish an op-ed by him is to exercise strikingly poor judgment. The only excuse is that Expressen keeps the debate over the FRA Act alive. Today they publish another op-ed, this time by two graduate students from the University of Gothenburg. Unfortunately, their arguments do not render a whole lot of credibility to the opposition to the FRA Act.

It is in a way both frightening and very fortunate that Stig Bergling comes out in the public debate and presents the good old Cold War argument [in favor of the FRA Act]. It is frightening because you could expect that we have learned how an arms race and paranoid international relations produced everything from weapons of mass destruction to terror groups who flourished in, e.g., Afghanistan in the ruins of the showdowns between the superpowers.

Already here the two grad students set the tone for what is to come: a long rant about how we should all just be able to get along. They are using the FRA Act as a vehicle to market their ideas; they are not out to defend individual freedom.

But it is also good that we, through Bergling's arguments, can expose the non-democratic mehcanisms that pave the way for a militaristic aspect of the [FRA] wiretapping [program]. ... Is it even conceivable to have a military defense and intelligence service with democratic oversight, or do we simply have to accept that those are none of the politicians' or the general public's business? From Bergling's viewpoint ... it seems as though strategic arms race thinking supersedes a broader discussion about people's rights and freedoms, as well as [analysis of] the social utility of building a military in the event of war.

Then they go on to make fun of the fact that military facilities, built in the 1950s, were equipped to survive a nuclear attack. A rather cheap point that reveals their true intent: a general critique of armed forces and armed conflict. There is nothing wrong in that, but the FRA Act hardly ties in to this story, especially since Sweden has almost dismantled its entire military over the past 20 years.

It is unfortunate that the FRA Act cause is being hi-jacked in this way by people who want to use it for their own gain, not to gain ground for the cause.