PATHETIC LIES ABOUT THE FRA ACT

In a strange twist to the FRA Act aftermath, Sweden's highest military commander, Hakan Syren, suggests that the law helps him and his military commanders predict whether there is a threat to Swedish military cargo airplanes flying missions in Afghanistan. Specifically, General Syren thinks that the FRA wiretapping program in Sweden, directed against Swedes, will help him get to know if anyone is planning to shoot down a Swedish plane with a "missile" in Afghanistan.

For the first time Commander in Chief Hakan Syren comments on the controversial FRA Act. But Syren was careful when he made his remarks on the events around the law [as he appeared on the TV news] on Monday morning. The debate has taken a somewhat unfortunate direction and gotten lost, there is a conflict of interests where on the one hand we need defense intelligence and on the other hand [we want] individual privacy. It has become such a black-and-white issue that we cannot find the answer in one camp, but we need some kind of compromise.

The only compromise is of course one where, as in the USA Patriot Act, there is a court order before any kind of wiretapping can be allowed - meaning that the police (not the military intelligence) has to have probable cause before they even begin to listen in to what any particular Swedish citizen or resident is up to.

Right this moment Swedish [military cargo aircraft] are flying missions in Afghanistan and in order to feel confident doing so I need to know what may happen there in the form of missiles and such things.

This is an authentic translation of what he is saying. He needs to blanket wiretap every phone, fax, e-mail and internet account in Sweden in order to know whether or not some terrorist in Afghanistan is going to try to shoot down a Swedish airplane - in Afghanistan.

It is highly unlikely that a Taliban terrorist in Afghanistan, with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his back, would bother to send an e-mail to Sweden before he tried to shoot down a Swedish aircraft in Afghanistan. The idea is so absurd that it does not merit further comment.

Instead, the real question is why Sweden's highest military commander opines on the FRA Act. The only viable explanation is that the government has ordered him out to talk about this in order to ease their own internal tensions. The criticism of the FRA Act internally in the center-right coalition is not going away and it is dawning on prime minister Reinfeldt that he may actually lose the next election over this issue. He is not concerned with the fact that he has created a surveillance system that, in the hands of an unscrupulous administration, would be the perfect instrument for silencing the political opposition and create an open dictatorship.

Reinfeldt is not going to back down here. So the question is what he will do next. He has another big issue ahead of him, even more contentious than the FRA Act, and that is the upcoming re-writing of the Swedish constitution. To change the constitution in Sweden the legislature has to approve the new constitution with a simple majority vote one time before and one time after a general election. That general election is 2010, so a new constitution will be ready in draft form next year.

It is very likely that this new constitution will centralize even more political powers in the hands of the major political parties and reduce even further the influence of the people over their own government. The latest constitutional reform, in the early '90s, put more hurdles and bureaucracy between the people and its government. The FRA Act was another step in the direction of a government detaching itself from the people. The constitutional reform will be a third step, one that is even more likely now that the FRA Act has become law of the land.

The elected officials in the center-right coalition have already swallowed one bitter pill by ending individual privacy with the FRA Act. The next one - an authoritarian constitution - will be far less difficult to swallow.