Talk:FRA law

Relevance of most of the text?
Most of the text of this article, about a law which now has been passed by the Swedish riksdag, consists of various pieces of opinion on the bill from political youth organizations and various companies and websites. It reads very much like a list, the encyclopedic relevance of which must be questioned. This is the problem of writing Wikipedia articles somewhat in the style of campaign blogs (but less POV) - the content easily becomes outdated and less relevant. In a democracy, laws are passed by the legislature where the people's elected representatives vote - and not various youth organisations (which sometimes have very few active members), but still the article is focused on their (stated) opinions. My suggestion: state that the proposal was highly controversial and sparked much debate, that some organisations affiliated with the governmental parties were against it, and cite the voting results. Then ditch everything else which goes through the position of all these organisations. Tomas e (talk) 18:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Although I've written most of the content, I agree. It's too much. But it's all pretty notable, I can't pick what goes and what stays. And creating a subarticle ("Criticism of the FRA law") would just move the problem. However, it is without doubt notable and worthy of inclusion that all riksdag party youth organizations - mind you, including those whose mother parties are in favor of the proposal - are against the proposal, along with many other reputable political and economical forces (Google, Bahnhof, Teliasonera, Journalistförbundet, Advokatsamfundet - the list goes on and on). Plrk (talk) 18:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Seriously, I'd say the protests against the law are more notable than the law itself. Plrk (talk) 18:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

While shorter than when I wrote my comment above, the relevance of what's left isn't that good. "Worries" from the Danish National Church about legislation in Sweden? To me that's a comment that's edited in if you're looking for arguments from one side, irrespective if that side is well informed. Because note: zero content on the explanations from the Swedish Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Director-General of FRA and other people, which have invariably included strong statements that the critics have misunderstood a lot. A clear case of undue weight, which means that I've readded the POV template. For the moment, this article is very substandard in relation to the corresponding sv:FRA-lagen. Tomas e (talk) 08:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Childish nitpicking
Alright, while I'm not a great fan of Aftonbladet and what it stands for, the last piece of text in this article is laughable. "that prioritize gossip, exaggerate recent events and other "junk"...

If it's not a reliable source, just edit away the "facts" presented. A comment like the one above has no place in a dictionary, online or not. Whether people will accept the facts presented by the magazine is up to them, just make a hyperlink to Aftonbladet as the source of the claim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.159.186 (talk) 17:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is factually wrong, inaccurate, not neutral and sources are dead or missing
Sorry to pan whoever is maintaining this, but it has to be said; this article isn't very well written or maintained. You can tell from the opening paragraph alone, this isn't going to be one the most accurate articles on Wikipedia. Quote:

First of all, please note there aren't any working citations supporting this statement. No wonder, since the law does in fact not authorize the FRA to "warrantlessly wiretap all" traffic.

Calling it "warrantless" is factually wrong, because any SIGINT done by the FRA has to be authorized by the The Defense Intelligence Court ("Försvarsunderrättelsedomstolen"), which is a court appointed by the government and is independent of the FRA.

Also, there are obviously laws limiting FRA's intelligence-gathering, something the opening paragraph ignores completely. According to Swedish law, signals intelligence is only permitted in order to assess:


 * 1) external military threats to the country,
 * 2) conditions for Swedish participation in peace support operations and international humanitarian efforts or any threat to the security of national interests in the implementation of such efforts,
 * 3) strategic matters regarding international terrorism or other serious transnational crime that could threaten important national interests,
 * 4) development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, military equipment and items referred to in the law on the control of  dual-use items and technical assistance,
 * 5) serious external threats to the public infrastructure,
 * 6) conflicts abroad with ramifications for international security,
 * 7) foreign intelligence operations against national interests, or
 * 8) a foreign powers' actions or intentions of vital importance to Swedish foreign policy or security and defense policy.

The Defense Intelligence Court have never AFAIK -- and cannot according to the law -- issue a general warrant giving the FRA the authorization to do any and all intelligence gathering they wish. So no, the FRA doesn't wiretap all traffic, as claimed in the opening paragraph. That's another factual error, and a very important one at that.

Additionally, The Defence Intelligence Commission ("Statens inspektion för försvarsunderrättelseverksamheten", or "SIUN" for short) provides oversight of the FRA, making sure it follows court orders issued by the The Defense Intelligence Court, and that all laws and regulations governing the FRA is followed, including privacy laws. However, their job is quickly glanced over in the article, and then immediately dismissed by the following statement:

(Unfortunately, the cited BBC-article says nothing about experts, only critics...)

Whoever wrote this did terrible job, IMO. Actually, considering how many issues this article has, maybe it's worse than that, maybe that person is out to purposely mislead people or use Wikipedia as a campaign tool against the law; something that is not that unreasonable to believe considering this page is also using a flow-chart made by people that publicly campaign "against all SIGINT." The flow-chart is made by Mark Klamberg, who has publicly campaigned against the law, which makes him an unreliable source of information in my eyes.

As for the rest of the article, it's basically just a huge Criticism Section, making the article look extremely lopsided. It's obvious there's a general slant held by the editors against the law, forcing me question the neutrality of the article as a whole.

That's all for now. Feel free to respond. I might come back later with a partial rewrite, but I'm very busy ATM... Gavleson (talk) 01:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * This article has now accordingly been marked as having multiple issues: including a disputed neutrality, citation and reference problems, using unreliable sources, and for having a Criticism or Controversy section that compromises the article's neutral point of view. Gavleson (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite
Just a heads up, I've now started working on a rewrite. Since almost everything in the "Protests and criticism" section is unsourced or has broken links (references 5-31), and nothing has changed, despite me asking for feedback above back in December 2013, I'll probably go ahead and remove everything soon. These are the only things properly referenced, with working links:


 * 7. A poll, 51% of Swedes against the law


 * 25. Jyrki Kasvi stated that telecommunication that goes through Sweden should be encrypted


 * 27. ISP Bahnhof has announced that it has no intention of complying with the law


 * 30. Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, has announced that the site will work against wiretapping


 * 31. Danny O'Brien, from the international internet organization Electronic Frontier Foundation said on his blog...

I don't find any of this particularly noteworthy, except maybe for the poll, and most of the stuff in this section a complete mess anyway, so I see little to no reason for me to try to keep this mess in the article.Gavleson (talk) 03:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Possible merge?
The rewrite is done. I'm pretty content, however, it would make a whole lot of sense to merge this page with the article on FRA, IMO. That article is not that long or extensive, important things are missing, and material is duplicated or overlaps (can't be helped). For example, the oversight of FRA is missing on that page, and that pretty much ties back to the changes in legislation, so it dosn't make a lot of sense keeping it split. At a quick glance, if the duplicated material on that page is removed, the article shouldn't become that much bigger after a merge.

Since I've made myself quite familiar with FRA and the legislation, these past couple of days, it wouldn't be much of a problem fixing this in a heartbeat. Not yet sure how I'm supposed to go about this though. Any suggestions? Anyway, I might come back to this after I read up on things... Gavleson (talk) 10:13, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm formally proposing a merger now... If you have an opinion, please don't post it here, join the discussion on the talk page here. Gavleson (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)