Pirate Party wins EU seat (maybe two?)

[Sal Atticum]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/07/2044217/Pirate-Party-Wins-At-Least-One-European-Parliament-Seat

The party ran on the platform of being against recent attacks by the Swedish government on internet neutrality and anonymity:

The current Swedish government has rushed through a number of privacy encroaching laws regarding the Internet, which have been deeply unpopular with a large part of the population, and yet have had the support of all the mainstream parties. These have included:

- Unlimited wiretapping with court order of all International data traffic for the intelligence services (and remember that in a country of 9 million, a lot more traffic is international than say in the US - in fact a lot of domestic traffic is routed internationally!)

- Forced data retention laws for ISPs, forcing them to keep information about all incoming/outgoing email as well as TCP connections.

- Laws enacted to help the music/movie industry allowing them to demand ISPs reveal the identity of Internet users with little court oversight.

These things, much more than the takedown of the pirate bay, has influenced people to vote for the Pirate Party, who have presented the only political opposition to them.

In fact, my 58 year old mother just called me to tell me she voted for PP (and I didn't even ask her to). I promise that she has never torrented anything in her life - yet she doesn't like the government spying on her more than anybody else.

Naturally, this has brought a fair number of comments to /.; I wonder how this sort of thing would fly in the US?

[pmp6nl]

Good for them.  Privacy is becoming more and more of an issue, especially with various technologies advancing.  Now do they really need to make all of those changes, who does it benefit and why are they benefiting.  Related, where do we draw the line between public safety and privacy?

[Sal Atticum]

At the risk of bringing wrath down upon me for appealing to authority:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

[pmp6nl]

At the risk of bringing wrath down upon me for appealing to authority:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Exactly!