Northern Lights

• Swedish MEP’s demonstrating honesty and integrity.
• Grass Root Swedish Hackers help to inform and educate politicians.
  
  Part I

As an American living in Europe I am very disappointed to see American political practices invading Europe and hastening the erosion of individual citizen’s rights.

In US political movements it is often common practice to wrap dangerous legislation for the citizenry with emotional wrapping paper. Two examples,

1. Anti unionists created an organization called “National Right to Work Committee” which was primarily a group of anti-unionist business people who work to ensure workers do not organize. The premise being there will be more work for everyone without unions.

2. The Patriot Act played out on American’s fears of terrorism and granted the government unprecedented rights to invade the privacy of its citizens.

The important pattern to recognize is emotional wrapping paper that is covering up laws that reduces citizen’s rights and freedoms.

In the European Parliament Declaration 29 was released with similar American style bravado by Italian MEP Tiziano Motti. The law is wrapped to protect children from pedophiles with emotional language and pictures as the one below.

Smile 29 Website

Buried within Declaration 29 is “ Directive 2006/24/EC”, better known as The Data Retention Directive. The Data Retention Directive is focused on making sure communication providers store most data on their users, meaning the citizens of Europe, for a period of 6 months to 2 years. In other words, the directive supposedly aimed at policing pedophiles grants the EU powers of mass surveillance of its citizens.

Apparently Declaration 29, as of this writing, has received enough signatures by Members of European Parliament (MEP) to move forward, however,  the speed at which these signatures were gained was reduced by heroic actions of the Swedish hacker community and Swedish MEP’s.  

Out of 19 Swedish MEP’s only 1 affirmed Declaration 29. MEP Cecilia Wikström openly admitted she singed Declaration 29 not knowing what it fully meant. She wrote this letter informing her fellow MEP’s of her mistake, the retraction of her signature, and informing her fellow MEP’s not to be fooled as she was.

Christian Engström a member of European Parliament representing the Swedish Pirate Party helped to further inform and educate fellow MEP’s in several rational and well thought out letters such as this one.

Swedish MEP’s have become much more educated after the passing in their home country of their version of the Patriot Act, The FRA Law. The FRA law allows all telephone and internet traffic between Sweden and the rest of the world to be wiretapped by Swedish authorities without a warrant. This FRA law while stripping everyone in Sweden of their privacy is also one of the primary reasons why foreign investors are not attracted to Sweden. I believe in many political camps here in Sweden there has been well warranted feelings of great regret and shame over passing the FRA Law.

In the background, the Swedish MEP’s engaged with several grass roots movements including the long and well established Swedish hacker communities. One Swedish hacker community that played an important part in stimulating dialogue with MEP’s is Telecomix. Telecomix started by developing an etherpad that organized other grass roots movements across Europe in about 24 hours.

What I find was incredibly healthy about the process between the Swedish hacker community and the MEP’s was there were few barriers of separation to opening dialogue. The Swedish hackers approached the MEP’s as people who may have not been aware of the deceptive practices engaged in by sponsors of Declaration 29. On the other hand, credit should be given to Swedish MEP’s that listened and wanted to truly understand the situation. These types of relationships are examples of how democracy should function, but in practice in my home country, America rarely does.

The lesson should serve as a siren call to all European MEP’s to closely examine just what it is they are supporting. The financial crisis we are in right now is largely due to lack of transparency and honesty within financial markets, government, and the traditional media within The United States. If the EU parliament upholds the tactics used by Declaration 29 proponents as acceptable, as reasonable, then our leaders are placing us on the same slippery slope here in Europe the US is already on.

Part II will cover the story in greater depth and will be released later in June.

Follow the Declaration 29 debate via the hashtag #smile29 on Twitter.

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