Author: HAX

Henrik “HAX” Alexandersson is a Swedish writer, thinker and political evangelist. Between 2009 and 2014 he worked in the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party.

A never ending struggle

For some days I have been a complete political news junkie–as the latest Swedish government just went down in flames. Looking forward, naturally I have some general preferences about who should rule my country. (Even if a lame duck administration as the present one isn’t all that bad. Hopefully it will not be able to do a lot of stupid stuff.)

But when it comes to some of my favourite issues, I’m frustrated.

We have the centre-right parties (in power until September 2014)–being really bad on surveillance, ignorant at best when it comes to data protection and in the grip of the copyright industry.

Then we have the socdem-greens (that, in practice, fell from power yesterday). The Social Democrats are just as bad as the centre-right people in these matters. And the Greens are selling out on the same issues, just for the grandeur of being in government. (Come on, give the Ring back to the nice Mr. Frodo.)

The third group (causing most of the stir) are some nationalist, xenophobic and semi-populists. Again, they are just as bad. (I guess that they haven’t realised that they are a given target for government surveillance.) And in general they are occupied with nostalgia rather than issues concerning the future.

Finally we have the Pirate Party, not even in the Swedish parliament with only 0.43 per cent of the votes in the latest elections. (So I guess the general population doesn’t bother about these issues either…)

Still, the surveillance issues are important–and rather pressing. What the government does in the EU is important as we are in the process of hammering-out new European data protection rules. And an European copyright reform.

In the bigger picture a free and open Internet is essential for democracy, culture, business, science and education. Yet, in Sweden 99,57 per cent of the votes are casted on political parties more or less uninterested, ignorant or plain evil when it comes to Internet and surveillance matters.

And it seems that Sweden isn’t unique. The picture is the same in most countries.

In dark moments I think this might be just as well. There are no guarantees that politicians will do the right thing, even if they are interested. So it might be better to trust spontaneous order, peoples creativity, the market and net freedom activists to be one step ahead and to raise objections if politicians go wrong.

The problem is, politicians go wrong about the Internet, surveillance, data protection, copyright and civil liberties all the time. The fact that they are uninterested or ignorant doesn’t stop them. In most cases they just rubber stamp papers that government officials hand them, anyway. Politics is in the equation, like it or not.

So we need to apply a constant external pressure on politics. To show the way, to campaign and to hit politicians and government officials hard when they do something stupid or dangerous.

It’s a never ending struggle.

/ HAX

The new dissidents

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is stuck in Russia, only being able to reach out to the world by video link. The same goes for Wikileaks Julian Assange, in limbo at Ecuadors embassy in London. Journalist and web activist Barret Brown spends his time in custody, waiting to be sentenced after looking too close into outsourcing of US national security matters.

This is in a way better for the US government than just throwing people in jail.

If you compare this to the case of whistleblower Chelsea Manning–her 35 year prison sentence for exposing the truth is clearly a stain on US reputation.

It’s more convenient for government to corner trouble makers elsewhere in the world or to constrain their actions with seemingly endless legal proceedings. It might not silence them–but it will hamper their work seriously. And you can (normally) do this without enraging human rights activists, hacktivists, the media and the general public too much.

It all bears a chilling resemblance to the way the Soviets treated many of their dissidents during the Cold War.

/ HAX

Sanctuary for Snowden

In Sweden tomorrow Monday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden will receive yet another award: The Right Livelihood Prize (a.k.a. the alternative Nobel Prize).

The outgoing (center–right) government bluntly stopped the prize ceremony from being held at the Swedish Foreign Office.

And when a Swedish green member of parliament today suggested asylum for Snowden the new (socdem–green) government went notably blank.

Considering the close ties between Swedish FRA and its US counterpart NSA, Sweden might not be the best option for Snowden anyhow. But it is interesting what a hot potato the Snowden affair is, regardless the political colour of government.

When it comes to the wider question of the future for Edward Snowden–it’s a disgrace that no western country is willing to provide a safe haven.

The reason Snowden is stuck in Russia is because the US has revoked his passport and all European liberal democracies have closed the door in his face. It’s not a free choice–but because of us and our elected political leaders.

Doctorow: The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing

I’m out travelling for a few days. Here, to give you something to chew on meanwhile…

Cory Doctorow: The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing–at Talks @ Google.

This video is not new, but it might be one of the most thought-provoking, interesting and important talks on tomorrows computing. (Youtube»)

One day, Bitcoins might save the world

Bitcoins, Blockchains and crypto currencies still are something new for most people. Bitcoins might be quicker and cheaper to use than banks and credit cards. But it will take some time before they are used in Mr Smiths everyday life.

Still, Mr Smith will be very lucky to have the Bitcoin option–some day.

The US Dollar might be strengthening for the moment. But the underlying problems with the US economy are still there. It’s not in balance. And the system as such is not a sound free, self-regulating market.

In Europe, with its common currency, it’s even worse. The ECB is kicking the can down the road, trying to stay clear from new difficulties. But the system–binding the value of money in disconnected economies to each other–is doomed. This will cause new crises until the day EU manage to centralise all economic power to Brussels and Frankfurt. And then, that centralisation will kill off the economy.

The Russian Rubel is weakening. And it’s very difficult to predict where the Chinese economy is going.

Gold might be an alternative. But it has to be traded, stored and eventually turned into some fiat currency anyhow.

Then we have Bitcoin: A virtual currency with a relatively controlled expansion of its volume. Without government interference. And, in many ways, more secure than state fiat money.

It doesn’t have to be a doomsday scenario. It doesn’t have to be the obliteration of the dollar or the euro. And it’s not even about the future.

If people in Cyprus would have had their savings in Bitcoins–instead of euros in the bank–it wouldn’t have been possible for the government to partly confiscate them the last time the euro crisis hit the country. If nothing else, people should learn from this that their money are not safe in the bank and that their fiat money is not protected by the state.

When the next crisis hits a currency (and it will happen, over and over again)–Bitcoin might be the only reasonably safe and useful alternative. It might be the only feasible option for most people. It might be what saves us when politicians, bureaucrats and banksters fucks it all up, again.

/ HAX

The Assange case and the deceitful Swedish prosecutor

Today Stockholm’s appeal court has rejected a demand to lift the arrest warrant against Julian Assange. This leaves him in limbo in Ecuador’s London embassy.

There is much to be said about the Swedish case against Assange. (It’s very thin.) One could speculate about the risk of Sweden handing him over to the US. (There might be a risk, but that is also the case in the UK.) But let me focus on something else: The Swedish prosecutor in this case, Marianne Ny.

Ny has stubbornly refused to go to London to interview Assange. She refused to do it when it could have been done at the Swedish embassy. And she refuses to do it now, at the Ecuadorian embassy.

Ny has claimed that prosecutors don’t travel abroad to interview people. She has claimed that it is too expensive. And she has presented the rather odd argument that Assange might not want to answer her questions anyway.

Recently the UK Foreign Office said it would “welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy and would be happy to facilitate such a move”. Link »

And today the Swedish appeal court made a special point about the prosecutors’ failure to examine alternative avenues of investigation. Link »

One could suspect that prosecutor Ny is acting in line with the interest of those who think that the best place to have Julian Assange tucked away is in limbo at the Ecuadorian embassy.

And one thing is for sure: Prosecutor Ny is not telling the truth when she claims that Swedish prosecutors do not go abroad to interview people.

A year and a half ago–when I worked in the European Parliament–I had a Swedish prosecutor, a Swedish police inspector, two members of the Belgian Federal Police and one (rather poor) translator barge into my flat in Brussels. At 7 o’clock in the morning.

The reason was a rather mundane tax dispute between me and Swedish authorities.

They looked around in my apartment (and impounded some letters from the Swedish tax authorities to me!), then invited me to a “voluntary” interview at the Belgian Federal Police headquarters the next day (where I was refused to have a lawyer present).

This clearly demonstrates that Swedish prosecutors happily do go abroad, even for minor cases (especially when it includes visiting an exciting foreign city).

It also demonstrates that Swedish prosecutors do not care care a bit about costs. The price tag for this whole operation, with international police assistance, must have been enormous. And absolutely not proportionate, taking the amount of money in my tax case into consideration. (If they had sent me a letter, I would happily have travelled to Stockholm to meet with them.)

This is how Swedish authorities act in a rather insignificant case about taxes. It makes it even more remarkable that they refuse to move at all–when it comes to an high profile case as that of Julian Assange, with its high level political and geopolitical implications.

Prosecutor Marianne Ny should be removed from the Assange case. (Especially as Chief Prosecutor Eva Finné already dismissed the whole case back in August 2010, before Ny suddenly entered the scene to reopen it.)

/ HAX