The Day Freedom Went Away

The Swedish Riksdag just voted through a proposal to implement extensive monitoring of all Swedish emails, SMS messages and phone calls that cross Swedish borders. A new supercomputer has already been bought (even before the proposal was voted upon) which will be used to search the massive volumes of data collected.


The proposal met almost unanimous resistance amongst our national media and the Swedish blogosphere. There were demonstrations outside of the Riksdag for several days. Yet, our liberal majority pushed through. Can you believe that? The liberals voted this through, while the socialists voted against (the socialists were the ones who came up with the proposal in the first place, but later abandoned it)!

It makes me sad to see the Western World betraying its fundamental ideas to protect itself against the (illusory) threat of terrorism. In the process of trying to protect what is valuable in our societies, we are destroying the very same values.

But, who is surprised? Nobody should be. The logic of any living organism is that it wants to live, grow and avoid death. Any organization aims to stay alive, hopefully grow and definitely not die. Give the same organism access to unlimited amounts of food, endless regenerative capacities and it will just continue to grow, forever.

Organizations also behave according to the same rules as living organisms. My prediction is this; governments with taxing rights will inevitably expand, unless or until an external threat destroys them.