Big Brother Comes to Sweden

Don’t believe the hype: “Sweden is no cuddly liberal democracy,” writes Nathalie Rothschild for Spiked, berating her home country for “introducing the most Draconian surveillance law in Europe.” Known as the FRA law but nicknamed "Lex Orwell" by opponents, the legislation gives intelligence agencies the right to intercept all incoming foreign communication. “Emulate Sweden? No thanks.”

Sold as a measure to "map external threats," the legislation, Rothschild argues, is “driven by a sense of paranoia, suspicion, and a desire to rein in people’s liberties just in case.” Designed to fight “an entirely phantom threat to Swedish safety,” the law is “a more explicit version of the illiberal, precaution-obsessed anti-terror laws being instituted in America,” she argues. (More Big Brother stories.)