In Saturday, demonstrations were held in four major cities in Sweden to protest against the bill to allow a governmental authority, the FRA, to bug data traffic of any Swedish citizen at will. Surpassing the United States in privacy abolishment, this bill allows the government to spy on any data traffic, including phone calls, SMS, e-mail, web traffic etc.
Demonstrations were held in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Umeå. I participated in the Gothenburg demonstrations that were held at Götaplatsen in central Gothenburg. The Piracy Party, together with the youth organization of the Liberal Party and the youth organization of the Left Party were represented with speakers.
About 200 people showed up, quite a good number given the fact that there was only a few day’s notice. There was quite a diversion in age of the people clad in clothes that said “Piratpartiet”
Many people brought their cameras and took photographs, but almost all of them just stood in the middle of the crowd and shooting photos of the speakers from there.
To take interesting photos of an event like this, remember to walk around the place and look for interesting perspectives! More people than me should have walked up the stairs on the end of the square to get some bird’s perspective photos of the crowd.
Balder Lindegård, Piratpartiet (Pirate Party)
Johanna Nylander, Liberala Ungdomsförbundet (Youth Organization of the Liberal Party)
After all the planned speakers were finished, Balder Lindegård asked if there was anybody else in the crowd who had anything to add. A guy named Thom Kiraly then went up and read an interesting poem about bugging. I liked the last line, it sounded “Listen to the citizens – but do it in the right way!”. (my translation)
In the end, I found the demonstrations a success. A fair number of people showed up, and I think we got the message up. There should have been more banners up, showing who we were and what we wanted. None of the speakers gave concrete examples of what we want to do today, just a lot of talk why this was wrong etc. Media coverage in Gothenburg, was completely absent, but the demonstrations in Malmö were on the Swedish news the same night.