The past few years has seen a development that may look like the tables have turned completely with respect for the law. The people who are upholding the law and guaranteeing our fundamental rights are hunted activists. They are defending our law-written rights against none other than law enforcement. Who’s the police these days, anyway, and who’s the crook?
In June the Swedish parliament passed a controversial surveillance law that gives authorities a mandate to read all email and listen in on all phone calls without warrant or court order. In response to the law, The Pirate Party organized rallies, bloggers and journalists turned into activists, and even Google decided to relocate their servers.
In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.
Despite public protests both online and on the streets of Stockholm, the Swedish parliament has voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor web traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders or similar authorization.
The Pirate Bay likes to get involved in Swedish politics every now and then, to stand up for their rights and those of others. Today they take a stand against a new law proposal that would make it possible for the government to track phone calls, emails and everything else people do on the Internet.
The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage
Yeah I have to admit, we are awesome… In fact, TorrentFreak is so great that we...
The popular cyberlocker Filecrop decided to disable access to all porn on its site. An interesting...
Two weeks ago the Court of The Hague ordered several ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing...
The Internet is a scary place for kids, but luckily there’s censorship. In the UK mobile...
After the historic protests in January SOPA and PIPA were ‘shelved’. In a keynote speech at...
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world's most visited...
Last month it became apparent that not all VPN providers live up to their marketing after...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...