Anna Leach reports:
The icy location is a big advantage for the new data centre that Facebook is planning in the northern Swedish town of Lulea. But while the frigid Arctic winds will fan the servers, it’s the legal climate that could get hot.
A controversial Swedish internet surveillance law passed in 2008 allows the government there to intercept any internet traffic that passes Sweden’s borders with no need for a court warrant. It’s called the FRA law and the Swedes don’t like it, and Google called it “unfit for a Western democracy”. And the rest of Europe could start to get annoyed by it too when that internet traffic includes their Facebook data.
Read more on The Register.
In other coverage of this story, the Associated Press reports:
Jan Fredriksson, a spokesman for Facebook in Sweden, said the company was confident that restrictions on the agency’s surveillance activities would protect the integrity of regular Facebook users.
“This isn’t something that will affect users,” Frediksson said. “Only people who are strongly suspected of terrorism can become subjected to this.”
Just like here? Oh good. Then we can be sure that there will be no abuses of the system, right?
Another day, another pat on my own back that I had the foresight not to sign up for a Facebook account.
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