Sweden's Watergate 179
An anonymous reader writes, "Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party's internal network has been illegally accessed several hundred times over a period of several months. Party treasurer Tommy Ohlstroem describes the incident as "wide-scale and systematic." Computer security company Sentor's investigation has revealed intrusions originating from computers belonging to Sweden's Liberal Party, and with the upcoming election in only two weeks many commentators are already describing this as Sweden's Watergate (Swedish only). An employee of the Young Liberals has admitted to unauthorized access, but a series of mysterious coincidences in the form of exceptionally well timed public announcements by the Liberal Party suggests the involvement of more than one person."
Many misleading statements (Score:5, Informative)
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
There is an election this month in Sweden. The alleged crime was committed last year and until mars this year but not publicly known until now just before the election.
You take your pick of who has done most to use this to win the election.
Re:Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:2, Informative)
Right = anti-immigration, being tough on crime, corporate interests etc. Racism to keep the rabble happy while the rich suck them dry.
Well, that is not exactly true... (Score:5, Informative)
- Social Democrates, pragmatic power party with an emphasis on a large welfare state and a regulated labour market.
- Moderates, previously somewhat conservative that now have triangulated the social democrates more or less totally.
- Peoples Party - Liberals, Social-liberal party that now could be placed to the right of the moderates.
Since there are seven major parties in sweden instead of two large coalitions like in the United States I find it hard to compare them to either the democrats or the republicans. For example it is hard to find any great amount protectionism in any of the parties platforms, but all favour a welfare state with socialized medicine for example. So you are over-simplifying things a bit too much!
Re:Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:3, Informative)
I'm Swedish and I'm pretty leftist, but that is plain FUD.
Anti-immigration and racism:
It holds true to the extreme right-wing parties that are not in the Swedish Riksdag, such as Nationaldemokraterna (openly racist, pseudo-nazi party), Sverigedemokraterna (ultra-nationalists) and such, but not the etablished right-wing parties. If you count HBQT-intolerance (homo/bi/queer/trans) and general bigotism you can put Kristdemokraterna (The Christian Democrats, ultra-conservative) in this group though...
Corporate interests:
That holds true to both sides. The exceptions are Miljöpartiet (The Greens, centre liberals currently allied with the left-wing parties) and Vänsterpartiet (former communist party). The Social Democrats are very much on the right (non-left) side of the scale in regard to corporate interests.
Being touch on crime:
All parties want to be tough on crime, they only differ on what type of crimes to prioritize. The Social Democrats (left, currently the biggest party in Sweden) have (obviously) made filesharing one of their top priorities. As they have shown the last years they also want to abandon our famous open and liberal society by removing our constitutional right to anonymous communication and privacy at home by creating insane surveillance laws allowing the police to bug anyone they like, even if they aren't suspected of a crime. What's even worse is that the right block's minister of justice (if they win the election) is just as bad or worse in this regard... Both sides are sucking Bush's and Blair's asses in the war-against-terrorism-nonsence.
That's why I voted for Piratpartiet [piratpartiet.se] - The Pirate Party, the only party that REALLY care about your freedom of speech, freedom of expression, your right to privacy and will fight against patents and reform the copyright law to make it reasonable for both customers and authors. (no, lifetime + 70 years isn't reasonable. ~20 years after release is reasonable.)
Re:Well, that is not exactly true... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A bit OT, but since we're on the Swedish electi (Score:3, Informative)
While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates ;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the June-list. The first one was formed as a response to a percieved lack of feministic issues being discussed in the national theatre (I'm a rabid feminist, it's an extremely important issue for me, but unfortunatly, the leaders if FI are, well, insane). The second one, Juni-listan (the June-list), was a party that was formed at the last swedish referendum (whether we should join the European Monatery Union and start using the Euro) as a rabid anti-EU party. Both are now trying to get into the parliament. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, but the Pirate Party has unfortunatly no chance of getting any seats. I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
It happened in the US, too (Score:1, Informative)
So you just had to double the amount? (Score:1, Informative)
Wrong. Actually, most news sources says it was 78 times during january, february and march. They also say there were more logins than those 78. Anyway, how would you know the exact amount?
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
Wrong. As of now, two people in LUF has already confessed involvement, and the newspaper Dagens Industri says they'll name another person involved tomorrow, and that she's in the innermost circle of the Liberal Party. And there's more! Several members of the liberal party actually tried to log on with their own names(!)
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
Wrong. No claim has been made to an attack like the one describe.
Instead, the local social-democratic department in question uses a wireless network, and a representative said someone probably sniffed it. The Liberal Party claims a member of the social-democratic youth organization gave them the passwords.
Either way, it's true that using passwords like that is insecure. But it's even more true that taking advantage of it like these liberals did is unethical. I'd prefer someone technically-impaired before someone ethically-impaired any day.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
Wrong. See 2. And it isn't a website, it's a FirstClass system.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
I admit this is worth mentioning if it is true. I've followed this thing quite closely though and you're the first to claim it. This wouldn't surprise me, but considering the rest of your post consisting mostly of unique claims and biased nonsense, I wouldn't trust you for anything.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
Partly true. They say they've suspected it for some time. They hired an investigator (Sentor) wednesday last week, the investigation was finished sunday afternoon, and they held the press conference a few hours later, at midnight.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
True, but pointless. The election is the 17th, not the 7th. If they wanted it to have the biggest possible impact, one would think they'd keep it a secret for more than just a few hours. That way they could've dropped the bomb much closer to the election. Now, it might just as well hurt the social-democratic party, because of exactly the point you're trying to make -- people will think that they're just taking advantage of this to win the election. This is probably why they chose not to "come to any political conclusions from this, but wait for the police investigation to finish". And at least this first day, the only parties to speak out on the matter has been the Liberals and the Conservatives ("Moderates"). The social democrats seem wise enough to shut up and let people think for themselves, for once.
(btw, what happened to 8? you got that one before me?)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
-1 Off-topic. So what? If you're going to try to change the outcome of the Swedish election