Rick Falkvinge, pirate

After wiretapping, a national DNA register

As reported in geek press everywhere, the administration bought out the few resisting legislators at the last minute, and the general wiretapping law was passed with a 143-to-138 vote.

What made me proud, though, was that the normally shy and inhibited Swedes had taken their clenched fists out of their pockets. 2,000 people — enough to block the entire building and street — were chanting “STOP THE FRA! STOP THE FRA!” outside of parliament for several hours as the members of parliament arrived in the morning. Police arrived in plenty and were forming barriers for the legislators.

This was an extremely unusual situation in Sweden as it was thoroughly a grassroots campaign, funded by no one and organized by no one — only a “spread the word” campaign.

However, the ink wasn’t dry on the result before the next shock arrived — the administration is now preparing a bill to confiscate the world’s largest scientific DNA register for the police.

Since 1975, every newborn infant in Sweden has had their blood sampled and stored in a huge registry, exclusively for medical research purposes, and particularly for phenylketonuresis (PKU) — hence, the register is called the PKU register. This register is something of a national treasure for medical scientific research. However, by its nature, it is also a DNA register.

The administration just initiated the drafting of a bill to have this entire register confiscated by the police. Everybody below 33 years of age. That would make the Swedish police authorities in possession of the world’s largest DNA database over a civilian population.

What the fuck is going on?