Swedish Pirate Party gets two mandates
Yesterday the Swedish Pirate Party got two mandates in the European parliamentary elections, and I wish to extend my congratulations! This is important in the struggle against European censorship, extended copyright laws, software patents, and citizen rights.
Seemingly, the Pirate Party, along with the Green Party, stole most of the young voters from other parties, especially from traditional left-wing parties like the Left Party.
If you know me, you'd know that I'm a stark opposer of the EU. As Norway, where I live, is a member of the EEA, the European Economic Area, we are bound to follow most EU regulations and directives to "harmonize" trade between European countries. My greatest concern regarding the EU is the increasing lack of local democracy, effectively rendering any attempt at bypassing or saying no to certain such directives impossible.
One of the EU directives I fear the most is the data retention directive, allowing warrentless wiretapping of potential criminals. Essentially, the data retention directive means storing and logging all telephone-, text message-, e-mail- and internet communication for a set time, which can be no less than six months. Law enforcers are granted access to this data without any clearance or court warrants.
Georg Apenes, Director of the Norwegian Data Inspectorate, described this fittingly as "conserving vast number of hayballs in the event that there might be a needle in one of them". The required systematization of this data is a direct attack upon citizen rights and our right to be protected from arbitrary exercise of authority from the state, the Rechtsstaat.
My hope is that the Pirate Party will enter European politics as a refreshing and progressive player. It's essential that we openly speak out against these blatant weakenings of our democracy. Additionally, I hope they will generate a new debate, now on European level, about the cause and impact of our current copyright legislation.
That said, it's important to note that the European Union has a severe problem with democratically justifing its legislations, and even its own existence. With an election turn-out of slightly above 43%, the general public does not seem to care about the EU, even though some of Europe's most important agreements are made there. This is worrying, although it's even more worrying that the Pirate Party seems to want to cling tightly to power in the EU instead of challenging and questioning its power.
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