[pp.int.general] Swedish NSA to wiretap all phone network, Internet

[Reinier Bakels]

> This, on contrast, is a bill that introduces wiretapping of ALL
> communication,

If the bill really requires *routine* wiretapping of all telephone and 
Internet communications, that is indeed outrageous. Wouldn't it be possible 
to estimate the amout of data to be saved e.g. from figures of internet 
exchange points. I guess even with todays storage technology huge "disk 
farms" (or the like) will be required. Requiring a lot of electricity: the 
environment will suffer as well. Perhaps the lawmakers are old-fashioned 
people not familiar with modern broadband technology, they may not be aware 
for instance about the amount of data transmitted to your home (1 Gb fiber I 
recall?) for digital high-definition television.
It would be easier to build a reservoir for the full contents of the Baltic 
Sea (21000 cubic kilometres), to be filtered for possible criminal content.
Admittedly, such number games do not address te fundamental issue, but if it 
is infeasible anyway then the desired result may be achieved as well.
For health scans (e.g. for breast cancer) usually a calculation is made 
dividing the cost to scan the total relevant (female) population by the 
prospected number of lives saved. If the cost per saved life is too high, no 
full population scan is made. This may sound harsh towards to the people who 
eventually die because they are not diagnosed in time, but the other side of 
the story is that the (presumably limited!) budget can be used more 
effectively. Incidentally, that is why I believe the police not the provider 
should pay for tapping, else "externalities" occur, and all economists know 
that externalities lead to undesirable behaviour from a social perspective!

Here similar calculations could be made. Then politicians must admit they 
strive for maximum security, not for proportionality. One must accept a 
certain risk ...
reinier