Making an impression

I guess that as from today I have an official web page. I have had a Swedish version up for some time but now the first version of the full web page is up. I have heard that a web page is a little bit like a house, it is a never ending project. The people I know that owns a house at least confirm the part about a house always being in need of something. So this is a first version of my presence on the Internet and I realise that much improvement can be done. The page is fairly simple, although at this point I am at least prepared to focus on other projects for a while.

Who knows what the next version of the page will look like. www.rasmark.com

Arguments regarding intelligence gathering

Although most of the people in the world are unaware of what the Swedish government are up to I happen to live in Sweden so I take an interest. The quick background story is that the government want all Internet providers to connect their networks to FRA’s computers. The acronym FRA stands for “Försvarets Radio Anstalt”, which translates as something like “The Defence’s Radio Department”. Strangely enough this is a civilian and not a military authority.

Traditionally FRA has been listening to radio communication of military importance but with more and more communication going through cables instead of through the air they are trying to find other tasks to justify their existence.

In line with many other nations that introduced legislation that could be seen as an infringement of personal integrity after 9/11 the Swedish government legislated to “filter” all communication across the nations border. (As I understand it the new law actually says ALL communication and is not specifically about electronic communication.)

Since a lot of domestic communication is likely to pass over the boarders en route to its destination and thus becoming international communication this law leads to a large portion of all the communication being monitored by the government, but that is not the point here.

In the debate one argument for connecting all networks to the governments computers is that it will enable the nation to keep an eye on Russia (in Swedish). Much of the international Russian traffic goes through cables that cross Swedish borders. Recent events confirm that it is a good idea to keep an eye on Russia. But is that what the politicians are really interested in?

It is obvious that a lot of money must be invested in new technology and FRA also wants to increase the number of employees. The exact numbers are not important, numbers can be confusing, ‘a lot’ suffice.

One very important way to get information about another country is to have an efficient embassy in that country, that is one of the reasons countries have embassies.

You would think that if information about Russia really is important than the Swedish embassy in Russia would be able to sustain a qualified staff. Unfortunately this seems not to be the case. Apparently the Swedish embassy in Moscow cannot pay competitive wages for local staff (in Swedish). In comparison with the money the government want to spend on eavesdropping on the Russians this is clearly not a question of a lot of money.

If an argument is to carry any weight it is difficult to use it to defend a big change at a high cost while a small cost to the same goal is simply overlooked. That might make people wonder how much weight the argument really carries.

Strictly speaking this is not a logical fallacy, just because an argument is used to support one thing that you want to do does not imply that something you do not want to do has to be done because the same argument support that as well.

Although it is not a logical fallacy it will weaken the convincing power of the argument when it seems to only be important when it supports something that you want.