Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo

The main coverage of this is on my Swedish language blog, but it’s interesting to put here anyway:

I posted yesterday about how Swedish blogger Henrik Alexandersson had been reported by “FRA” (a swedish spying agency) for publishing classified government documents that may have indicated that they had been illegally wiretapping innocent Swedes for the past 12 years at least. The coverage has been picked up by The Register from other sources as well, for the English speaking of you.

After well founded rumours from police sources of an arrest warrant out for mr. Alexandersson, the authorities seem to have backed off for the moment, as they saw the Streisand effect come into full swing – the attempts to censor and silence critics by thinly veiled threats of legal action backfired royally, at this time, by my own count, at least 40 other bloggers have copied the classified documents in question and republished them (including yours truly).

In other words, the attempts to supress free speech in order to cover up possibly illegal government activities didn’t work quite as planned – they roared at one blogger, the whole blogosphere roared back, with some help from the mainstream media and a lot of help from an incensed public opinion.

The republishing of the documents on various blogs became first page news at Dagens Nyheter, Swedens largest morning newspaper among other things.

A list of republishing blogs to-date can be found here on my Swedish language blog.