I hope Google move their servers outside of Sweden, encrypt the connection to Gmail, so that Swedish people can continue to exercise their rights under the EU privacy directive and protect themselves from warrantless surveillance by the Swedish military.

Moreover I hope no data from anyone else in the EU is placed in Sweden where the Swedish military can take a look, sans warrant, because that would be a violation of other EU citizens privacy right.

I hope that ISPs in neighbouring countries make a point of routing around Sweden, because to expose their customers traffic to surveillance, they also expose themselves to lawsuits.

It's a pity that Sweden should depart from the norm of EU privacy, but the Nazi's in Germany and the Defence dept in Sweden and the UK with it's 42 day mini-guantanmo law are thankfully the exception in Europe.

I guess this would apply to US residents only, since if the 'merkins gave the same right to privacy to non-US residents, they wouldn't be allowed to play with my PNR?

"... putting penalties in place to punish and dissuade bad actors."

oh please, don't make me laugh...

I have nothing against google, i use their services privately. (in moderation)

but anyone foolish enough to use all their nice "free" services for business has got to rethink that.

most business and some private data that is given to google through these free office apps et al should /never/ be given out so freely. do people not realize that they are not incidentally showing their goods to some philantropic org but rather throwing their goods into a system set up /specifically/ to trawl the intartubes for usable data to sell advertising?

el chopper negro because google has a fleet of them...

Maybe this is only in the U.S., but https://mail.google.com looks like it works. Granted, this is only half of your problem.

Wait - Sweden has a military?

Mine's the one hunched over, making a run for Finland.

That has to be the most amusing one by Google.

You would think they would be paying for that information, but no, instead they make it out as a service for the website. Whilst you get a little demographic data, they get the bigger picture.

Now what you can derive from this bigger picture has never really been known, but it could mean that you could spot trends for investment just before they happen, and well ahead of any public media, and if that accuracy is close to say 90% then google will eventually take over the world :)

It is just a thought, but they can see how people are using the web in moments, and they didn't pay anyone for it, they just offer a little service. Most government websites are using urchin tracker, it is bizarre have they not heard of server logs, though urchin does give them a slightly wider picture, it is our privacy that is being traded, and for nothing really.