When Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (Svenska Försvarets radioanstalt – FRA) works with foreign countries, it usually gets something in return. But this is not the case when it cooperates with the US National Security Agency (NSA) in its efforts to gain unauthorized access to computers, said Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who revealed Edward Snowden's leaks this year.

 

"Quite simply, what the Swedes do is target the groups or the individuals that the US tells them to (target), and then hand over the information in bulk," Greenwald said, according to the TT news agency.

 

Sweden has a key role in the US global surveillance programme, he added.

 

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"Sweden is clearly one of the countries that's the closest to the US when it comes to surveillance. The US is truly impressed by the finesse, capacity, and commitment the Swedes show," he said. 

 

In a televised interview with Sveriges Television broadcast on Wednesday, Greenwald said that it is up to the Swedish public if they want to see a change.

 

"I think it’s up to the people of each individual country to ask themselves whether or not they want to live in a society in which their government collects massive amounts of information about them and about other innocent people around the world, in which the internet is no longer this force for democratization and liberalization but instead becomes the most oppressive tool of human control ever known," he said. 

 

"Because the more we do on the internet the more subject to monitoring and control we become, and I think that’s the first thing that has to happen, that people ask themselves democratically how comfortable they are living in a society like that."

 

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