Swedish elections are ordinarily staid affairs, but this year's political season has been jolted by charges of computer espionage. The Social

404 Not Found

---

nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) Democrats called in the police last week after declaring that the Liberal Party had hacked into their private computer network 78 times between January and March. The ruling SDP has accused Liberal Party campaigners of illegally obtaining its strategy secrets for the Sept. 17 general elections by accessing an Intranet reserved for SDP leadership.

Prime Minister and leader of the SDP Göran Persson said he was "shocked" by this "serious crime." It was, he said, "as if someone steals the key to your house and rummages through your private belongings." Three Liberal Party officials have been formally charged, while three others, including the influential party secretary Johan Jakobsson, have all resigned.

Strategists for the Liberal Party, which is led by Lars Leijonborg and part of a four-party alliance, have admitted to using advance insight into SDP initiatives to design their policies, but deny having known that the information was obtained illegally. "I was told the SDP would have a senior citizens campaign and that it came from a leak," Barbro Westerholm, a member of the party board, told daily Svenska Dagbladet. "I now understand it was no leak but hacking. I feel deceived."

The revelations came towards the end of what had been an uneventful election campaign, centering on unemployment and welfare. Polls had consistently shown a slight lead to the opposition alliance, but a survey taken partly after the scandal broke indicated that the SDP may now have a small lead.

But the scandal may not be the boon to Persson it appears if it turns voters off. "Some people might think the whole election is nonsense and abstain from voting," says Professor Henrik Oscarsson, a political scientist from the University of Gothenburg. "The SDP will lose out if turnout is low."

• ULLA PLON
• How will the computer hacking scandal affect the upcoming general election?