Sweden's bitterly contested "Big Brother" law, allowing the Government to spy on cross-border e-mail traffic, has been passed into law after a late-night session of Parliament.

Rarely have political emotions been so stirred in Sweden, which prides itself on a long tradition of guarding civic liberties and transparent government. Bloggers, newspapers, unionists and even the former head of the country's security police, Anders Eriksson, have taken up arms against the Bill, saying that it did not provide sufficient safeguards against state intrusion.

"This law is fundamentally flawed and needs to be completely rewritten," said Mr Eriksson after the law was passed, "this is not just a matter of including a few checks and balances."

Checks and balances is exactly what the law — dubbed Lex Orwell by the Swedes — was given in order to secure its passage. The centre-right Government faced a humiliating defeat yesterday when at least four members of the ruling coalition threatened to vote against it.

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Instead of an early morning vote, the Bill was diverted at the last minute to the parliamentary defence committee. There, politicians from across the party spectrum agreed on an appendix that will extend parliamentary and judicial control over e-mail and telephone surveillance. It may also define more closely what criteria are to be used when fishing for information about terror or organised crime suspects.

Eventually these promised additions to the Bill satisfied enough members of the governing coalition to secure its passage: 143 votes in favour, 138 votes against. The law will be effective from next January and the appendix will be debated and passed in an autumn session.

If anything the debate is likely to heat up over the coming months as various interest groups — such as internet service providers — try to limit monitoring powers as much as possible. Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, has already warned the Government that it is going too far.

"By introducing these new measures, the Swedish Government is following the examples set by governments ranging from China and Saudi Arabia to the US Government's widely criticised eavesdropping programme, " said Mr Fleischer. "Do Swedish citizens really want their country to have the most aggressive government surveillance laws in Europe?"

The new law is being justified in terms of shielding Sweden from terrorist plotters even though Sweden — unlike neighbouring Denmark — has received few signals that it was being targetted by radical groups. The FRA, the National Defence Radio Establishment, is already authorised to intercept military traffic and it has an international reputation for code-breaking.

Now it will be allowed to control not only international civilian internet traffic but also telephone conversations. The FRA, a civilian agency despite its name, says it is not interested in individual conversations; it will operate on keyword searches.

Critics however say that the pledge to snoop only on cross-border communication is meaningless; in fact it will be able to see almost all domestic traffic. Second, the Government will lean on operators to channel information about their users to the FRA.This could trigger legal action from clients complaining that the confidentiality of their communications has been breached. Third, even the new appendix does not change the fundamental problem: that ordinary people will not have to be criminal suspects before having their communications intercepted.

For Swedes, this is an unprecedented violation of their privacy. " We are going to be among the most advanced in monitoring our citizens, the US included," said Anne Ramberg, the head of the Swedish Bar Association. Voters are also bothered about the huge costs — 100 million euros (£78 million) to expand computer storage facilities —and the creation of what will in effect be a surveillance bureaucracy. The National Post and Telecom Agency says that the costs will be passed on to to telecom operators.

Significantly some of the sternest opposition has come from the Swedish security service, Saepo, and not just former heads such Mr Eriksson. "The Bill is completely foreign to our form of government," said the Saepo legal counsel, Lars-Aake Johansson. The Swedish secret service always had to obtain a court order to justify phone tapping or e-mail intercepts and a case had to be made every time for there being a threat to national security.

Now, even under the terms of the appendix, the listeners from FRA will not have to make individual argument for an intercept and can trawl quite broadly providing that there is an (unspcified) "external threat".

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