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Sweden's Snoop Law Targets Russia
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 09, 2008 02:42 PM
from the well-then-it's-ok dept.
from the well-then-it's-ok dept.
praps writes "There's been much controversy lately over Sweden's new law which allows the signal intelligence agency (FRA) to monitor all data traffic within the country's borders. The Swedish government has kept curiously quiet about the new law's objectives but sources close to the intelligence community say that Russia is the prime target. '"80 percent of Russia's contacts with large parts of the world travel through cables in Sweden. That is the core of the issue," said one source.'" Related: EuroConcerned writes "Many things are happening in Sweden after the new legislation on wiretapping has been voted.
TorrentFreak has an article on what's going on, including massive protests and Google moving their servers away from the country."
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Sweden On Verge of Passing Sweeping Wiretap Plan 234 comments
An anonymous reader writes "No one seems to have noticed that Sweden is close to passing a far-reaching wiretapping program that would greatly expand the government's spying capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country. If a bill before parliament becomes law, the country's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) will monitor all internet traffic that passes in or out of the country. As the article notes, there's a good chance email traveling from, say, the UK to Finland would be fair game, since it's likely to traverse through Sweden before reaching its final destination. So far, there's been nary a peep from Swedish media about the plan."
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now that's funny (Score:5, Funny)
His email was leaked to the press by another party colleague and Andrén was later heard on a recorded phone-call exclaiming that his secrecy of correspondence had been broken and that it was âoeGestapo methodsâ. Dude, you just voted for a bill that allows all emails to be read and all phone calls to be recorded. Live with it!
I am glad to see their politicians are as inept as my politicians!
Re:now that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking about the same. Personally, I'd want that person removed from his office. He voted quite obviously on a bill he neither read, understood, nor understood the implications thereof. How the fuck does he DARE to vote on it?
Seriously, if politicians had to survive in private business, they'd be fired on the spot.
Parent
Re:now that's funny (Score:5, Informative)
He voted quite obviously on a bill he neither read, understood, nor understood the implications thereof.
He isn't the only one. Another one literally said I like signals intelligence, so although I really don't know anything about this bill, I'll vote Yes.
The stupidity is staggering.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to think that phrase meant something. Then I realized how many completely incompetent people there are in private industry.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but when I decide on something that is against the interests of my employer (remember, politicians are essentially our employees), and when asked why I decided that way my answer is "no idea, I don't have the foggiest about the thingamajig, but it sounded cool", what will my employer do?
solution to these sorts of problems (Score:3, Funny)
My plan to fight this sort of thing:
1. Profit!!!
2. Buy a large island and form a new government on it, which cannot pass any laws without approval by 50% of the public (not 50% of voters but 50% of the island's population) in a vote, which takes place once per year.
3. ???
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That only works as long as you're greater than 50% of the population.
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Re:solution to these sorts of problems (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure how a discussion about how out of touch the politicians who pass laws like this have to be and how full-time professional politicians are bad for society gets modded off-topic, even if it is formatted as a typical joke.
The whole problem with a law like this is that people are getting paid to sit around full-time and think about how to have an impact on the lives of others. Many of the problems in the world are because politicians have too much impact on the daily lives of others. Obstructionism in government preserves the freedom of the people.
Parent
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Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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It's NOT within Sweden's borders (Score:2, Informative)
There is one major fault in the article.
The FRA will only spy on traffic going across Sweden's borders.
NOT on domestic traffic.
Re:It's NOT within Sweden's borders (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the concern in Sweden is about traffic that crosses the borders but which has one endpoint in the country. If you can spy on any traffic crossing the borders, that means that Swedes who communicate internationally or who communicate with other Swedes using international communications infrastructure are just as eligible.
Is there some protection for two Swedes in Sweden who use, for example, Slashdot to communicate?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Is there some protection for two Swedes in Sweden who use, for example, Slashdot to communicate?
Nope, no protection at all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is there some protection for two Swedes in Sweden who use, for example, Slashdot to communicate?
In reality, very unlikely. But politicians usually lack everything but the most superficial understanding of computer and network technology, so they think that such protections will exist just because they wrote them into the law.
Several of them has said that FRA won't snoop on communication between swedes, regardless of whether the traffic crosses a border or even if they use international services like GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. But as anyone with a minimum of knowledge in the field knows, this is impos
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Furthermore, servers are often located all over the world. If you use a chat service of some kind, the information often leaves the area, then returns. Thus, this could be ruled as having been "crossing Swedens borders" but was actually Swedish traffic all along.
I think the overwhelming problems are:
1. Probably not enough oversight to ensure power is not being
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How can they tell the difference in a real-time fashion?
They have what was the #5 of the top known computer clusters in the world.
I think the overwhelming problems are:
The main flaw in the legislation is diverting any and all traffic without explicit court orders targeting specific cases. The rest derive from that.
And I wouldn't say 'arguable' returns, I'd say negative returns. The scheme is trivial to bog down beyond recovery; phrase generators are one thing, a much more useful form of clogging the works w
Re: (Score:2)
And these types are to be distinguished how exactly?
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Since a lot of calls bounce out of the borders and back in, do yuo really see that as effective?
tell it to my butt (Score:2)
The FRA will only spy on traffic going across Sweden's borders.
yea, tell that to Mr Butt, my public relations correspondent. here, just bow your head closer to it ... yea like that ... hey whats that noise ? ooopss. sorry.
How much do you think the US paid for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be a "USA SUCKS" guy (in this case). We obviously have legitimate concerns with Russia and if we aren't doing everything we can to monitor their traffic, we're really screwing up in the intelligence arena (again).
So, if we decided to monitor them, we'd go for the choke point, a place where all the Russian traffic flows, right? Of course Sweeden is a fairly open society (as opposed to ours) and I'm guessing they wouldn't attempt to help us without doing at least the bare minimum "above the covers".
So I suppose I'd be awfully surprised if we weren't behind all this.
Or if you think about it from the other direction--what use would Sweden itself have for intelligence about Russia beyond that of selling/giving it to governments that could do something with it?
Re:How much do you think the US paid for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sweden has always been passing on intelligence to the US. We've lost people to get you the intelligence too [wikipedia.org]. No doubt the laws which forbade FRA from snooping in cables have caused the stream of quality intelligence to the US to dry up, and I'm sure the US put pressure on our officials to get back on track.
That said, I believe this is mostly misdirection, but that's me.
Parent
Better link on the DC-3 incident. (Score:2, Informative)
Can't seem to find a good article on that on wikipedia (which is odd), but here'a decent recap from Report on downed DC-3 complete [www.mil.se].
"The DC-3 took off from Bromma on the morning of 13 June 1952. The National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) had assigned the aircraft to monitor a large Soviet naval exercise.
A few hours after take off, a telegraph operator at Roslagen's wing in Hägernäs received a call from the aircraft. Contact suddenly disappeared and nothing more was heard. The DC-3 had be
Re: (Score:2)
I would.
Simple if most the data flows through those cables then the US would just tap the cable off shore.
Or if possible tap them in Norway or some other NATO country.
Sweden prides it's self on being neutral. Odds are that Sweden want to do this for their own reasons. Sweden has been flying their own Elint aircraft since the 50s. Sweden knows that they have a lot more to fear from Russia than the NATO members but because they are outside of NATO they don't have access to all the NATO Intelligence data.
Re:How much do you think the US paid for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sweden knows that they have a lot more to fear from Russia
There is one reason why I don't really buy the "we need to snoop on Russia" argument: Why on Earth would we (Sweden) be continually reducing our defense forces (as we are) if Russia is so much a threat that we have to pass such a far-reaching wiretapping law to listen on them? It doesn't make sense. I mean, soon the only thing we could do to fend off an attack would be to throw compute nodes from the FRA supercomputer at the invading Russians, but I hardly think that this would stop them.
Parent
Re:How much do you think the US paid for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sweden and Russia are pretty close geographically, last time I checked. I would think that Sweden would have a lot of use for intelligence as it relates to organized crime in Russia, military activities, industrial accidents that might not be reported through more conventional means for some time... Heck, there's a whole host of reasons that a country might want to keep tabs on a neighbor...especially a neighbor that has historically been a little reluctant to share lots of details with the outside world.
Don't forget all of the Russian ddos attacks and botnets [theregister.co.uk].
Re: (Score:2)
And a neighbor who has has a history of military misadventures in Scandinavia.
The current Russian mafia/intelligence/government mash-up in power in Russia is a little scary.
I'd like to believe its just a matter of a little sort-of-useful nationalism to get the country back on track after the fairly rough post-communist era, but part of me also thinks its a government with the guiding spirit of nationalism, the abilities of the KGB/FSA and the morality and tolerance of organized crime.
I know lots of Russians
Re:How much do you think the US paid for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Help the Pirate Party (Score:5, Interesting)
It is so refreshing to see a political party focused on electronic freedom and sane intellectual property laws.
Help the Pirate Party [piratpartiet.se] fight this and other crazy technology laws by donating [piratpartiet.se]
From the Torrentfreak blog: (Score:3, Insightful)
A few things:
Various viral campaigns have flourished along with grassroots activism and The Pirate Party has hauled full sails to catch the wind that will blow them straight into European Parliament during the elections of 2009.
That would be great, but IIRC they were almost ignored at the polls last time...you don't go from a fringe party getting a negligible number of votes to winning an election in just a few years.
Next, we often speculate at what would happen if a populace were to massively protest a government action, and this is an interesting indication that it wouldn't do a thing. There seems to be more protest action on this in Sweden than there has been on the Iraq war and the FISA bill combined in the states, and the politicians aren't going to budge by the looks of it. Quite frightening.
Third, I love the "FRA: STFU GTFO" banner XD
Re:From the Torrentfreak blog: (Score:5, Insightful)
"the politicians aren't going to budge by the looks of it"
This surprises you? The EU Constitution was routinely rejected in Europe, so they call it a treaty to get around that pesky voting thing. Then Ireland's people get to vote on it and reject it, so despite the requirement that it be unanimous, they have no intentions of stopping.
Parent
Re:From the Torrentfreak blog: (Score:4, Insightful)
A joke on democracy? Are you kidding me? Individual parlimentary approval is *more* democratic than a national *referendum*?
The way the European governments are going about this is ANTI-democratic.
Parent
Re:From the Torrentfreak blog: (Score:4, Insightful)
How?
Insisting that people do NOT get to vote is democratic? How?
A bunch of politicians, the majority of whom have not read the document either, voting on something AGAINST the the will of the people is democratic? How?
Seriously. By what ass-raped definition of "democracy" can you possibly define what they are doing as democracy?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I see you're not European! ;)
That would be great, but IIRC they were almost ignored at the polls last time...
They received about 2/3 of a percent. That made them the third biggest party outside of parliament, which puts them in tenth place overall. Not amazing, but they had existed for about 6 moths at the time.
While the police's illegal TPB raid gave them a lot of power, all traditional media thought they wouldn't receive any votes at all. In polls, they weren't even an alternative. In party leader debates, they weren't invited - even if it was an event that was also open to parties o
The Red Danger is back (Score:2)
sources close to the intelligence community say that Russia is the prime target
... because they figured that people are tired of hearing the terrorists story, and therefore came up with a different enemy to justify their hunger for control.
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Just an FYI:
Russia has been flexing it's military again; which seems strange.
They've flown at least one bomber into Alaskan air space recently that had to be escorted back.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing strange about Russia flexing its muscle. The whole reason that Putin became so popular is because he made sure that Russia was again taken seriously after Yeltsin's era. He may be oppressive to a certain extent and the riches may go mainly to his friends, but at least Russia is respected again.
And sure, Putin's Russia (and possible Medvedev's as well) is quite dangerous in various ways. But so are various terrorist organisations. However, they are nothing compared to the political leaders of
So who's responsible? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Swedish government has kept curiously quiet about the new law's objectives but sources close to the intelligence community say that Russia is the prime target.
This new law is so strange that it makes me think that the Swedish government is under the influence of a larger power.. I wouldn't be surprised if the United States or some other country had something to do with this, but who knows..
Meanwhile, the major opposing party Socialdemokraterna (socialistic democratic party) has vowed to undo the law if it wins the next election.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not quite. The Socialist Democratic Party in Sweden has vowed to _change_ the law. They want to add some meaningless part about personal integrity - but keep the surveillance system and data parsing.
In practice, they won't change anything by adding the desired "integrity" paragraph to the law. It would mean that only people who are under suspicion will be monitored - but uhow_ would one do this without having access to - and investigating - each and every data packet?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And not only that, they've also vowed to redo it!
INteresting (Score:2)
Google moves their servers out of Sweden, but keeps them in China.
Some nuggets from the Swedish articles (Score:5, Informative)
It should be noted that while the FRA law has been a source of intense debate both within the parliament and population at large, the governing parties have apparently made a point of as far as possible not mentioning it, neither before or after passing the bill. Also, before the bill was passed, the parliamentarians of the coalition parties were instructed to vote the party way (which is unconstitutional) which caused several embers to resign their positions in protest.
TFA notes that when the official silence has been broken, be it in response to the massive criticism or in private but revealed communication, the politicians in charge appear to range from inexcusably ignorant of the subject to criminally incompetent. As an example, it mentions Gunnar Andrén, the leader of the People's Party (folkpartiet) and a member of the liberal ruling coalition, who in a private email to fellow party member and parliamentarian Camilla Lindberg, who went against the internal instructions and voted against the law, expressed anger and recrimination.
This letter was publicised by Miss Lindberg's partner, a fact which made Mr. Andrén lash out in rage, claiming revealing a private letter was "Gestapo- and Stazi like" and "in violation of the Sanctity of Letters" act, a Swedish law that states that it is illegal by any party but the intended recipient to intercept or partake of the contents of a closed letter.
The irony, and what makes an incredibly arse out of him, is evident in the comments on the Swedish article (http://www.politikerbloggen.se/2008/07/03/9359/), a sample:
* "Smart guy, first voting for FRA and then getting pissed when someone does the same on him"
* "the yes-man Andrén is pissed about something he thinks only FRA and the government can do, the right to read others' private mail"
* "I agree with Gunnar Andrén that it is Gestapo methods to read others' letters or tapping phones. Now we know what GA wants in Sweden since he voted yes for FRA"
Re:Some nuggets from the Swedish articles (Score:5, Interesting)
* "Smart guy, first voting for FRA and then getting pissed when someone does the same on him"
This reminds me of another such episode in the FRA drama. Immediately after the bill passed the vote, some members of the pretty politically incorrect forum Flashback started a thread that purported to monitor the surveillance agency FRA, especially its employees. In it, they scoured publicly available sources, such as the FRA web site, Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc, for information on FRA employees, and posted what they found in the thread.
Shortly afterward, the FRA director cried out in the press against the publishing of "protected identities of secret FRA operatives" on the web. He complained that it was unfair and that his employees had a right to privacy. He apparently didn't see any hypocrisy of complaining about the lack of privacy for his own employees while taking away the privacy of everyone else.
Besides, what real "secret operatives with protected identities" have their own Facebook or MySpace page with their real name and FRA email address? Maybe he should inform his "secret agents" about not publishing their personal information on publicly accessible web sites. Not to mention the FRA web page, which contained a thorough organizational scheme with names, etc. He should probably clean up on his own doorstep before crying out in the press that someone had looked at their own web site.
The whole story was beyond funny.
Parent
Neighbour concerns (Score:3, Informative)
Many customers have asked their Internet provider to remove traffic through Sweden if possible, but many IPs use Swedish backbones. The Danish Police Intelligence (if any) is very concerned, since most of their traffic goes through Sweden, and the Minister of Justice wants to contact the Swedish government for information on how it will affect Danish citizens. The Minister of State ("primeminister", he's seldom seen in Denmark lately) and Minister of IT doesn't want to though, as they see it as a "Swedish Case".
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
sweeden is full of loser-faggots
Only because we are so generous with immigration from Finland and Norway
Re: (Score:3)
Monitoring of foreign communications has never been a technical issue in the US within my lifetime, nor a legal issue within my father's lifetime. It's the domestic spying we really need to crack down on first. Then we worry about whether or not we can stop our government from spying on everyone else, or if that's even a good idea.