Sweden's Snoop Law Targets Russia 186
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."
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.
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:So who's responsible? (Score:1, Informative)
Three guesses which party proposed the legislation while they were in government?
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 been shot down by a Soviet fighter aircraft east of Gotska Sandön."
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.
Re:It's NOT within Sweden's borders (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 impossible, especially the claim that such communications won't even be processed. That's clearly either a lie, or at least gross ignorance of the subject.
Re:So who's responsible? (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:So who's responsible? (Score:3, Informative)
And not only that, they've also vowed to redo it!
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:So who's responsible? (Score:2, Informative)
We have seven (7) parties in the Riksdag in Sweden, The leftists, the social democrats, the environmentalists (they form a loose group but squabble a lot). We also have the center, the people's party, the christian democrats and the moderate party. These last four parties formed an Alliance (commonly referred to as "the alliance") last election and won.
They are the ones that voted for the law. However, it was the Social democrats who proposed the new law a couple of years back, this is also the party whose minister of justice pushed for a bill in the EUropean parliament that all ISP's in the EU be forced to store traffic data on it's customers for two years. This is the infamous "data retention law".
So right now we have the three opposition parties complaining about the law, when one of them wanted it in the first place. It is unclear if the other two would in fact tear it up, should they come into power.
It's a bloody mess. And to make things worse, we have the "Sverigedemokraterna" (a party with a very cloudy past involving nazimeetings and burnings of Mosque's etc.) using the FRA-law as a hammer to get more voters in the next election.