EU Parliament: Other Countries Spy, But Less Than the UK, US 170
itwbennett writes "An E.U. Parliament survey of 5 member states found that 4 of the 5 (U.K., France, Germany and Sweden) engage in bulk collection of data. Only the Netherlands doesn't, but that's not because it doesn't want to. In fact, The Netherlands is currently setting up an agency for that purpose. France, which summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain allegations that the NSA spied on Alcatel-Lucent, ranks fifth in the world in metadata collection. And Sweden? Its National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) is alleged to have been running 'upstreaming' operations (tapping directly into the communications infrastructure as a means to intercept data) for the collection of private data — collecting both the content of messages as well as metadata of communications crossing Swedish borders through fibre-optic cables from the Baltic Sea."
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing legal about it; it is entirely outside the scope of the law.
What you mean is that it is common practice to keep an eye on your enemies and on your friends since it allows you to prepare for what's coming. And everyone does it from the youngest age, through gossip and eavesdropping.
The problem here is the scale at which it can be practiced nowadays by the most powerful entities. You should always be wary of that kind of concentration of power. The strong often abuse their power.
A state maintains itself by keeping its own citizens under control and keeping at bay outside threats. But in modern times, for economical reasons, the outside threat is quite weak. States have every incentive to cooperate with each other. All the power granted by this collection of information is thus turned towards the only outlet: population control and the erosion of freedom. This is hardly comforting...
Re:Problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden's FRA was set up to help the US (Score:5, Informative)
Wait what? It's no secret that the reason FRA exists is to tap the underwater cables carrying almost all of Russia's traffic and hand it over to the US. There was an uproar against the creation of FRA in Sweden - but it was met with statements from our prime minister to the effect of "It's best for us all if we don't talk about this anymore".
Earlier documents put in context with recent revelations show that Sweden has been systematically wiretapping Russia on behalf of the United States. This is clear after putting a number of previous questionable agreements and developments in context today.
http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/07/documents-sweden-wiretapping-russias-international-traffic-for-the-nsa/ [falkvinge.net]