Sweden Admits Tapping Citizens' Phones for Decades

paulraps writes "Sweden is close to implementing new surveillance legislation that will include the monitoring of emails, telephone calls and keyword searches using advanced pattern analysis. The objective is to detect 'threats such as terrorism, IT attacks or the spread of weapons of mass destruction' but the proposals have divided the country. In a misguided attempt to put people at ease, the government admitted that Sweden has been tapping its citizens' phones for decades anyway."

Yes ... and?

[Colin Smith (2679)]

The software to encrypt your information is free. If you don't use it you have to assume that people are reading your information...

 

Re:Yes ... and?

[mastershake_phd (1050150)]

The software to encrypt your information is free. If you don't use it you have to assume that people are reading your information...

Yes, but using such software can bring unwanted attention. Especially if the government is looking for stuff like that as I am sure the Swedish government is.

Heads up

[SgtChaireBourne (457691)]

Well, Phill Zimmerman [philzimmermann.com] not only gave a heads up in 1991, he gave to the tools to use to do something about it. According to even a slow beast as the European Parliament, you should already be encrypting your e-mail [europa.eu]. It's warning is from 2001, read and weep:

29. Urges the Commission and Member States to devise appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and above all to support projects aimed at developing user-friendly open-source encryption software;

30. Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes;

31. Calls on the Commission to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the "least reliable" category;

32. Calls on the European institutions and the public administrations of the Member States systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm;

33. Calls on the Community institutions and the public administrations of the Member States to provide training for their staff and make their staff familiar with new encryption technologies and techniques by means of the necessary practical training and courses;

— from European Parliament resolution on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)) [europa.eu]

Re:Yes ... and?

[Zenaku (821866)]

Yes! The people of Sweden should have hidden the evidence that they were even making a phone calls! By prearranging a secret means of communication with each and every party they might ever conceivable want to contact! But they didn't! They were asking for it!

Re:Yes ... and?

[eck011219 (851729)]

Why encrypt it? Everyone is speaking Swedish -- who can understand THAT anyway?

Re:Yes ... and?

[c0d3h4x0r (604141)]

Everyone is speaking Swedish -- who can understand THAT anyway?

Chefs?

Re:Yes ... and?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?
See the løveli lakes
The wøndërful telephøne system
And mäni interesting furry animals

Re:Yes ... and?

[by Anonymous Coward]

We apologize for the fault in the comments. Those responsible have been sacked.

Anonymous Møøse

strange

[mastershake_phd (1050150)]

Strange country they got there. On one hand they have the Pirate Bay, wich runs with impunity, on the other this.

Re:strange

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

c/tabs/your hands/

Hooray

[alx5000 (896642)]

Cause I'd be sooooooo relaxed if my Government tries to pass a law in favour of torture, but only if they admit they've been doing it for ages.

It's like a 7-mile-wide billboard shouting "SORRY, WE HAVE NO FUCKING SHAME"...

Snicker

[by Anonymous Coward]

Guy : Honey, I think we should start seeing other people
Gal : I can't believe you are saying that, I thought our relationship was strong
Guy : I don't know why you're so upset, I've been seeing others for 10 years now, hasn't bothered you yet
Gal : You've been doing WHAT?!>
Guy : Oh, uh, I mean, well, did I say 10years, I meant .. SMACK

Yeah well...

[BWJones (18351)]

Yeah, well it's not like Sweden has a document like the US Constitution that prot....ect......s.... its um, citizens from....... Er..... Nevermind.

Revolution!

The US called

[HomelessInLaJolla (1026842)]

The Centre Party leader claims that defence minister Mikael Odenberg's proposed legislation would merely codify practices that have already been in operation for decades

"Sweden has always listened in as a means of ensuring that we have had the information necessary to protect national security. I don't think that is a secret," said Olofsson at a press conference on Friday.

"All I know is that we do not currently have any surveillance on the cable network. For six decades we had a surveillance system with no regulation and absolutely no protection for private individuals. I think that is forgotten sometimes in this discussion," said Odenberg.

The US Federal Government called--it seems that Sweden is infringing on their patent for "Application of the Kansas City Shuffle to a Population of Citizens to Effect Domestic Surveillance Under the Auspices of Preventing Terrorism for the Purpose of Perpetuating Financial Debt"

Hee hee hee

[(arg!)Styopa (232550)]

So all the people who regularly point out how much "better" a society Sweden is than the US, either have to:
- entirely backtrack
- agree that domestic surveillance really ISN'T that big a deal
- just be hypocrites.

(grabs some popcorn)
OK, let's start discussing!

Re:Hee hee hee

[Rycross (836649)]

Option four: Be just as outraged at the Swedish government's wiretapping.

There's no need for there to be a logical inconsistency.

Not Surprised

[segedunum (883035)]

I live in the UK, and we are the surveillance capital of the world. The fact that phones have been tapped for years in other countries as well doesn't surprise me at all.

With the internet I now have the option of securing my communications if I so wish, which isn't really a problem for surveillance at all for legitimate purposes, but this quite clearly scares the security services here and elsewhere because they want to feel like they're in control. Crucially, the security services in many countries now have to give themselves a reason for being, wasting taxpayers money and continuing the old boy's network - which is where the exagerrated levels of terrorism and foreign threats come from. We've had a ton of these arguments in the UK, and none of them stand up to scrutiny or evidence. Apparently, we're facing threats that are even graver than anything seen in World War 2, and yes there are terrorist groups out there in the world, but this is quite obviously ludicrous to any sane person.

However, I don't think that telling citizens that their phones have been unknowingly tapped for decades anyway, so there's nothing to worry about, is exactly the wisest of moves. These security services organisations are so out of their depth now it isn't even funny, especially regarding internet communications. If they wanted to keep themselves in a job then they should have worked harder to keep Communism and the Soviet Union intact ;-). The fall of the Soviet Union, as it once was, has always puzzled me in that I wonder whether many security services organisations could actually see what was coming.

Not really

[russint (793669)]

FRA [www.fra.se] has always been listening to "international" traffic (radio, satellite etc), not cable/telephone. Most countries do that. Olofsson doesn't really know what she is talking about.

Bah, they're Swedes.

[Caspian (99221)]

Everyone knows what they've been saying on the phone: endless variants on "B0rk b0rk b0rk!"

I don't believe this is accurate.

[castrox (630511)]

I'm a Swede and judging from the major news sources FRA (Military radio surveillance agency, basically) has only been allowed to monitor radio based sources (primarily the Russians) and not e.g. cable channels. They have certainly not been sanctioned to wiretap phones which is a police matter and requires a warrant. This is what they want to do, but there's been a massive uproar against this, since they say they want to "only" surveill international communications and technically they cannot distinguish between national and international communications (IP-traffic).

In fact, they don't wish to at all guarantee that people who've been wiretapped should know about it afterwards - in other words, this is a very sloppy proposal and they are receiving a lot of critisism for it.

They way they say that "this has been going on for ages and we are now just passing a law for it" is nothing but BS, which purpose is to make the matter seem less drastic.

Most likely, the law will be delayed for a year, debated and more restrictions as to what they may surveill be specified. Expect to see protests here any day soon. :-)

Good thing I don't live there

[boyfaceddog (788041)]

In my country we have a constitution that protects our rights from invasion by the government. I could say wahtever I wanted to about President Bush and suffer no consequences at all.

I for one would never say anything bad about President Bush though, even though I know the FBI/CIA/Whaterver aren't listening to me. That would just be silly.

...which may affect other countries as well

[LadyBug@FI (110420)]

For example 90% of internet traffic from Finland to international destinations goes through Sweden. Which means that Swedes may be able to spy on Finnish traffic as well.

This causes problems because in Finland your mailbox (and of course e-mail traveling to it) is protected by legislation to be your private space. For example your employer has no right to go and look at its contents without your permission even if they own the equipment and the disk space and it contains valuable company information. Of course there are provisions for accessing your e-mail if you happen to be run over by a truck, but in that case the employer has to document when the mailbox was opened, who were present, what was read/removed etc. This applies to e-mail logs to some extent as well.

Sooooo, if you are a company offering e-mail to your employees in Finland but hosting the e-mail servers in Sweden, this Swedish initiative may mean that you are in violation of Finnish laws because outsiders can get access to the mail traffic. The Finnish authorities have taken the view that if this becomes reality, the e-mail servers for Finns need to be moved to Finland.

Long live Nordic co-operation!

At least I'll have employment...

[Rakishi (759894)]

I've had one of the more famous professors in data mining directly tell us how stupid it is to try and find "terrorism" in these sorts of data sets. There are too few training data points (actual terrorists) and too much data with a lot of variability. In essence false positives alone would make it all worthless. Now of course some people in the field disagree but those are also usually the ones who stand to make a pretty penny if governments do go this route.

So soon we may no longer have many freedoms but at least I'll have guaranteed employment.

Swedish Constitution

[SKorvus (685199)]

Swedish Constitution [riksdagen.se]
2. Fundamental Rights and Freedoms [riksdagen.se]

Art. 6. Every citizen shall be protected in his relations with the public institutions against any physical violation also in cases other than cases under Articles 4 and 5. He shall likewise be protected against body searches, house searches and other such invasions of privacy, against examination of mail or other confidential correspondence, and against eavesdropping and the recording of telephone conversations or other confidential communications.

They Are Afraid

[Perl-Pusher (555592)]

That's why they spy on them.