Norwegian Ecocrime to Monitor Net-users? 24
egjertse writes "Norwegian Ecocrime, the department for economic crime; also responsible for investigating computer crime, wants to keep logs on all norwegian internet users according to this article in norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. English summary of the article follows: "Ecocrime feels that the increase in internet related crime makes it necessary to demand all internet users to identify themselves online - If ecocrime get what they want, all your activities on the internet will be registered. Attorney general Inger Marie Sunde describes a system where all internet users must identify themselves using some sort of smart-card. Internet cafes will also be required to keep logs on all their customers, their identities, and their activities online - logs that will be handed over to the police when requested. Sunde also wants to increase the penalties for computer crime and make anonymous cellphones illegal.""
Re:In other news, (Score:2)
Hey! It's working! I did a search for "BBW" and got back so much pr0n that Big Brother showed up and took my 'puter away!
Big Brother really is watching, and he must really hate it when you start looking at nude .GIFs of his even-bigger sisters ;-)
Your Papers Please (Score:3)
Public policy should not revolve around making life easier for the police and prosecutor's office, at the expense of everyone else's rights.
Central Scrutinizer (Score:2)
"This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to *The Death Penalty* (or affect your parents' credit rating)."
In other news, (Score:3)
The new agency dubbed BBW (Big Brother is Watching) will begin implementing its policies starting next week. Citizen will be required to purchase these GPS wristbands at their own expense.
Re:In other news, (Score:1)
And the prize to be the last one left is...?
Re:In other news, (Score:1)
Death/Prison. After all, if you're the last one left then you more than likely turned someone over for an illegal activity and therefore have few loyalties and could turn on anyone at anytime... even the government.....
On a more serious note (well slightly anyways... ) I'm sure the people who like to mess with Echelon [letterbomb assasinate president, oops, sorry...] could have LOTS of fun with this thing, keep the police running all over the place [nuke nsa sabotage, oops, sorry again...], just cuz you typed something wrong or looked at sites that may have questionable purposes (A valid site that may have a section on anarchy, sites criticizing the government, etc come to mind)
-revolution congress bomb... uhh I mean: GreenHell
Re:Your Papers Please (Score:2)
History of abuse of governmental power (Score:3)
Although in europe, we generally have a better privacy protection than in the US, it sometimes turns out that the government and the police loke at themselves as standing outside this strict laws.
In norway, the social democrats, being in the government after World War II, made great use of internal intelligence in order to keep an eye on people with different political opinion. This was in no way allowed by norwegian law, and there were big discussions when it became known to the public in the mid nineties.
In germany, social democrats in the eighties build up the system of "berufsverbote", which meant that people, who acted e.g. as candidates for local councils for a legal party, were not allowed to work in the public sector.In both times, the power of social democratic government was used against leftists. Today, there is a social democratic government in norway. I'm not amused about the prospect that this time they abuse their power to monitor the movements of every neticen.
Having moved to norway some months ago, I dislike the norwegian behavior very much, as I did in the deCSS-case. Hopefully, ecocrime will not get through.
echo $FAKEMAIL | sed s/soccer/football/ | sed s/" at "/@/
I could like this... (Score:2)
The question is this: Do you believe everything you read on the internet? Does law enforcement?
Police and prosecutors are perhaps not the best judges of what goes on on-line, and without training law enforcement may not have a clue.
I suppose a number of folks could entertain themselves by giving the authorities exactly what they want. Whether this information is true or not is entirely up to the individuals making the traffic. Think of it as the world's biggest fire alarm system, but with lots more possibilities, and you can pull the annunciator on the far side of town from the comfort of your home.
I also predict the market for fake cards will go through the roof, and Internet cafe owners will make a good "second story" income by collecting to ensure that they mispell "Bjorn" as "Sven".
I think that they will find out about anonymous cell phones as well. Every criminal knows that all cell phones are anonymous. After all, nobody saw you take it out of that woman's purse.
Re:Cell phones, anonymity, and speaker ID (Score:1)
The location data is always there, you have a high labor factor on that at the current time (you have to have a person go looking for that ESN in the logs...) but I have no doubts that this is already being automated. I suspect the next step is automation and presentation of triangulation data. The information is all there, and required by cell systems to work handoff, so it's just a matter of time.
Re:As ever, I suggest (Score:1)
Of course, I also support the death penalty for long-term congressmen. (Offense? What do you mean 'What offense?')
Death penaties for Congress (Score:1)
This is the same sort of twisted logic as a spike sticking out a the steering wheel as a safety measure isn't it. It would work in that anyone who wanted to be a long-term congressman must believe in what they are doing so much that its worth dieing for. Or they're insane of course, but there's nothing better than madmen in power to make politics more interesting.
Re:Your Papers Please (Score:1)
this policy seems to have undocumented features... (Score:2)
It's not like people are truly anonymous on the net- with the right amount of legwork, some tools, and some data to begin with, your activities online can be documented relatively easily- the distinction today is that it's a great big bother. In short, the fact that it's difficult to dig dirt on you is what keeps most people from doing it- and their solution is to require you to do their digging for them. If this were going on in the US, I imagine the ACLU would have something to say about that with regard to it's 5th amendment implications. In any case, there's not much difference (assuming some degree of competence on the part of investigators as net hunters) between the status quo and their proposed policy.
I'm actually reminded of the US policy to prohibit encryption that they can't break- a stupid plan that merely set back security development in the US.
More disturbing, perhaps, is the idea that net activity must be controlled and audited- and it's going to be disturbing in different ways to different people- and the sort of extensions this policy might see in the future. Many rules we see online are simple extensions of rules or controls already in place in 'real-space'- this is disturbing in that it is not.
Haxors and such will need to find a new MO when traipsing through unauthorized lands. Not a big deal, they'll survive, it's what they do. Folks for whom much of the net's appeal lies in relative anonymity and freedom will be perturbed at the specter of Big Brother, in the form of low-level bureaucrats, perusing logs of their online activity.
Folks who feel they've got something to hide may need to abandon the net as a resource, or else join the ranks investing in new or forged identities.
As ever, I suggest (Score:1)
Re:As ever, I suggest (Score:2)
Why? It's not as if he's in office by some divine right. He's there because people in his district feel like he's doing a good job for them. When they feel like he's not, he's gone and someone else has the job. Term limits are simply a way to get rid of someone without having to campaign against them.
Ecocrime is a real problem (Score:2)
The problem with this unit is that they are highly incompetent. They run around after script kiddies, because anything more advanced is clearly beyond their reach. So, if you'd like to do e.g. industrial espionage, Norway is the country, cause legal enforcement is too stupid to figure it out (well, don't take that as legal advice... :-) ).
I'm pretty sure Ecocrime is not getting anywhere. Fortunately, we have The Data Inspectorate [datatilsynet.no] and the Consumer Ombudsman [forbrukerombudet.no] that are highly clued in many areas. I have been highly impressed by how these people have handled the spam issue (spam is outlawed in Norway with reference to long existing laws, new laws are in development). (In the medicall area, it is my opinion that the Data Inspectorate is too strict, their insistence that it must be totally impossible for anybody to unauthorized access medical data does in many cases hinder effective treatment).
Also, Ecocrime have an excellent track record in loosing court cases as well, and I'm pretty sure they are not going to get anywhere with the DeCSS case either.
The reason why I say they are a real problem is that their incompentense makes them do whatever they are told to do. The result is that they can harass citizens without having any case at all. They'll loose in court, but the mere threat of having the police knocking down the door seizing equipment may be enough to silence critics. I wrote an e-mail to the Minister of Justice about it (she's not awfully clued either), I haven't heard anything, but at least it didn't bounce... :-)
bork bork bork! (Score:1)
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Cell phones, anonymity, and speaker ID (Score:1)
Would a sigint agency want to use this technology? I think so: it means you can connect all the speakers in a call to a call solely on the basis of call content. Exceedingly convenient when you might not be able to intercept and decode all signaling and call acounting traffic, and still useful if you can, since a call to/from a land-line or a known cell gives you a pretty reliable indication of caller location, too. And once this is automated, the data just keeps coming.
I cannot live with You (Score:1)
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What happens if this gets passed? (Score:1)
Two years into the future:
"Ecocrime has announced that they are putting into in effect a key escrow system that must be used by all Norweigan Internet users who use encryption. Anyone using an unauthorised encryption routine will be punished by public flogging and disembowlment."
I foresee a large influx of geeks to Sweden, Finland, and Iceland if the Internet Registration bullsh!t goes through.
And don't think the US is immune to such stupidity. If the government keeps pandering to Corporate America, this'll happen here too...
Five years into the future:
A mass execution of the Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Alan Cox took place outside the UN building in New York, for violating the "Must Sell Out All Software" clause of the World Trade Treatise. Attempts to appeal their cases were squashed when a bomb exploded in the EFF headquarters. The RIAA and MPAA have not commented on any actions, other than small smirks on their faces. UN Chairman Bill Gates also had no comment.
Re:who are ecocrime? (Score:1)
From the horse's mouth:
http://www.okokrim.no/okokrim/brochu re98.html
Suffice to say that Ecocrime is somewhat famous for being incompetent and charging windmills. Inger Marie Sunde has started some kind of witch-hunt against Internet crime, especially against script kiddies.
I don't think there is any kind of conspiracy here, though. She seems personally convinced that the police needs extended rights to intrude our privacy on the 'net to be able to stop cybercrime.
What happened in the DeCSS/Johansen case was that MPAA asked the norwegian authorities to look into the case, and IMS jumped on the opportunity to go after one of these terrible hackers.
So, there is no conspiracy. She was just a "useful idiot" for the MPAA.
Too bad that DeCSS/Johansen didn't end up in Norwegian court - it would have been an excellent opportunity for a media blitz.
I cannot live with You (Score:1)
It would be Life --
And Life is over there --
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to --
Putting up
Our Life -- His Porcelain --
Like a Cup --
Discarded of the Housewife --
Quaint -- or Broke --
A newer Sevres pleases --
Old Ones crack --
I could not die -- with You --
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down --
You -- could not --
And I -- Could I stand by
And see You -- freeze --
Without my Right of Frost --
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise -- with You --
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus' --
That New Grace
Glow plain -- and foreign
On my homesick Eye --
Except that You than He
Shone closer by --
They'd judge Us -- How --
For You -- served Heaven -- You know,
Or sought to --
I could not --
Because You saturated Sight --
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be --
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame --
And were You -- saved --
And I -- condemned to be
Where You were not --
That self -- were Hell to Me --
So We must meet apart --
You there -- I -- here --
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are -- and Prayer --
And that White Sustenance --
Despair --
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So he was right! (a bit OT) (Score:2)