Sweden Admits Tapping Citizens' Phones for Decades 273
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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:
Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Funny)
Chefs?
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What? What do you mean?
Oh, I understand, you are probably thinking of surströmming [wikipedia.org]. In that case, I agree completely, it is just plain repulsive.
Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Funny)
See the løveli lakes
The wøndërful telephøne system
And mäni interesting furry animals
Re:Yes ... and? (Score:5, Funny)
Anonymous Møøse
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But the greater problem is that using encryption automatically makes you a person of interest. No kidding, there have been incidents in America where simply using encryption is, in the eyes of
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That, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic example of why /. can never be taken seriously as a forum for political discourse.
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As long as the stupidest, most ignorant, least knowledgeable and most impressionable among us outweigh the rest and are allowed an equal weight in voting and directing this country, we will never be able to change anything (or preserve the t
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Seriously, you make a very eloquent point, but surely there has to be some way that we can motivate the masses and the median level of idiocy? Maybe I'm too young, but I still believe in this country and its people. I most definitely think we have the capacity for greatness still in us. It's just all a matter of finding that magic motivation. I have to admit that I have no idea what it could be, but I believe that it has to be there somewhere.
Maybe I'm jus
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strange (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:strange (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:strange (Score:5, Informative)
--
But what about the awareness of state sponsored terrorism?
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Various groups have been mentioned to have had an agenda with this man's politics and many of them were or are still associated with terrorism.
Not all that strange (Score:3, Informative)
Bewteen 1936 and 1978 we had the IB (information bureau, it held a few other names through it's existence but IB is the one most used to refer to them), a vast network of informers in every major workplace in Sweden. When they were exposed to the world in the seventies, a law was made saying that the state cannot register the political opinions of the citizens. This was obviously just window dressing, and the SÄPO (Security police) essentially continued
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Maybe pirated bad anime fandubs are just the new opiate of the masses?
Slashdotted (Score:2)
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CoralCache:
http://www.thelocal.se.nyud.net:8090/6645/2007030Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Posts like this annoy me. Are you saying you were actively taught they were on country? I doubt that. The only other explaination is your total lack of interest in world geography. Even one cursory look at a map of Europe and you would know.
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As long as we're all being jerks on the internet I'll point out that the school graduates the students, so your question should have been "Are you sure you were really graduated?".
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Hooray (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like a 7-mile-wide billboard shouting "SORRY, WE HAVE NO FUCKING SHAME"...
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It's not a slippery slope if you're already at the bottom of the hill...
Snicker (Score:5, Funny)
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
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Are you saying that I hate myself? I guess I could have said "person1" and "person2", since had I switched the genders around then I could also be accused of being a misogynist (or maybe more correctly that my statement was misogynistic).
but you could have used a slightly more diplomatic way to draw attention to it
How about:
Gal : Honey, I think we should start se
Yeah well... (Score:5, Funny)
Revolution!
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The US called (Score:5, Funny)
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Patent revoked. Clearly Sweden has prior art on this.
It's all ABBA's fault (Score:2)
Too bad.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Can't reach the site... details? (Score:2)
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The Social Democratic Party was omnipresent and had virtual carte-blanche in their actions.
Only recently there is a movement to come clear about what in other countries would have been considered abuse of the system by the political party in power.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hee hee hee (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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 (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no need for there to be a logical inconsistency.
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Interesting....
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Fascist governments can fail too. In other words, Sweden might have done this in hopes of becoming a fascist government but failed to take the step from "listening to everyone" to "arresting undesirables and claiming that we heard them plot against the government".
It is of interest to note that you don't actually have to "listen to everyone" to make the latter claim, if you publicly claim that
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Everything wrong in the world has to be the fault of the US, or else you cant expect the US to do all the work in fixing the problems.
Ikea sucks
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America makes mistakes, fine. We have bozo's for President (not just bashing Bush here, honest). Those bozo's go about bombing nice places into ruins, making new bin Ladens across the world.
But that's not the citizenry, any more than
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What people. Where.
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I could also point out that Sweden is at least sort of hone
The anti-American (Score:2, Insightful)
And how much would Sweden have to suck before it stars being worse than the USA? The exercise goes like this: Start taking away (alleged) Swedish liberties one by one, and raise your hand when the liberty removed breaches the threshold and causes living in the USA to be preferable to Sweden.
If you run that exersie through your mind and discover that you still feel di
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Re:Hee hee hee (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweden U.S
Infant mortality rate 2.76/1,000 6.43/1,000
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate .1%
Income distribution - Gini index 25 45
Inflation rate 1.4% 2.5%
Public Debt 46.4% of GDP 64.7% of GDP
Life expectancy at birth 80.51 years 77.85 years
Source: CIA Factbook
The CIA Factbook isn't a particularly controversial source, and I can think of others ranging from the UNICEF to the UN.
I know it is fun to pretend that people you don't agree with are in a logically inconsistent position. But, it actually reflects poorly on you when you pretend it is the case when it isn't.
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It's fine to love your country, but don't let tha
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-Blame the US for starting this development.
Frankly, if it wasn't for the current US goverment and their unhealthy obsession with terror we would not have this development in Europe.
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Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Things are about to get a lot worse (Score:2)
Breaking news today, Britons will be denied a passport [dailymail.co.uk] if they don't submit to the world's most intrusive mass-surveillance system
People who refuse to give up their bank records [bbc.co.uk], tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed [bristol-no2id.org.uk] and the records of their car movements for the last year [independent.co.uk], or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to will be denied passports from March 26th [no2id.net].
The Blair Govt has already admitted that this an
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
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But reading the article, Per Kjellnäs, former head of FRA, says that his organization did in fact listen in on telecommunications, but never over the cable network.
FRA are free to legally eavesdrop on every cellphone call as it is not over cable, as well as every cable call that is transmitted using a radio link somewhere before reaching the other subscriber. That is, most telephone calls withi
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
I don't believe this is accurate. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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This reminds me about the rejected EU software patent proposal. The same argument was used there, probably with the same motive.
Good thing I don't live there (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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...which may affect other countries as well (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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The Swedes have always been listening to Finnish traffic going through Sweden. The Finns are probably doing the same thing to Swedish traffic going through Finland.
The point is that a very significant part of all traffic from Finland to the rest of Europe as well as to North America is routed through Sweden. It may be that traffic between Sweden and, say, Russia gets routed through Finland, but the vast majority of international traffic from Finland goes to the west, whereas the same probably can't be said about the communications from Sweden to Russia or so.
I'd also be interested to hear about a single major (and at least partially Swedish) telecom company provid
The WHAT attacks? (Score:2)
IT Attacks?
muwahahahahaaaa.......
At least I'll have employment... (Score:5, Interesting)
So soon we may no longer have many freedoms but at least I'll have guaranteed employment.
Wiretapping Ubiquitous (Score:2)
For example, if the police want to dete
Swedish Constitution (Score:5, Informative)
2. Fundamental Rights and Freedoms [riksdagen.se]
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Since when was Sweden.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's trying to blow up Sweden? (Score:2, Interesting)
Things are pretty rough if a country that doesn't even suffer from the /illusion/ of terrorist threat* can go to such lengths to violate their people's privacy in the name of security. Makes one think that maybe it's a part of human nature to overreact, or something.
Random statistics from the interne
Always been Watched (Score:2)
That Sweden is admitting this, is really at least a breath of fresh air...
not that it makes the practice any better, at least their can be public debate..
Technologically Possible != Morally Acceptable (Score:3, Insightful)
You're much more likely to be killed in a violent mugging than by terrorists. Does that mean we should allow mass email screening to identify muggers? Would they be stupid enough to discuss mugging people in emails if they knew everything was being screened? Of course not, and terrorists aren't stupid enough to discuss terrorism either.
Even if it did catch a few terrorists it's not worth giving up your freedoms for anymore that it would be worth giving them up for the possibility of catching a few more violent criminals. It doesn't take much for a democratic system to lurch towards tyranny and it is the height of stupidity to provide the facilities that make it possible.
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Communications into and out of a country - contact with foreign destinations - has ALWAYS been a target of governments, and rightly so. It's always been the stance of the courts as well that international communications is fair game - you do not need a warrant.
In fac
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They Are Afraid (Score:5, Funny)
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And when a government doesn't need a warrant to tap a phone, then you're well on the road to fascism.
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How very ironic you are posting this in a thread about a country that has been chiding the US for its policy on this very issue for years. Always posing as the civilized bastion of liberty looking with disdain on US policy for tracking terrorists, and in many cases harboring known terrorists from extradition.
As long as there are legal prohibitions against use of this information to catch petty drug crim
Re:Grow UP (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not ironic. Ironic is their making a statement that they've been tapping people's phones all along in an attempt to make people feel better.
I live in the US, so the airplanes already hit my buildings. And I also live in a country well on its way to fascism. I don't need to live in a utopia to point out the failings of repressive and overreaching governments.
And the simple fact is that if we hadn't been using the Taleban to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, they would never have been in a position to do what they did. In fact they probably never would have ended up deciding that we were the great satan or what have you.
Throughout history, terrorism has tended to occur most when there actually is a wrong that needs righting. I'm not sure whether or not doing wrong is a valid response to doing wrong; frankly I have a hard time making that judgment call because I've never been in their shoes. I've never been part of an organization that was trained and equipped by the US, then abandoned and left to die when we were no longer useful.
History called (Score:2)
Dumbass fuck
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Hell yeah. Can't let those towelheads get their hands on our cellph^H^H^H WMDs.
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Yeah, they're only spying on terrorists. Although, honestly, what they should do is just not give the terrorists phones in the first place. I guess you have to be Swedish to understand.
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Re:I bet they don't understand arabic anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)
Arabic (Score:2)