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Norwegian Ecocrime to Monitor Net-users?
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.""
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 ;-)
Public policy should not revolve around making life easier for the police and prosecutor's office, at the expense of everyone else's rights.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"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)."
due to the fact that a citizen could possibly commit a crime everytime he/she steps outside, authorities are now requiring every person to wear a GPS signal transmitter.
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.
Sig it.
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 "/@/
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.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
it seems apparrent that their policy is ill-considered- requiring people to have identities online will simply commoditize identities for those intent on doing what the gov't thinks they shouldn't- a brisk trade will sprout in used or forged or stolen identities overnight. As ever, those intent on working around the rules will continue to find a way to do so... leaving everyone else with more or less a great big hoop to jump through in order to conduct their online affairs.
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.
Lupus non mordet lupum.
Of course, I also support the death penalty for long-term congressmen.
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.
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 and the Consumer Ombudsman 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... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
A swedish minister *did* refer to Norway as "the last of the soviets" some months ago. (thinking that the cameras were off)
All opinions are my own - until criticized