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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."
.. that data mining doesn't work.
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!
Of course, encrypting your email is one thing. Encrypting your voice communications is another. And all manner of encryption is extremely difficult when it gets to the point of making sure the recipients and senders who are not you will be able to encrypt and decrypt (becuase I would say 99% of people do not do this)..
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 authorities, is in and of itself probable cause for further search. Not to mention, I believe it is illegal to wear a mask that covers your face at certain times and in certain places in America (I'm not sure if this is a constant thing or just during the superbowl or something), because it makes identifying you on CCTV difficult. For the same reason, expect it to eventually be illegal to use encryption (or, at least, without acquiring some sort of government license and registration to allow it). And it won't be that hard, since encryption is considered a munition.
I'm almost 30. I'm too old to waste the rest of my life giving a fuck. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm pretty much ready to cave in to the inevitable.
>And when a government doesn't need a warrant to tap a phone, then you're well on the road to fascism.
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 crimes etc, the march to fascism is pretty much stalled in its tracks.
But do come back and share your thoughts when the airplanes hit your buildings.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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 internet, demonstrating I at least made a half-assed attempt to research this comment: Terrorist "Incidents" in the past 40 years. Sweden is way down at #60, U.S. at #15. Interestingly, per-capita stats place Sweden at the same rank, but the U.S. way down at #93. Of course, this statistic may be entirely meaningless - but I guess it does show something, in terms of the tax base supporting the respective anti-terrorism efforts vs. actual risk.
* - (such as the illusion of threat we have in the U.S. At least people hate us here. Who hates the Swedes? The Finns, I guess... Or the Geats.)
What? What do you mean?
Oh, I understand, you are probably thinking of surströmming. In that case, I agree completely, it is just plain repulsive.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic example of why /. can never be taken seriously as a forum for political discourse.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
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 fact, US law specifically ALLOWS intercepts of international communications, handwringing notwithstanding. Title 18, part I, chapter 2511, section 2 (specifically subsections f and g) state it is legal to intercept such transmissions. No need for a FISA - or any court - warrant.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!