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Norwegian Police, Seeking Info On 2 Bloggers, Take Data From 7,000 Accounts

Posted by Soulskill on from the orders-of-magnitude dept.

xiando writes "Norwegian police were asked by officials in Italy to get personal information about two bloggers who were using a server in Oslo. The police decided the best thing to do would be to take the server's hard drive, along with personal information from about 7,000 other users (Google translation of Norwegian original). Other ISPs say this is standard operating procedure in Norway these days."

7 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. And in the USA by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some time back, there was a judgment that allowed police to trawl through the entire contents of a hard drive if they had a subpoena for one person's data from the drive, so I was wondering if the following scenario would work:

    Police get a subpoena for electronic bank records of an individual. They go to the bank and the bank offers to provide the relevant data. However, the police say: "No, this subpoena is not limited like that. Give us all the hard drives that might contain data on the subject". The bank is compelled to hand over thousands of hard drives. Now the police can trawl through bank records of millions of people unrelated to the original subpoena.

    Could this happen? Will it happen?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  2. "Not something that only happens in the U.S." by dcollins · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Not something that only happens in the U.S."

    Wonderful sub-headline in the linked article. Great example of our worldwide reputation nowadays.

    --
    We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
    1. Re:"Not something that only happens in the U.S." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Not something that only happens in the U.S."

      Wonderful sub-headline in the linked article. Great example of our worldwide reputation nowadays.

      It is something that also happens in EU. The root of this is a directive from EU, transformed to Norse law. Norway is in a position where it can oppose directives from EU, but as of yet and as a principle, it has made all EU directives into Norse law.

      The Scandinavian countries has a tradition of keeping the laws on the level of an easy to understand ethical foundation and as much details as possible outside the laws in regulatory frameworks. Most of the laws are written in an easy to understand, hard to twist, plain language (those parts that aren't, are hundreds of years old "fossils", the laws gets rewritten in simpler (more modern) language as they evolve, of course, to sanitise an EU directive into something simple and easy to understand is very challenging). This makes the regulatory frameworks easy to revise when parts of them lead to unfortunate, unexpected, side effects, and to modernize when necessary, without loosing sight of the ethical principles on which they are founded. The principle of simplicity in laws and regulations and the sharp separation of what belongs where, is also the reason Scandinavian citizens take laws and regulations, both the creation of them and the duty to follow them, more serious then other Europeans. EU has a tradition of keeping as much details as possible into its directives (a.k.a. the laws of EU) and they are written in a very bureaucratic language (in Swenglish and Denglish, not real Swedish or Danish, English is mostly a sub-language of the Nordic languages and it just takes a few simple changes (mostly spelling and prepositions) to transform it into formally correct translations, but it gets very ugly and simplistic, on a level of grunts and groans, most Scandinavian EU politicians stick to reading the French and German language versions of proposed EU directives), with lots of special cases, that aim to please the opposing wills of, and within, the EU countries. Proposed EU directives can also be changed the last minute before they are accepted (I think a proposal should be in a stable state at least a couple of weeks before they are accepted, so that people have a chance to understand them). The EU directives are to abundant and to much of a mess for anybody, except experts in the field in which they apply, to understand. The politicians that approves them rarely understand what they approve. In the Scandinavian countries, this means that the full effect of what an EU directive will implicate is not understood before it is rewritten into a national law proposal and then it is already to late to stop it without leaving EU (in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, Norwegians could theoretically still refuse to adopt it), most other European countries just dump the EU directives word-by-word into their own messy laws and then mostly ignore them (as they already do with laws that comes from within the country).

      At least Norway isn't in the position of its neighbours Sweden, Finland and Denmark, that are more closely tied to EU and is obliged to incorporate all EU directives into their own national law.

  3. Cloud computing by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If your data is stored in a cloud, then it is bound to get trawled through multiple times per year due to subpoenas for other people.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    1. Re:Cloud computing by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If your data is stored in a cloud, then it is bound to get trawled through multiple times per year due to subpoenas for other people.

      I'm comfortable with that. I'll let as many policing forces trawl through my Gmail as the government agencies desire, provided that I'm allowed to use (PGP) end to end encryption to my heart's content.

      The FBI has been looking into requiring online services to be able to comply with a wire-tap order (and decrypt any encrypted data) -- Google can't comply with a demand to decrypt my data as long as Gmail lets me send arbitrary textual data and/or attachments -- The next step will be outlawing end to end encryption; Mark my words.

      My cloud has a silver lining -- an envelope of end to end encryption.

  4. Actually, Socialism is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a theory of Political Economy, and includes both an economic model and a political/government model. In particular, it postulates government's executive powers that for "public good" can transcend many rights of individuals, not just rights to own property. Most historical forms of Socialism actually postulated the so-called "tyranny of the proletariat" as a necessary condition of enduring Socialist ways in the society.

    Socialism has invariably led to expansion of government's power even where it did not result in straight-up tyranny. Just ask Julian Assange how far into Swedish bedrooms of consenting adults it currently extends.

    Having come of age in a Socialist country, I heartily recommend the theory writings of prominent Socialists (the study of which was mandatory both in school and and in college). Even "moderate" Fabian Socialists like Shaw advocated government censorship, including but not limited to censorship of "harmful" scientific theories (see his take on Lysenko vs Russian genetics, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/works/lysenko.htm

  5. Re:Socialism at Work by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    GP's simplistic drivel about "socialism" certainly does sound like what contemporary conservatism has reduced itself to; but there is an incongruity: empirically speaking, contemporary conservatism practically worships the power and authority of the state security apparatus. The people who trust the state to run prisons; but not schools. Who think that taxation is tyranny but torture is not.

    Maybe he is a larval Randroid, or one of those people who thinks that "libertarian" means "authoritarian who hates paying taxes"...