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

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."

Comments

And in the USA

[whoever57]

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?

Re:And in the USA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Could this happen? Will it happen?

Yes and yes, of course. In particular, invoke any of the magic words "terrorism," "national security," "child pornography," "drug dealing," or "intellectual property," and the Constitution no longer applies. The kind of large-scale fishing expedition you describe is entirely in keeping with this policy.

Re:And in the USA

[ultranova]

Would that be the Norwegian constitution?

Not for long. Norway has oil.

Re:And in the USA

[sveinungkv]

This thread is about the US constitution but as a Norwegian I can assure you that the Norwegian politicians ignore our constitution just as like the US politicians ignore the theirs.

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

[dcollins]

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

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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Cloud computing

[flyingfsck]

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.

Re:Cloud computing

[VortexCortex]

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.

Re:Socialism at Work

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If you think that only "socialists" do these things, you are desperately naive. Unless of course you're using the definition of socialism which seems to be quite popular among so-called conservatives these days, "any policy I currently don't like."

Re:Socialism at Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Your quote:

What can you say except welcome to Socialism at work? Trust us, we're the government, we know what's best.

I'll counter your Troll with a fact from the article:

In pursuit of two bloggers who have been critical of a right-extremist group in Italy, the Norwegian police seized about 7,000 people.

So no, this is not about socialism, this is about Conservatism. People who join the police and the military tend to be Right Wing, so it's not surprising that anybody critical of the Right Wing would be targeted by police. This is why anti-war and human rights activists are often harassed and spied on by governments and police forces around the world.

Actually, Socialism is

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Actually, Socialism is

[melchoir55]

Did the Op also denounce capitalism when it was discovered that America was viciously torturing prisoners at Guantanamo?

It is trivial to point out that to explore socialism one must also explore political theory. No one suggested otherwise. However, it is wrong to view it as a model of government. Governments have people in power. "Socialism" does has no comment here. Perhaps the state is a socialist oligarchy, or a monarchy, or a democracy, or a dictatorship, or even a communist state!

Governments work to expand their powers regardless of the economic model being applied. Conflating the two is dangerous because people end up thinking like the OP: that socialism results in police grabbing power.

Socialism has no causal force here beyond the fore common to all such systems. The problem is that people are willing to trade liberty for security, which results in police forces being granted far more power than is necessary or safe.

Re:Socialism at Work

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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"...

Actually...

[RCC42]

What can you say except welcome to Socialism at work? Trust us, we're the government, we know what's best.

Actually it sounds like fascism to me.

One of socialism's (purported) goals is to reduce levels of government and government power overall in place of individual or collective power.

Re:Socialism at Work

[Sique]

Conservativism today means: I take any govermental service as long as my boss doesn't have to pay taxes.
It's the completely fucked up idea that one has to protect the rich and the powerful, because one could one day be rich and powerful too, and then one might not like to pay taxes. But the idea that one day one could be poor and unable to help oneself gets refused because if that is something that only happens to other people.

Socialism in America

[hairyfeet]

The problem with socialism in America is this: It only applies to the rich. Socialism is allowed and indeed encouraged for the rich with "too big to fail" bailouts, TARP, lowering the "burden" on the top 1% through both tax breaks and the looking the other way at tax dodges like the "double dutch". But socialism for the poor such as free or low cost medical care, ensuring that all have adequate food, shelter, and clothing, help for the indigent, these things are frowned upon and looked upon as somehow bad or evil. Personally after seeing how bad the corporatist mindset has run this country into the ground I'd be all for socialism of the second sort.

As for TFA, cops do what they want, film (and excuses) at 11. Here in the USA we have ICE and the FBI used as a private "copyright police" while being paid for by the taxpayers, we have cops that do truly heinous crimes (just look up "police abuse" on Youtube to see how prevalent it is) and walk away with a slap on the wrist if they get anything at all, and thanks to 9/11 we now have Constitution-Free Zones that cover 2/3rds of all US citizens.

News flash: All cops WILL abuse their authority if left unchecked, full stop. For every decent cop you probably have 4 "bully with a badge" types that thanks to the code of silence will be protected by their fellow cops no matter what they do. Until we demand of our elected officials and the MSM that police have to follow the constitution and laws we citizens have to abide by along with REAL punishment for those that run roughshod over peoples' rights then stories like this will sadly be all too common.

Too many have been allowed to get away with too much for too long and it is time to start reining in their power or ALL of us in the west will end up in police states.