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World Ignores Sweden’s
Draconian Internet And Telephone Wiretap Bill
Bad
Cop News
Thursday, June 5, 2008
SWEDEN - Sweden is on the verge of passing a far-reaching wiretapping
program that would greatly expand the government’s spying
capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone
traffic coming in and out of the country.
So far, hacks from the mainstream Swedish press seem to be on
holiday, so news about the proposed law is woefully hard to come
by. That leaves us turning to this summary from the decidedly
left-leaning Swedish Pirate Party for details. We’d prefer
to rely on a more neutral group, but that wasn’t possible
this time. According to them, here’s a broad outline:
The En anpassad försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet bill
(which loosely translates to “a better adapted military
intelligence gathering”) gives Sweden’s National Defence
Radio Establishment (FRA) direct access to the traffic passing
through its borders. Now remember, we’re talking about the
internet, which frequently routes packets though multiple geographically
dispersed hops before they reach their final destination.
(Article continues below)
This all but guarantees that emails and voice over IP (VoIP)
calls between Swedes will routinely be siphoned into a massive
monitoring machine. And we wouldn’t be surprised if traffic
between parties with no tie to the country regularly passes through
Sweden’s border as well, and that too would be fair game.
(For example, email sent from a BT address in London to Finland
is likely to pass through Sweden first.)
Once intercepted, the data will be searched for certain keywords,
and those that contain the words will be pulled aside for additional
scrutiny. A broad array of organizations will have use of the
system, including the Department of Transportation, the Department
of Agriculture, the police, secret service and customs, and in
some cases major businesses. The bill allows Swedes to be singled
out, as well.
When the bill was introduced in early 2007, Google was reportedly
so concerned about its consequences for privacy that it threatened
to limit its ties to the country if the measure passed.
“We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view
of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place
any servers inside Sweden’s borders if the proposal goes
through,” Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy
counsel, said last year, according to this article. “We
simply cannot compromise our users’ integrity by allowing
Swedish authorities access to data that may not even concern Swedish
activity.”
But so far, few outside of the pro-privacy universe have bothered
to discuss the bill this time around. There have been no similar
pronouncements from Google and representatives there didn’t
respond to a request for comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
has likewise been reticent about the bill.
“Surprisingly enough, there hasn’t been that much
written about it, even in the Swedish media,” said Patrik
Runald, a Swedish national and a security response manager for
F-Secure who works in San Jose, California.
“The funny thing is when asked what do you want to look
for, [backers of the bill] don’t really specify what they’re
interested in,” he continued. “It’s a very broad
bill. They basically can interpret whatever they like.”
One of the few recent press mentions of the bill came from a
publication called Cellular News in London. According to this
story, Nordic and Baltic telecommunications provider TeliaSonera
planned to move email servers out of Sweden to protect the privacy
of its Finnish customers.
The bill is scheduled to come up for a vote on June 17. According
to the Swedish Pirate Party, a majority of parliament currently
backs the bill.
Appeared
Here
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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