Tax authorities in Denmark buy 'Panama Papers' evidence
m.dw.com
m.dw.com
This is the press release from the Danish tax authorities, confirming the purchase: http://www.skat.dk/SKAT.aspx?oId=2234275&vId=0
The people at the NSA who decided to build dragnet surveillance didn't sit down one day and said "hey, I'm feeling evil today, let's violate some laws for lulz", they said "omg terrorists, this is a case where we have to weigh both sides". When cops do illegal searches, they're convinced they're weighing both sides in the interests of getting a criminal of the street.
At the very least, you lose any credibility to criticise the government when they bend the law to catch some bad guys, if you're OK with them bending the law to catch other bad guys.
There are some things that are more important than catching some asshole tax cheats. Preservation of the rule of law is one such thing.
There is already a case going against SKAT about this, so that will decide if it is okay or not in the future as well. Besides, when the tax minister order this, arguable, the legislative powers have already decided that this is okay, and anything short of the federal court deciding that it is against the Constitution of Denmark, means it's already within the law.
Enlighten me. Please. Because they're vastly different from my perspective.
* One is a limited scope information about people breaking some specific laws - the information is verified to be useful by sampling. The action breaks a law created by the parliament, and that can be changed by a simple vote in the parliament.
* The other is a mass surveillance without a limited scope, not targeting any specific crime and no evidence what so ever about its effectiveness. It is a breach of The Consitution of Denmark §72.
It sounds like you are making an "ends justify the means" argument, but I don't think that absolves them of supporting black hat activities.
But even with that, "limited scope" and "targeting specific crimes" aren't magic get-out-of-jail-free cards. If I design (from a secure location that won't prosecute or extradite me for doing so) a worm to infect peoples computers, and once there, quietly scan these computers for evidence of pirated movies (very targeted, very limited scope) and only when it finds evidence of such does it phone home (and only with the evidence, nothing more is ever collected or shared). I then sell this information to an aggressive anti-piracy-litigator. Is this now OK, because it's "limited scope information about people breaking some specific laws - the information is verified to be useful by sampling"?
(Also, on laws: If the law can be changed willy-nilly to suit whatever the government wants to do, you don't have the rule of law. This is bad. It is doubly bad when you go and change the law, not because you have a principled belief that it's bad, but because it prevents you from doing a specific thing. In practise, this is the same as the law not applying to the government. The Danish constitution is tragically toothless, as most of the relevant articles contain the phrase "except where an special exemption is created in law" - for an example for the inviolability of the home, more than 200 such exemptions exists.)
Here SKAT had an oppotunity to gain that information anyway, and that is a clear signal to criminals that they shouldn't feel safe hiding behind some beneficial countrys laws.
Your example with a worm, is a straw man. Infecting millions of computers and shifting through it all to collect doubtful infomation is hardly the same. SKAT have been trying to get their hands on this infomation for decades, through legitimate deals. Now someone presents it to them via a different channel. If you want it to be comparable, it is someone infiltrating a torrent tracker and use information from that to sell to collection agencies. They still cannot use the information for anything but prompt a real investigation. After all we don't know if the information is real or not. If you want to do that, be my guest - I don't have a problem with it.
About the law, it cannot be changed willy-nilly, it still have to be voted for in the parliament.
Indeed it is but would you care to point out which of the laws skat is violating?
Also, "the law" != "the rule of law" (in Danish, retssikkerhed).
I'm convinced some of them, most likely those who gave it the green light in the first place, did so because they recognised what an incredible effective implement of population control it is.
It's less about the terrorism and more about a safety net for the entrenched and privileged in a future of massive civil unrest.
Germany for example doesn't have that, at all, as our Federal Constitutional Court has rules in exactly such a case (tax evasion lists bought by a German state and used to search someone's home).
I wouldn't be surprised if Denmark did it the same way.
While conducting these clandestine operations they may also collect information which could convict someone domestically in court... but US courts will not permit that evidence to be submitted as it was collected illegally.
External intelligence agencies would be kind of an exemption. But not in the case of the CIA, as they give information to internal intelligence agencies, although they shouldn't, at least by the law.
Secondly, the tax offices presumably have a right to carry out audits and don't need to substantiate why. I would think that they could use any method ranging from a dice roll to an anonymous tip on a hotline to trigger an audit. The trigger would not be used as evidence in the trial... it may be from a jealous lover who's lying, but if the audit reveals you didn't pay your taxes properly, well there you go.
Thirdly, it may not even matter. Saying 'we have this material' is a great bluff on it's own and could be used to get rule breakers to come clean on their own, as well as sending a message to would-be tax dodgers that it's getting harder and harder to cover your tracks.
This doesn't say anything about the moral issue of tacitly condoning stealing documents by paying for them, though.
> Do you also have a problem
> with illegal wire tapping if
> as a result a terrorist
> attack is prevented?
Tax evasion is actually a crucial, existential problem for several countries. More so than terrorism. I, for one, welcome these exceptional measures in this case.
Why do the journalists don't share the data with the governments for free? Establishing trust that the government is serious and real should be possible for them.
Could the anonymous source just be a journalist who wants to profit of the data?
I'm all for fighting tax avoidance but considering that most of the EU member states have an interest in the data this could be quite a sum of cash that is someone obtaining from an illegal hack. It's also not clear who benefits here. It's pretty shady isn't it? Even it's legal.
Funnily, the second largest media network responsible for this leak belongs to the German government (NDR). They cooperate with SZ all the time. So, a branch of the German government actually already has access.
That leads to the question: Why don’t the governments share the data with each other for free? Or, as not even the German government itself gets access: Why doesn’t the government share the data with itself?
They could share the data if they want with the governments but the government has no say and no way to get the data with any legal means.
Ever looked at the members of the Rundfunkrat? In theory, it’s independent, in reality...
> and I see no problem with this
It goes against fruit of the poisonous tree principle[1], what Danish government is doing should be wrong because it tacitly approves future illegal activity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
Regardless, that doctrine isn't used in most of Europe; the linked article even points that out: where illegally obtained evidence is usually admissible in court (depending on each state's law) but the gatherer faces charges for that.
Switzerland and Lichtenstein really hate that.
On economic terms, moral terms or legal terms?
The standard for investigating someone is much, much lower than for convicting someone. Such tax evasion lists are easily enough to do an investigation.
6.000.000 DKK ~ 805.000 EUR
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/27/denmark-fea...