Sweden 'a close partner' in NSA surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Sweden 'a close partner' in NSA surveillance

thelocal.se

206 pointsyesbabyyes55 comments

Of course it is, and it was before the internet as Sweden has cables to/from Russia over which most of Russias traffic passes.

Ive heard from former employees at the then government owned Tele company that they had secretly installed black boxes in specific locations.

The FRA-law if you remember, which was passed after FRA illegally surveilled all communications they could get to make it legal, collects huge amounts of data, just like NSA, and then they trade with their NSA/GHCQ counter-parts. One argument for the surveillence was from some right-wing military person "Sweden needs a bargaining chip in the international scene".

> "Sweden needs a bargaining chip in the international scene"

Only it's not a bargaining chip, it's an ongoing commitment, a liability they can never get back out of. Once in place, pressure of all kinds is being exerted to make sure it stays that way.

Indeed.

I almost vomited when I read the ministers defence of this law and this relevation "we do this for freedom and democracy and to safeguard Swedish soldiers in foreign countries" then another one "we have regulations, courts and other laws in place to make sure everything is done by the rulebook".

One argument for the surveillence was from some right-wing military person "Sweden needs a bargaining chip in the international scene".

Ok then, he needs to look at the map http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/502.gif and then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

Russsia isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

Actually, fear of Russia is the most powerful argument of the right-wing types. That is the very reason why Sweden has been eager to co-operate and assimilate with the west.

Luckily for them, Finland has always been there to buffer and protect them from the easter invasion.

EDIT: Having made such bold statements, thought it would be decent to provide some links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish-Novgorodian_Wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1554%E2%80%9...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1590%E2%80%9...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Nordic_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1741%E2%80%9...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1788%E2%80%9...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1808%E2%80%9...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War

'Always' was obviously an exaggaration. Eight hundred years would be more accurate, which is pretty much as far as written history goes at these parts.

The information was presented to the EU parliament by Duncan Campbell -- who broke the ECHELON story 25 years ago. [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_%28journalist%2...

I think it's pretty safe to say that the intelligence agencies of almost all Cold War era allies are still close partners. Governments on either side still generally regard the other side as potential adversaries.

Of course, the Swedes still officially claim to be neutral, like they were during the Cold War (and in WW2 and WW1). In practice, it's of course obvious which side they liked best.

I don't think it's nearly as clear cut as that. Neutrality means you're willing to work with whoever wins. It requires a high level of moral ambivalence.

If you are actively aiding one side or the other (or both), I don't think that counts as being neutral (if it does, it is certainly a very weak form of neutrality). Which is exactly what Sweden has done and is doing, dating back to at least WW2.

An isolationist policy leads to a neutrality that doesn't necessarily involve working with the winner.

Oh please...is Sweden so socialist that there's an ambivalence of western vs eastern bloc ideology?

The socialists. Obviously.

Sure, but just as the "democratic" side of the Korean conflict isn't the side of the Korea with "Democratic" in the name, the same is true of the "socialist" side of the Cold War.

Leninist (and Stalinist, etc.) states, of course, liked to put "socialist" and/or "democratic" in their names, but the entire Leninist concept of party vanguardism is intrinsically both anti-democratic and anti-socialist.

I actually meant all the sides. Because Sweden ended up doing socialism best.

Sweden's official foreign policy has been armed neutrality for a very long time, almost as long as for Switzerland. Sweden has not been a combatant power in any war in living memory.

But geographic reality compels Sweden to be aware of who its friends might be in moments of trouble. Some nearby countries that were not combatant powers (at first) were overrun during World War II. So Sweden arms, yes, to be able to maintain neutrality as best it can, and it also pursues an active foreign policy of making friends without making alliances with the countries that best support Sweden's cultural heritage and aspirations for freedom and prosperity.

Here in the land of the Swedish diaspora, where almost everyone knows somebody with Swedish ancestry, the local public university's law school has an exchange program with the law program at a Swedish university. I remember hearing a talk on Sweden's defense strategy given at the law school here in 1989 by a visiting Swedish professor. He, and almost everyone else in Sweden at the time, was quite concerned by repeated incursions into Swedish territorial waters by Soviet submarines on training missions. The Soviet Union and its successor state Russia have an obvious strategic interest in controlling access to harbors in Sweden, so Sweden has an obvious strategic interest in knowing whether or not Russia is planning any hostile moves. Sweden needs to be informed about the outside world to maintain its policy of armed neutrality. The cooperation described in this article is not surprising in that historical and current events context.

AFTER EDIT: I would be delighted to hear from anyone who can let me know what facts they think I have got wrong here, as the pattern of upvotes and downvotes so far suggests that someone disagrees with me, but I'm not completely sure why.

I think people are voting you down because what you are saying is based on Sweden's "official" line during the Cold War. A lot of new information has been revealed post-1994, that pretty much shows that Sweden was anything but neutral during that period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality#The_Cold_Wa...

http://www.thelocal.se/18262/20090317/

Why would Sweden be neutral during the cold war - putting aside nuance, you're either pro-eastern bloc or not?

What? Do you have reading skills?

The message you are answering to doesn't take a political position, it just says that the previous one has some facts wrong.

That said, I don't think you're either pro-eastern bloc or not. There are many political opinions one can have, and many aren't easily divided into pro-eastern bloc or not.

Nobody showed I had any facts wrong. Sweden has been formally neutral (not part of a defense alliance) for as long as anyone now living has been alive. As my own post said, Sweden has to think, within its general foreign policy framework of neutrality under international law, about who its friends are.

It was not that hard to guess that the main impetus behind the FRA law and the capability to spy on the Russians' Internet traffic was the prospect of trading any valuable pieces of intel with friendly major powers, apparently specifically the US. In retrospect it occurs to me that the Americans might actually have been actively lobbying for the law in the first place.

Yes I agree this is very likely. FRA has certainly provided much valuable intel in the past from radio analysis and for the cooperation to continue it felt the need to listen into cabled communication as well.

> the Americans might actually have been actively lobbying for the law in the first place.

Very likely. That's how the pirate bay got raided. Sadly, the swedish government has been very opaque in their dealings with the us.

Does this mean that the "truly anonymous" VPN providers that have sprung up like mushrooms in Sweden thanks to a supposedly privacy-friendly law are dead in the water?

I don't know what privacy-friendly law you are talking about.

VPNs in Sweden have always been a bad choice, you have less protection than a regular swedish ISP would give you from a legal perspective.

The reason VPNs became popular in Sweden is because of the FRA and the IPRED law (giving content producers the right to ask an ISP (via a court) for information about who is behind an IP address so that they can build a case and sue).

yeah, I never got the appeal of those services. After all, it's the country that all but threw out the rulebook to nail the PirateBay people and then Assange. Not the friendliest haven for digital rights, imho.

FRA is one of the reasons why Finland is very close to building another cable to Germany via the Baltic Sea, bypassing Sweden. It's politically very high on the to-do list.

Follow-on project would be to connect it to Asia via the Northwest passage. Russian company is already laying some cable there, but connecting these two is wishful thinking at the moment. On land the cables are already there, reaching from Helsinki to near Russian Murmansk.

Pictures here: http://yle.fi/uutiset/suomi_haluaa_oman_tietoliikennereitin_...

This puts Julian Assange's problems with Sweden -- and the UK/Sweden cooperation in same -- into a whole different context.

Please elaborate.

Sweden is an important intelligence partner of the US. Assange is an enemy of US intelligence (even if he isn't focused directly on US espionage the way Snowden is).

I think.now people.can stop.dismissing those that claim Sweden dislike wikileaks as "tin foil.hatters"

I think the claims have always been more along the lines that why go out of the way to have Sweden extradite Assange for charges that haven't popped up when he was right there in the U.K.?

Prime Minister Cameron reinforced the other day that the 'special relationship' still exists, so why should Assange have more to fear from Sweden than the U.K.?

Because Assange is not charged with anything they can nail him for in the UK. The fact the UK government is nonetheless spending 8 million annually just policing the embassy suggests they hold a rational belief they can get their way with him in Sweden, possibly before he is even charged with anything.

Seriously... has the government ever spent even 1/2 that amount in a situation where someone is wanted for extradition but has yet to be charged for a non-crime? How about 1/10th or 1/100th of that amount? If Assange really had nothing to fear in Sweden the rational act for the UK government would be giving him passage to Ecuador, saving millions in useless spending, and cashing in the whole thing a favor to the OAS.

> Because Assange is not charged with anything they can nail him for in the UK.

He's not charged by the U.S. for anything that they can nail him for in either Sweden or the U.K.

If that changes U.K. law is unlikely to be significantly more flexible for Assange on national security concerns than Swedish law.

What Assange is charged with under Swedish law is also a crime in the U.K. by the way, as ruled by the U.K. High Court itself.

One big part of "due process" that progressives push for is that you should not get special treatment just because you are famous (or infamous, for that matter).

He may have not been indicted by the US, but supposedly the US has prepared an indictment: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/julian-assange-atto...

And if they wanted to extradite him, they don't need him to be in Sweden first. This is the problem with conspiracy theories; there's an excess of path-dependence which leads to absurd conclusions. If Assange's attorneys are correct and the US has prepared an indictment against Assange, they could just ask the UK to extradite him directly to the US, since the US and UK have rock-solid treaty relations. There is absolutely no need to get him to Sweden first.

Believing in the conspiracy theory also involves ignoring Assange's tweets saying things like 'Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism' as opposed to simply denying that anything untoward happened.

It's even dumber than that, because extraditing him from Sweden is harder, since it would at this point be subject to the approval of both the UK and Sweden.

Assange volunteered to go to Sweden if given a guarantee against extradition to the United States.

The only conspiracy theory on display is your allegation that the UK government is so inept it actually prefers to spend 8 million a year provoking a diplomatic row with Ecuador and the OAS instead of acceding to a perfectly reasonable request.

Luckily, criminals (and innocents) don't get to dictate the process and legal rules of criminal investigations (and extraditions).

We call it rule of law. You may have heard of it.

I'd suggest against using the word "lucky" to describe any situation in which innocent people can be forcibly extradited for "questioning" despite volunteering to be questioned locally, over the telephone/Internet, or even agreeing to traveling abroad if given a guarantee they won't be packed up and shipped to a third-country with a history of extrajudicial torture.

Your insistence that this case is following "the process and legal rules of criminal investigations" is laughable and only shows you know next to nothing about how said rules are usually interpreted and applied.

It's easy to gin up outrage by trying to reframe basic mechanisms of the justice systems of pretty much every modern country as abnormal or abusive. For instance, the notion that you can be extradited to face charges seems banal, until you introduce the notion that someone might want to "face their charges" in a totally different country over video link.

Fact check: Assange does not face charges.

No, he doesn't, because under Swedish law he can't be indicted until he's confronted by prosecutors.

I do not see where I actually commented on the merits of the case or the extradition request. Maybe you can enlighten all of us?

BTW 'they' as used above refers to the United States. Sorry for the poor grammar.

An indictment which the U.K. could extradite him on without having to worry about Sweden, yes.

Clearly, since delimiting words with periods rather than spaces is the new tinfoil hat.

It's a common side effect of typing on a mobile phone keyboard that places the period next to the space bar.

No, I heard it confuses Echelon. /s

Given that government has access to this much information and is not using it to hunt down tax dodgers etc, does it mean they are actively protecting the rich?

It's fairly common to silo national-security-sensitive information, to avoid revealing sources or methods for things deemed not important enough to be worth it. The NSA doesn't share its data with the IRS or even regular police departments, either.

Deleted comment

Instead of down voting maybe explain why it is OK that Sweden helps the evil empire.

Fucking useless Eurofags.

From your POV, I reckon is so enough freedom remains for "people" like you to post on the internet. You should be pleased.

From your previous anti-American POV, I doubt you actually care about true freedom and you're more interested in anti-americanism

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