Swedish signals intelligence now able to listen in on Finnish calls and read emails

Cross-border signals intelligence monitoring active from today

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As of last night, the telephone calls, emails and other electronic communications of Finns have become increasingly an object of interest to foreign intelligence services.
      Sweden's FRA law (FRA-lagen in Swedish) authorises the state to warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden's borders as a means of combating terrorism.
      The FRA (Försvarets Radio Anstalt) are the country's Defence Radio Establishment, and under the terms of the legislation they may work in cooperation with (and share information with) the authorities of other countries. In other words they can pass on the content of what they hear or read to other intelligence services.
     
Previously the FRA had only been entitled to pluck radio and other signals out of the air, but with an ever-increasing amount of communications in recent years transferred from radio transmissions to cables, it was thought necessary to expand their right to tap into communication cables passing the Swedish national borders and intercept signals "in the service of national security".
     
The Finnish connection is implicit, since the main trunk cables run through Sweden to the rest of the world.
      The FRA law, which has been compared with the US/UK "Echelon" eavesdropping programme for signals intelligence collection and analysis, was passed in the Swedish Parliament in June 2008, but has prompted a good deal of opposition and protest, both by individuals and in the media.
     
Encryption systems, of the kind used routinely by many large companies in their Internet traffic, can go some way towards protecting the privacy of messages, but are of little value in the case of traffic analysis - i.e. who has sent what to whom or which foreign number a Finnish caller has dialled.


Links:
  FRA - Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment
  FRA Law (Wikipedia)

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