Indiscriminate dragnets are essentially standard tools, possibly the primary tools, of signals intelligence these days.
They’re, well… indiscriminate. Since intelligence operates in secret, I think it’s fairly disingenuous to consider their use governed by guidelines about who can be spied on. You don’t even know who the person is, until you’ve already spied. All oversight will be conducted in secrecy, and we already know that in the US, the NSA they made a mockery of the concept.
We could ban the dragnets entirely, but I can’t see many militaries agreeing to handicap themselves relative to adversaries who will continue to use them. The very best a Norwegian could hope for at a long shot is that Norway won't spy on them, but Norway's allies will and share the intelligence. Also, every other country in the world (and private companies) will be spying on them.
I have no problem with using dragnets to identify and disrupt activities that threaten national security.
I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in court by circumventing people's rights.
I don't see the need banning dragnets as a realistic option.
We need is a much stronger interpretation of fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.
FWIW a metadata dragnet/haystack can be used to search for parallel construction needles the same way it's used to search for terrorist or insider trading needles, all three are just varying types people working together to get something done in secret. I'm not sure how to make incentives align so that actually works out in practice but it's technically feasible.
Dragnets is a huge problem for analysts. Traditional analysis is based on a certain amount of "degrees", 1. degree would persons/network directly associated with a target, then usually would never exceed 2. or 3. degree.
Now that everything is collected it causes problems with the amount of data which causes quality data to drown in the amount. You basically don't get to pick up anything of worth before it's too late.
This again (the perceived lack of finding "terrorists") is used to argue for more budgets and "tools". Some say this is on purpose and I wouldn't disagree.
That argument is weak. It's equivalent to saying I should kill some people because my adversaries kill people. That's nonsense because the situation isn't symmetrical. It's not the adversaries who are getting killed.
I am disappointed beyond words. If they indeed surveiled Norwegian citizens I except all responsible will be severely punished and that examples are made. These days I feel examples are made of people that did much less to impact personal freedom and democracy. Obviously the Rechtsstaat has cumbled already... I believed Norway to be above such dystopian practices. </rage>
Why would you think that? It was a "public secret" in Norway for decades that the security services engaged in illegal surveillance mostly of the Norwegian left wing. E.g. I have personally talked to people who were the subject of surveillance well in excess of what the law allowed - one was a trade union organizer and member of the communist party that was followed to and from work every day for many years - his only explanation (after all they did not put every member of the communist party under surveillance) was that his route to work led past the Soviet embassy.
Another was the longtime editor of the communist newspaper Friheten ("Freedom"), Arne Jørgensen [1], who told me about how he for a period regularly had agents of the security services stop him in the streets to rattle him by e.g. commenting on details of private conversations he had the previous day with his wife at home.
This was reported regularly for years, but was laughed off as conspiracy theories, until it got a point where it could not be denied any more, and the Lund report[2] revealed extensive illegal surveillance.
Former prime minister Willoch defended the illegal surveillance against e.g. AKP-ML (Maoists ) with arguing they were an illegal organization. But no decision to outlaw them have ever been made.
During the writing of the Lund report, it became clear that one of the members, Berge Furre [3], a theologian and former Socialist Left (SV) politician, was still under illegal surveillance during his work on the report into the illegal surveillance.
None of the people involved were charged with anything. The security services changed name from POT to PST, and everything else remained largely unchanged.
Years later, when the first reports of Norwegian complicity in NSA surveillance was reported, the paper that reported it was pushed into a retraction after Grandhagen, the then leader of the notoriously tight-lipped military sercurity service uncharacteristically "took the blame" for reported surveillance that for every other country in the same document had turned out to be civilian surveillance of their own citizens, and claimed that Norway was somehow feeding the NSA metadata on phone conversations in Afghanistan of a volume that meant Norway somehow must be tapping every phoneline in the country.
Nobody in the press admitted to asking follow up questions about why military intelligence would suddenly gie out details like that, nor about why the US would be interested given reports that the US at the time themselves did not just capture meta data, but full voice recordings from Afghanistan.
Nobody reacted. Both Dagbladet and Aftenposten (major newspapers) deleted a slew of comments in their forums asking why nobody had asked questions about this of Grandhagen.
Like with the surveillance uncovered by the Lund report, any questions about this now gets met just with a shrug.
Then a couple of years ago, Aftenposten reported about a lot of unregistered IMSI catchers in Oslo. Again the intelligence services just insisted they were looking into it, after which the IMSI catchers "disappeared".
There's decades of history of this bullshit in Norway, and decades of experience showing that most people just refuse to question the official stories until things like the Lund report, and then go back to quietly accepting the official stories.
Part of it is probably that it has been relatively benign in Norway. No secret prisons, very little government interference in the press, etc. - it's mostly been just surveillance, so few people have been affected, and those who have been affected have been far out on the political fringes.
> "Despite a hefty price tag of more than $33 million paid by Norwegian taxpayers, the Norwegian Intelligence Service has kept the operations at the site beyond public scrutiny"
They wouldn't be much of an intelligence agency if they didn't.
Also, is 30 million really a hefty price tag? I know I shouldn't judge based on American intelligence spending, but 30 million is what it cost to build my counties vocational tech school.
This may not be illegal at all.
Like all other countries, we have foreigners living in Norway. A small subset of these are bad actors. Most notable we have a history of Russian agents and ISIS members in the country. Intercepting all communications filtering for these non-Norwegian citizens/terrorists is not illegal.
That doesn't mean this is legal; much like in other countries military intelligence have no jurisdiction over citizens - there are separate domestic agencies for that (the FBI/CIA, MI5/MI6 distinction).
Good point. While I'm grateful for the information, and I don't think that they meant any harm, but the OP does us a disservice by dropping the word "Potential" from the title.
How do you know they only "filter for non-Norwegians"? According to some people in this thread, the intelligence agencies should operate in complete secrecy.
Can anyone with better knowledge of satellite tech explain why exactly this article mentions use against Norwegians and draws a parallel with illegal spying?
The source documents they provide seem to be about targeting satellite traffic (Inmarsat, RU civ/mil traffic, etc) from certain foreign satellites.
If i know my fellow countrymen, most people in Norway will shrug this off. That is if the news reach them at all -- I haven't seen this reported in any Norwegian mainstream media so far. We live in discouraging times.
Yeah this irony always gets me. Like yeah Cointelpro was "illegal" but also they did it and got away with it regardless. You can say it's illegal but that doesn't change that the intelligence agencies don't care.
[+] [-] dalbasal|8 years ago|reply
They’re, well… indiscriminate. Since intelligence operates in secret, I think it’s fairly disingenuous to consider their use governed by guidelines about who can be spied on. You don’t even know who the person is, until you’ve already spied. All oversight will be conducted in secrecy, and we already know that in the US, the NSA they made a mockery of the concept.
We could ban the dragnets entirely, but I can’t see many militaries agreeing to handicap themselves relative to adversaries who will continue to use them. The very best a Norwegian could hope for at a long shot is that Norway won't spy on them, but Norway's allies will and share the intelligence. Also, every other country in the world (and private companies) will be spying on them.
I think this may be a lost fight.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|8 years ago|reply
I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in court by circumventing people's rights.
I don't see the need banning dragnets as a realistic option.
We need is a much stronger interpretation of fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.
FWIW a metadata dragnet/haystack can be used to search for parallel construction needles the same way it's used to search for terrorist or insider trading needles, all three are just varying types people working together to get something done in secret. I'm not sure how to make incentives align so that actually works out in practice but it's technically feasible.
[+] [-] fyrstenberg|8 years ago|reply
Now that everything is collected it causes problems with the amount of data which causes quality data to drown in the amount. You basically don't get to pick up anything of worth before it's too late.
This again (the perceived lack of finding "terrorists") is used to argue for more budgets and "tools". Some say this is on purpose and I wouldn't disagree.
My 2 cents.
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freekh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vidarh|8 years ago|reply
Another was the longtime editor of the communist newspaper Friheten ("Freedom"), Arne Jørgensen [1], who told me about how he for a period regularly had agents of the security services stop him in the streets to rattle him by e.g. commenting on details of private conversations he had the previous day with his wife at home.
This was reported regularly for years, but was laughed off as conspiracy theories, until it got a point where it could not be denied any more, and the Lund report[2] revealed extensive illegal surveillance.
Former prime minister Willoch defended the illegal surveillance against e.g. AKP-ML (Maoists ) with arguing they were an illegal organization. But no decision to outlaw them have ever been made.
During the writing of the Lund report, it became clear that one of the members, Berge Furre [3], a theologian and former Socialist Left (SV) politician, was still under illegal surveillance during his work on the report into the illegal surveillance.
None of the people involved were charged with anything. The security services changed name from POT to PST, and everything else remained largely unchanged.
Years later, when the first reports of Norwegian complicity in NSA surveillance was reported, the paper that reported it was pushed into a retraction after Grandhagen, the then leader of the notoriously tight-lipped military sercurity service uncharacteristically "took the blame" for reported surveillance that for every other country in the same document had turned out to be civilian surveillance of their own citizens, and claimed that Norway was somehow feeding the NSA metadata on phone conversations in Afghanistan of a volume that meant Norway somehow must be tapping every phoneline in the country.
Nobody in the press admitted to asking follow up questions about why military intelligence would suddenly gie out details like that, nor about why the US would be interested given reports that the US at the time themselves did not just capture meta data, but full voice recordings from Afghanistan.
Nobody reacted. Both Dagbladet and Aftenposten (major newspapers) deleted a slew of comments in their forums asking why nobody had asked questions about this of Grandhagen.
Like with the surveillance uncovered by the Lund report, any questions about this now gets met just with a shrug.
Then a couple of years ago, Aftenposten reported about a lot of unregistered IMSI catchers in Oslo. Again the intelligence services just insisted they were looking into it, after which the IMSI catchers "disappeared".
There's decades of history of this bullshit in Norway, and decades of experience showing that most people just refuse to question the official stories until things like the Lund report, and then go back to quietly accepting the official stories.
Part of it is probably that it has been relatively benign in Norway. No secret prisons, very little government interference in the press, etc. - it's mostly been just surveillance, so few people have been affected, and those who have been affected have been far out on the political fringes.
But I see no reason why that would change now.
[1] Norwegian wikipedia entry as I don't think he's covered in the English one: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_J%C3%B8rgensen_(redakt%C3...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund_Report
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berge_Furre
[+] [-] cjcfjrf|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
They wouldn't be much of an intelligence agency if they didn't.
[+] [-] fhood|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepyhead|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ancorevard|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepyhead|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|8 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean this is legal; much like in other countries military intelligence have no jurisdiction over citizens - there are separate domestic agencies for that (the FBI/CIA, MI5/MI6 distinction).
[+] [-] johnhenry|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] willstrafach|8 years ago|reply
The source documents they provide seem to be about targeting satellite traffic (Inmarsat, RU civ/mil traffic, etc) from certain foreign satellites.
[+] [-] erokar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eivarv|8 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/antennene-som-samler-inn-da...
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/ytring/sviket-mot-grunnloven-1.13940422
[2]: https://www.nrk.no/ytring/e-tjenesten-folger-norsk-lov-1.139...
[+] [-] sleepyhead|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sigmar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rsbartram|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 45h34jh53k4j|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coding123|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fenwick67|8 years ago|reply