Norwegian government introduces US-style surveillance of citizens

[mogster]

The government wants to store data about who you call and when you called, for up to two years. This is the first step on the way to mapping all electronic information, as demanded by the EU.

Today, Norwegian law requires the telecom companies to delete all information about phone and internet traffic when they no longer need them for themselves. Now the government wants to turn the rules upside down and make it mandatory to store information like this for minimum six months, maximum two years.

The Orwellian society is making progress in Norway.
(...)
Registration of who you are calling and when is the first step to implement the EU directive for data storage in Norway - as we are required to do under the EU - Norwegian free trade agreement.
(Norway is not a member of the union).
Next step is to demand registration of who you are sending email to, and when you hook up to the internet.

The terror attacks in Madrid in 2004 set the stage for the EU directive, and the intention is to uncover terror attacks and serious crime in the planning. The deadline for implementing the directive is March 15, 2009.
The dept. of Communications and Transport is leading a work group with members from Kripos (Norw. Scotland Yard), dept. of Justice and Datatilsynet (government and private sector communications watchdog), looking into how the directive is to be implemented in Norway. The result will be publicized before summer 2007.

(...)

Aftenposten has been given access to internal documents from the group. The documents says that there will be created a central database for storage of phone/internet communication in Norway. Additionally, it's clear that the government wants the internet service providers to store data for up to two years.

One of the controversies is how long the data is to be stored. The police wants them stored as long as possible.

The Datatilsynet watchdog says that the directive will mean extended surveillance of totally innocent people in Norway, and are working so that the directive will be implemented with the minimum requirements in the EU directive.

- The directive means massive surveillance of all of the Norwegian population. Everybody is treated as 'black sheep', says deputy director in Datatilsynet, Leif T. Aanesen.

More:
http://www.iterapi.com/index.php?parse_news=single&cat=49&art=329

[annabanana]

1. This is sad. I have always credited the Scandinavian countries

with a large reserve of common sense. I hate to see them succumb.

[mogster]

7. It is changing

No doubt about that. Common sense is the first to go when dealing with the undefined 'war on terror'.
Just look at Britain, where the term originated.

[Karenina]

25. Ah yes, the AMERICAN model

:puke::puke::puke:

[mogster]

28. At least we're together in this, Karenina

;-)

I found the directive in question, btw - in English:
The EU Retention directive

[Eric J in MN]

2. They should withdraw from the EU-Trade agreement instead of spying on all their citizens.

The law should forbid the recording of the internet activity of people without a warrant.

Also, the idea that all this data is going to go into a government database, but get erased after two years, is ridiculous. Once the government gets that data, they're keeping it.

[mogster]

8. It's difficult to withdraw from something as mandatory as EU trade agreements

Maybe a stronger Scandinavian fraction inside EU will make better change. Sweden and Denmark are member states, so Norway is kinda on the outside. But EU will have to change for me to support that, today I see it as a undemocratic structure which removes democracy from the citizens of each country and puts it far away in Brussels where no one can make any difference without being on the inside of capitalist lobbyism. Besides, I doubt there would be any support for this in Denmark, which is more of a EU oriented country than Sweden and Norway. Or in Norway, where the word 'union' carries a special ring after 400 years of involuntary unions with Sweden and Denmark from the 16th century until 1905. Last, the EU has changed fundamentally during the last decade, and is much more than a trade agreement today.

I agree that no such law should be implemented in Norway, and it resembles the US laws/decrets in wording and scope. It's uncanny seeing democracy being eroded like this.

[Eric J in MN]

9. There is no US law saying internet companies have to save data.

The US govt may be secretly recording us, but if so it's doing so illegally.

[mogster]

11. OK, decrets then

I was thinking about this:
http://news.com.com/Anger+grows+over+NSA+surveillance+report/2100-1028_3-6071525.html

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. What's mandatory about it? Abrogate it. Period.

[mogster]

26. It's not that easy

You have just touched upon the biggest debate in Norway for four decades, lol :-)

[rodeodance]

3. at least their gov. is up front about it.

[mogster]

12. Yes, and the directive isn't implemented yet

The trend is clear, though, and it will probably be.

[Leopolds Ghost]

You guys are showing resignment

The corp. media must have beaten you into submission to think that anyone
wouldn't go out and at minimum, shut down a major intersection over this.

[woodsprite]

4. My daughter said once she gets out of college, she's moving

out of the US. I told her there were not many places to go where there is not this constant "big brother" looking at everything you say - essentially, we're lab rats. It's a shame, but it really is true.

[mogster]

13. You are right

One entity makes the new 'ideology' shareable throughout the world: mass media. They're the same everywhere.

Here, I found this on my disk while looking for the Orwell picture :-)



From an old DU thread, no doubt.
'When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace'.

That just about says it.

[EFerrari]

20. But they can't process all that information, no way.

Let the greedy idiots collect all they can and thAt is a LOT.

They don't have the resources to process the data. They're heading into a dead end.

[mogster]

23. They're gonna try, though

From the 'fact box' in the original article:

This is what the government wants to store:
Where you're calling from: Phone number to stationary phone or mobile phone. Name and address of the phone owner.
Who you are calling: Phone number to stationary phone or mobile phone. Name and address of the phone owner.
When you call: Date and time of day for the call, and the duration of the conversation.
Where you're physically calling from: Your position out from which base stations your mobile phone is using. The same data will be stored for IP telephony.

Kinky ...

[EFerrari]

27. Sure -- but sometimes I wonder if the idea that they are doing this

isn't supposed to scare us, curtail our activities -- in other words, another scare tactic that really has no practical payoff?

No, I don't like it and I will protest illegal invasions of privacy.

But, these guys have trouble finding their own email. How are they going to manage ALL of our email?

I'll never forget that during his 9/11 testimony, Richard Clarke said,"I don't think the FBI knows what it knows."

:)

[mogster]

29. Yea, guess that's a reason too

The slow uphill struggle made even more difficult by scare of being under surveillance?
I agree that the FBI doesn't seem to be in control, lol.

But then there's Google. Imagine all the info in those databases - gazillions of webpages, and even so it more or less serves it's purpose, and give you what you're looking for. Information, when structured, is easy to sort even in large quantities. As for Norway, it's just five million people, so it would be easy to gain a total overview.
I'm sure I'm in a file somewhere ;-)

[gulfcoastliberal]

30. Google stores all your search terms for someperiod of time.

So do do AOL and Yahoo (obviously - China). These records can be turned over to government officials with a subpoena.

[EFerrari]

31. Is that like being stuck in the refrigerator?

:)

I've wondered if a country the size of Norway -- a citizenry, that is -- is harder or easier to manipulate than we are. Imho, the size of this place makes it easier to manipulate us because there is really very little sense that Arizona is kin to New Jersey.

And maybe that's why nationalism springs up so often and so ugly here because there's no real, organic sense of cohesion. Hmm. This may be the Cuban jazz speaking.

:toast:

[mogster]

34. I doubt the Norwegians are easy to manipulate, lol

Or at least I used to think that way. But it is astounding how the younger generations fail to accomplish what previous generations managed as far as 'social revolution' goes. The kids of today buy the Porgress party's mix of racism, ultra-capitalism and opportunism without questions. The ideals aren't international social values, but introvert individualism. This can only be caused by the mass media influence, so there you go.
Cheers, Beth :-)

On edit: here's the consumer price index for Norway, historically. It'll give you an idea why we're changing:
http://www.ssb.no/histstat/tabeller/12-12-4t.txt

From 29,0 in 1970 to 135,4 in 1990, that's an increase in private spending of gigantic proportions. I guess you could at least double the 1990-number today, the 90's were pretty good years for Norway.

[rosesaylavee]

5. So sorry to read about this...

As said up thread, the Scandinavians are so far ahead of the US on health and other social issues... just thought the Norwegians were immune to the craziness that has infiltrated the USA.

:(

[The2ndWheel]

10. It's not craziness

I think that's where we lose sight. It's the logical outcome of what we've been doing for thousnads of years(that could be the crazy part).

[mogster]

14. Ya

In some ways far ahead, in other ways far behind. Today, I'd say without a doubt that the political awareness of what's _really_ happening is much more developed in the US than in Norway. The sublevel media such as blogs and independent internet media outlets has sufficed to inform the population where the mass media has failed. Not so here, where the blog as a medium quickly was taken over by the mass media and failed to set a standard as information containers, but instead became entertainment containers. Today most blog outlets is run by the newspapers, and are subject to their censorship.
Things are starting to happen, but the influence of a press that up to a couple of years ago was very good, but which now is more or less like the US press, is difficult to counter.

In Norway, it's the press that promotes strong arm politics, not first and foremost the government (Labour/Socialist Left coalition). But the influence of the US govt. (and EU) is strong, and are also supported widely by the right side of the political spectrum.
The pressure on the government to comply to the demands of the 'terror-war' is formidable, and we are subsequently a coalition partner that supplies arms material, bomber planes and manpower to fight 'the Muslims'; Al-Queda.

One wonders how a country like Norway, a peace negotiator that even awards the Nobel peace prize, got involved in an undefined war with no specified end point, a war that's been going on for six years now in Afghanistan.
For how long will we be credible as peaceful and respectable as far as the Peace prize is concerned when we 'bomb the Afghanistan into stability' (actual quote by the previous Defense minister) with one hand, and with the other work for peace?
One can do peace or one can do war. One can't do both.

The majority of the population was against both wars and is probably against this surveillance program, but has no option but to comply when faced with the concerted power of the media, most of the politicians and the USA/EU powerdrive against terror.

[rosesaylavee]

16. A large part of the problem here is

corporate ownership of the media... would any of our corporate media owners here just happen to share ownership in yours? Just asking...

[mogster]

17. That is an issue also here

There are only one TV channel not owned by corps; the NRK - Norwegian Broadcasting Company. Built as the BBC, it was a very good channel up 'till they got an boss from the Conservative party in 2000. After that, their news service detoriorated (IMHO).

But the biggest difference was made in Jan. Feb. 2004, when the BBC World disappeared from 350.000 Norwegian homes and was replaced by CNN, overnight. This was due to a so-called channel democracy in the pan-European provider UPC, where you could vote which channel to be the default news channel in their package. This company was the largest cable TV provider in Norway.
When you delve into it, you'll see that the UPC was bought by Liberty Media Corp. in 2001, a company dubbed by Al Gore as 'the Darth Vader of media', through the company UnitedGlobalCom.
The channel democracy worked like this:
- previously the BBC was the default choice if not enough people voted for other channels.
- the BBC was replaced as default choice by CNN
- not enough votes came in, so the default channel 'won' on walkover

The result was a solid turn to the right in news reporting and poorer quality, as the CNN of today is in no way comparable to the BBC (sorry, no offense intended ;-).

[Leopolds Ghost]

21. EU-style "democracy" is the sort of tyrranny my ancestors (US and elsewhere) rebelled against

Tyrrany of the majority + no common law + no bill of rights

including absolute "first amendment" rights.

Anyone ever read Thucydides? The Athenian Empire? The world's first free-trade union?
"Exporter of democracy"?

[rosesaylavee]

33. No offense taken.

I agree. CNN is as manipulated as the others. We still watch the BBC to get what is happening outside of the US. It is not what it was either but at least it covers the main events out there.

Its too late to look into Liberty Media for me tonight. But wouldn't be at all surprised if they were connected with the RW media conglomerates here. Lots of money in controlling the message. Unfortunately, I don't think I am being tinfoil here at all.

Wish Al Gore would run for president in 2008 - he seems to understand what's been lost here and abroad.

[babylonsister]

6. Isn't it sad that 'US style surveillance of citizens' is the comparison?

I sob for our country and what we've become. Oh, and Norway; they are following the wrong role model.

[mogster]

15. Please note that it is my quote

Not the original Afteposten article angle ;-)

But Bush is the wrong role model, agreed!

[EFerrari]

19. Sorry, Norway. We're still trying.

:(

[mogster]

22. Hi Beth, good to see you

I know you are :-)

[EFerrari]

24. Good to see you, too, my friend.

:hi:

[Cleita]

32. I guess all I can comment is,

"There goes the neighborhood."