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Wiretapping legal but not yet in use

National News | 2009-12-01 | 1 comment
The highly discussed and controversial wiretap law takes effect today. But the signal intelligence agency FRA is far from ready with the technical implementation.

The “FRA law” last year was accepted by the Parliament and gives ‘Försvarets radioanstalt’, FRA ( the National Defence Radio Establishment) legal permission to tap communication cables passing the Swedish national borders, this despite protests by a large public opinion and many experts.

The Government was however made to revise the law before it was passed by the Parliament, including some measures securing personal integrity, and therefore it was at first today that the wiretapping was suppose to start. But this is not the case.

Infrastructure not ready

For that to happen, network operators have to build access points where traffic can be managed into the FRAs powerful system for analysis, so-called interaction points.

“Such work is in full swing, but not yet finalized”, says Anni Bölenius, information officer at FRA to Computer Sweden.

Thus, it will also take some time before the first interesting information is picked up from the stream of information passing through the cables.

“It will take a while before we produce intelligence based on signal detection in the cables”, says Anni Bölenius.

Construction of the infrastructure required for the intelligence operations is surrounded by much secrecy. The companies involved is said to already have been contacted by the FRA, but the agency do not want to talk about who they are. Speculations among Swedish internet activists, however, point out the former state-owned telecom operator TeliaSonera’s network as particularly interesting.

A subsidiary company of TeliaSonera operates a significant part of the international Internet traffic in Sweden. But hey do not want to speak about if there are any interaction points ready in their network.

 

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Readers' comments

2010-01-26 06:34 VT wrote:
TeliaSonera has its own spying system. Ever heard about ACB/ITSS scandal in LITHUANIA? No? You don´t know what is TeliaSonera then - it is statewithin a state the biggest threat to fair business, the mafia style practices based on the friendship with those in power. The Swedish government has been tllerating to TeliaSonera´s criminal actions against companies in LIthuania. As we say here in Lithuania money has no smell.. TeliaSonera MUST STOP SPREADING CORRUPTION AND BRIBERY IN LITHUANIA!


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