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Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying
- sigmar 9y ago"Potentially" from the headline was was dropped from the title.
- strictnein 9y agoAnd not "Norway Potentially Used NSA Tech..." but "Norway Used NSA Tech for Potentially Illegal Spying".
- Scipio_Afri 9y agoThe intercept is known for previously having some sensationalist in an anti-surveillance and anti-US way As for the title here being edited by mods to further be more sensational, Ycombinator has interesting backers. See previous discussion about ycombinator and other tech companies having funding from Russian oligarchs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631084
- sctb 9y agoThanks, we've reverted the title to that of the article.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y agoThere is no illegal spying. There cannot by definition be illegal spying, as if you are caught, it is retroactively made legal. Go back to sleep.
- castis 9y agoYou're telling people to go back to sleep, we should be telling you to wake up.
- fenwick67 9y agoYeah 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.
- coding123 9y agoSo I can go into the president's bushes and spy on him. If I'm caught surely he would understand that by definition I was doing something legal.
- strictnein 9y ago> "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.
- fhood 9y agoAlso, 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.
- varjag 9y agoTo put it into perspective, Norwegian parliament has spent ~300 million USD (and counting) on its renovation project..
- dboreham 9y agoAnd every major road in Oslo has been tunneled to keep the city pleasant for pedestrians.
- runeb 9y agoDisregarding your gross exaggeration, road infrastructure costs are funded by taxing roads, automobile purchase and fuel.
- ptaipale 9y agoI don't think they're earmarked in Norway (they're not in most countries). Taxing autos and fuel generates revenue which is general tax revenue, and what goes to road infrastructure is up to political decisions.
- varjag 9y agoThis has nothing to do with the scandalous waste of money this project is. Building a municipal garage shouldn't cost like 3 F-35 fighters.
- freekh 9y agoI 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>
- cjcfjrf 9y agoI think cultural enrichment from single adult males fleeing territories with conditions so bad that they couldn't even being their women and kids is much more important than your self important privacy. Go check your privilege. Edit: why this tone? Because straight tone is considered racist by the collective "hackers" who forget statistics when it is against their narrative
- jerheinze 9y agoRacism is racism regardless of whether you coat it in "statistics".
- rimliu 9y agoWhile the above comment may not be the best or suitable, where do you see racism in it?
- tehwebguy 9y agoI'm not sure it was racist either but it was supremely bad. It puts mass surveillance up as the only solution to the alleged problem and meanly belittles the previous poster for a desire that differs from their own.
- cjcfjrf 9y ago"The only solution "? I think you missed my sarcasm and the edit. I am 100% for privacy and 101% for solving the root problem if you didn't get the hint
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- erokar 9y agoIf 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.
- eivarv 9y agoNRK (government-owned broadcasting corp. - about as "mainstream" as it gets) covered it yesterday [0], and has published comments [1-2] today. [0]: https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/antennene-som-samler-inn-data-om-norske-borgere-1.13881286 https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/antennene-som-samler-inn-da... [1]: https://www.nrk.no/ytring/sviket-mot-grunnloven-1.13940422 https://www.nrk.no/ytring/sviket-mot-grunnloven-1.13940422 [2]: https://www.nrk.no/ytring/e-tjenesten-folger-norsk-lov-1.13941834 https://www.nrk.no/ytring/e-tjenesten-folger-norsk-lov-1.139...
- Neuron4ger 9y agoTo be fair, neither VG, Dagbladet or TV2 have covered this, at all. These are all major news agencies.
- sleepyhead 9y agoFrom the article: "In partnership with NRK" (Norwegian public broadcaster).
- dalbasal 9y agoIndiscriminate 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 think this may be a lost fight.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoThat 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.
- dalbasal 9y agoI'm not sure I'm following, at least one of us is misunderstanding the other. I'm not making a normative statement. I'm saying that [1] (for example), Russia will not deny itself a tool that China pocesses and [2] when it comes to dragnets, I have very little confidence in mechanisms to separate citizens from foreigners. Even if I'm wrong and it is possible to regulate dragnets in this way, you are then spied on by everyone but your own government (which is better than nothing, but not exactly inspiring).
- schoen 9y agoPeople making normative statements managed to get governments to agree to ban landmines, torture, and chemical and biological weapons. It seems like there's a whole lot of potential upside in also being willing to entertain normative statements about military tactics.
- ancorevard 9y agoThis 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.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoThat's one controversial interpretation that claims collecting citizen data doesn't count if you don't really mean it.
- ancorevard 9y agoThey are legally obligated to monitor all communications from and to a foreign country originated by a foreigner in Norway. The dragnet approach, monitoring all in order to filter down, seems reasonable as long as they only store the filtered data and not full stream.
- testvox 9y agoWhy do you think they only store the filtered data?
- e12e 9y agoThey don't, and they've been lobbying for changing the law. They've said so on record (that they grab and store everything, and deletion is based on intelligence value, not following laws governing surveillance and storage of personal (citizen) data).
- johnhenry 9y agoGood 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.
- sleepyhead 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- willstrafach 9y agoCan 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.