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Surveillance of cables for civil communication by the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA)

Mark Klamberg, doctoral candidate

5 October 2008

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Us humans leave electronic footprints after us, in the form of credit card payments, visits to websites, phone calls and e-mail.Imagine that somebody could collect everything and process it through a powerful computer. With the right tools one couldfind patterns that in detail describe what kind of person you are. This is called social network analysis, a term included by the wider concept data mining.

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Key feature of the “FRA-law”

IT- and telecom operators are obligated to transfer all traffic in cables crossing Swedish borders to the State

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Definitions

Distinguish between• Transfer to the state (stage 1) – collection and processing (stage 2)

• Content data (text of the message) and traffic data (who is contacting who, when and how)

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Collection and processing of data (stage 2)

The FRA has a mandate to monitor and collect content data for certain purposes including external military threats, terrorism and IT-attacks. The Agreement of September 25th specifies these certain purposes. The FRA may under certain conditions collect and process content data when an individual is targeted.

FRA can also provide assistance to the Police within the parameters set by the specific purposes of the “FRA-law”.

The question about assistance to the Police has not been finally settled.

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Intelligence court

According to the agreement September 25th the collection of data would be placed under the control of an “intelligence court” which operates behind closed doors. The court will, among others things, limit FRA’s collection and processing of content data.

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Traffic Data

No restrictions on collection of traffic data, the basis of the FRA operations (analysis of traffic patterns)

Traffic data on Swedes (and others) have been collected for more than 10 years without legal basis. The FRA has in an internal document stated that they intend to continue to collect traffic data to the same extent.

According to the adopted law the FRA has the mandate to collect, process and store all available traffic data. This is necessary for analysis and targeting. Targeting relates to the what content data should be collected and processed.

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Targeting

Targeting can be done using phone numbers and technical parameters (for example internet protocol address)

In addition, according to the law a person’s race, ethnicity, political views, religious and philosophical beliefs, membership of a labour union, health or sexuality may under certain conditions be used for targeting.

Targeting is, inter alia, done by the use of traffic data

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Transfer of personal data

According to the law personal data collected by the FRA may be transferred to other countries.

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A critical remark

Is this kind of data collection and surveillance…

• Consistent with the right to privacy? This is both a human right and a constitutional right.

• Efficient?

• Proportional?

• Confident and reliable in the sense that it gives accurate results and not false alarms?

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Questions?

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Thanks!

Contact:

mark.klamberg@juridicum.su.se

+46 8 16 11 90