
Finland: New surveillance law threatens fundamental rights (2015) - ff_
https://edri.org/finland-surveillance-law-threatens-fundamental-rights/
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metafunctor
Like in most countries, changing the constitution in Finland takes time. The
Finnish constitution can be changed in one of two ways:

A) The parliament accepts the change by a simple majority vote, and the change
will "rest" until the next election. After the election, the change will pass
with a 2/3 majority vote by the new parliament.

B) The parliament deems that the change is urgent by at least a 5/6 majority
vote. Then the change will be voted upon and will pass with a 2/3 majority
vote.

Finland is not “changing the constitution“. Not yet, at least. Such a change
has been _proposed_ by a group appointed by the ministry of justice, and is
now being _discussed_ in public. None of the above steps to actually change
the constitution has taken place yet. I find it unlikely that a 2/3 majority
vote for a change like this can be achieved with the currently elected
parliament.

The annoying thing I find about the news coverage about this is that they make
it sound like it's already decided. We're seeing headlines to the tune of
”here are the new wiretap rights for Finnish Security Service”. It is not
decided yet.

~~~
SNvD7vEJ
Thanks for the more sane perspective on this.

I was like "wtf" when I read this article. As a Swedish citizen, the article
got me a bit worried.

~~~
ptaipale
Unfortunately, this "wtf" should cover a large part of the news we read.

However, here the thing is that the discussion in Finland is about "following
the Swedish model", because in Sweden the FRA (Försvarens Radioanstalt) has
permission to do things that the corresponding Finnish authorities would like
to get.

~~~
Sharlin
Yep, and before the "FRA law" they were almost certainly already doing the
same thing, just illegally.

~~~
kpil
No need, they probably just have to call their friendly neighbour.

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aleksei
This would be a big misstep for Finland. At the moment, the old forest
industry & export is dying off, with no replacement in sight. A viable
candidate would be datacenters, which would benefit from the existing factory
halls and cooling, climate, and possible future green tech solutions. Along
with no domestic mass surveillance, no secret courts and no NSLs, this could
be a great "pivot" for the existing infrastructure.

If this change were to pass, however, there will be little internet related
tech locating to Finland, which is what the government is actually hoping to
happen.

Also of interest are the reasons behind the proposed change. There has been
little to none "national security" issues in Finland, so it's somewhat odd to
see it pushed as the main reason.

The director of the surveillance police has actually stated in the past that
they rely a lot on information passed to them from other surveillance
agencies, and that they don't really have anything to give back. I think this
is more about amassing data for exchanges between agencies, rather than an any
actual threat.

~~~
jabl
> This would be a big misstep for Finland. At the moment, the old forest
> industry & export is dying off, with no replacement in sight. A viable
> candidate would be datacenters

Yes, this vision has been thrown about, but they thing is, even if the wildest
predictions were to come through, the employment generated by these large-
scale datacenters is a small fraction of the jobs lost in other industries.
And most of these jobs are relatively low-paying ones such as perimeter
security, replacing faulty servers etc. A far cry from, say, the hordes of
engineers employed by the telecom sector during the boom years.

Sure, they may indirectly generate a lot of jobs, but you don't need to live
next to (or even in the same country as) an Amazon, Google, or whomever's,
gigantic datacenter in order to use it.

~~~
aleksei
Well yes, my wording may have been off: the factory workers will remain
unemployed no matter what.

But converting factories to data centres would be a way to avoid demolition,
and create a demand for specialised tech knowledge and make Finland somewhat
relevant to the internet, which is what the government is after.

~~~
taneliv
Regarding government's desire for internet relevancy, it would make a lot more
sense to first gain the companies' trust and commitment to Finnish
datacenters. And only then change the laws (or even more sensibly, just
perform surveillance illegally).

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ff_
Up to date article (5 days ago) on this from the national public-broadcasting
company:
[http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_const...](http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_constitutional_changes_to_broaden_official_surveillance_powers/9223709)

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Sami_Lehtinen
A great blog post about topic in Finnish:
[http://kasvi.org/?p=670](http://kasvi.org/?p=670) Google translated version:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fkasvi.org%2F%3Fp%3D670&edit-
text=)

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aluhut
I guess with Russia around the corner being old school Russia again, that was
just a matter of time.

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gribbly
Why would increasing the governments right to spy on their on populace protect
them from a Russian aggression ?

~~~
throw0617
Rights to monitor Internet traffic would allow authorities to have better
picture of cyber attacks and maybe allow putting up better defences against
them.

It is also quite clear that Russia is having various operations where they try
to affect the public opinion for example through forum posts. Would be
probably quite useful to be able to monitor these as well.

Of course, as usual, on the other side you then have the peoples right to
privacy and I'm not sure if the pros outweigh the cons.

In general the principle in Finland is that we can't setup ultimate defense
against Russia. We can only try to build up defense, which makes attacking us
too costly.

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helical
> 06 Oct 2015

So… did they alter the constitution?

~~~
ff_
Not yet. Altering the constitution is a slow process - fortunately.

The draft/proposal is dated to Jan 2015 [1] (it's in Swedish, sorry), and it
was in the works, and came up again today on the newspapers after the Minister
of Justice called for a debate on this. Here's an up to date article on this:
[http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_const...](http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_constitutional_changes_to_broaden_official_surveillance_powers/9223709)

EDIT: add sources.

[1]:
[http://www.defmin.fi/sv/uppgifter_och_verksamhet/lagstiftnin...](http://www.defmin.fi/sv/uppgifter_och_verksamhet/lagstiftning/lagberedning/lagstiftningen_om_underrattelse_forbattrar_inhamtandet_av_information_om_internationella_militara_hot)

