
Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying - georgecmu
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/01/norway-nsa-victory-garden-surveillance/
======
dalbasal
Indiscriminate 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.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I have no problem with using dragnets to identify and disrupt activities that
threaten national security.

I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in court
by circumventing people's rights.

I don't see the need banning dragnets as a realistic option.

We need is a much stronger interpretation of fruit of the poisonous tree
doctrine.

FWIW a metadata dragnet/haystack can be used to search for parallel
construction needles the same way it's used to search for terrorist or insider
trading needles, all three are just varying types people working together to
get something done in secret. I'm not sure how to make incentives align so
that actually works out in practice but it's technically feasible.

~~~
dalbasal
_I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in
court by circumventing people 's rights._

This is doable, I think. It's kind of the case now, and all it would take is a
momentary parliamentary majority to enshrine it. But, it's honestly hard to
see a consistent legal/theoretical justification for it, if all the data is
sitting on a government server.

Are you saying that a court/prosecutor should not be able to demand someone's
emails? What if they could be used to exonerate?

Somehow, I just think that once these datasets exist (they do) we will
eventually get used to them.

~~~
wlesieutre
I think "parallel construction" is the issue at hand, they can illegally
search your emails with no cause or warrant, and then pretend they didn't and
came by the evidence through other means. They can do this to _everyone_ , and
if you're targeted there's very little (nothing?) you can do about it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

>In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations
Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents
to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against
Americans that are based on NSA warrantless surveillance. The use of illegally
obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the fruit of the poisonous
tree doctrine.

~~~
Teever
I've been wondering for quite some time just how much of Bob Mueller's
investigation into the President and Russian collusion is a meticulously
produced example of parallel construction.

I'm not saying Trump and his people are innocent or that there's no Russian
involvement, I just think it's highly unlikely that the set of evidence that
we will see in these cases was obtained or produced with the publicized
methods.

------
freekh
I 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>

~~~
vidarh
Why would you think that? It was a "public secret" in Norway for decades that
the security services engaged in illegal surveillance mostly of the Norwegian
left wing. E.g. I have personally talked to people who were the subject of
surveillance well in excess of what the law allowed - one was a trade union
organizer and member of the communist party that was followed to and from work
every day for many years - his only explanation (after all they did not put
every member of the communist party under surveillance) was that his route to
work led past the Soviet embassy.

Another was the longtime editor of the communist newspaper Friheten
("Freedom"), Arne Jørgensen [1], who told me about how he for a period
regularly had agents of the security services stop him in the streets to
rattle him by e.g. commenting on details of private conversations he had the
previous day with his wife at home.

This was reported regularly for years, but was laughed off as conspiracy
theories, until it got a point where it could not be denied any more, and the
Lund report[2] revealed extensive illegal surveillance.

Former prime minister Willoch defended the illegal surveillance against e.g.
AKP-ML (Maoists ) with arguing they were an illegal organization. But no
decision to outlaw them have ever been made.

During the writing of the Lund report, it became clear that one of the
members, Berge Furre [3], a theologian and former Socialist Left (SV)
politician, was still under illegal surveillance _during_ his work on the
report into the illegal surveillance.

None of the people involved were charged with anything. The security services
changed name from POT to PST, and everything else remained largely unchanged.

Years later, when the first reports of Norwegian complicity in NSA
surveillance was reported, the paper that reported it was pushed into a
retraction after Grandhagen, the then leader of the notoriously tight-lipped
military sercurity service uncharacteristically "took the blame" for reported
surveillance that for every other country in the same document had turned out
to be civilian surveillance of their own citizens, and claimed that Norway was
somehow feeding the NSA metadata on phone conversations in Afghanistan of a
volume that meant Norway somehow must be tapping every phoneline in the
country.

Nobody in the press admitted to asking follow up questions about why military
intelligence would suddenly gie out details like that, nor about why the US
would be interested given reports that the US at the time themselves did not
just capture meta data, but full voice recordings from Afghanistan.

Nobody reacted. Both Dagbladet and Aftenposten (major newspapers) deleted a
slew of comments in their forums asking why nobody had asked questions about
this of Grandhagen.

Like with the surveillance uncovered by the Lund report, any questions about
this now gets met just with a shrug.

Then a couple of years ago, Aftenposten reported about a lot of unregistered
IMSI catchers in Oslo. Again the intelligence services just insisted they were
looking into it, after which the IMSI catchers "disappeared".

There's decades of history of this bullshit in Norway, and decades of
experience showing that most people just refuse to question the official
stories until things like the Lund report, and then go back to quietly
accepting the official stories.

Part of it is probably that it has been _relatively_ benign in Norway. No
secret prisons, very little government interference in the press, etc. - it's
mostly been just surveillance, so few people have been affected, and those who
have been affected have been far out on the political fringes.

But I see no reason why that would change now.

[1] Norwegian wikipedia entry as I don't think he's covered in the English
one:
[https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_J%C3%B8rgensen_(redakt%C3...](https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_J%C3%B8rgensen_\(redakt%C3%B8r\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund_Report)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berge_Furre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berge_Furre)

~~~
fyrstenberg
> security services engaged in illegal surveillance mostly of the Norwegian
> left wing.

IMO how you put it is perhaps a bit misleading -

You should probably point out that it was the left wing surveilling each
other. More specifically it was the Socialist Labour party (AP) which
conducted surveillance of the communist AKP-ML (and NKP) for the reason of
being in control of the left-wing agenda in Norway.

Considering that AKP-ML was part of the stay-behind groups, known as "Gladio"
(something that ironically (?) sprung out of NATO [0]), armed and trained PLO
and marxist revolutionaries in Israel, and had networking with other similar
ideological extreme radical left groups such as Red Army Fraction (Germany,
Japan, Italy), Black Panthers and Weather Underground in the US, as well as
IRA in Ireland and close ties with Pol Pot[1] and other groups in Asia. And
they were actually planning armed revolution in Norway - the surveillance was
called for (ref. Willoch). However, the labour party's close ties with the IC
and media in Norway was peculiar (at the time there were only a single
national government owned TV/radio broadcaster, NRK, rooted in the labour
party) and these three "fractions" held meetings frequently.

> No secret prisons

Partly correct - in Norway some people were thrown into mental hospitals
instead. A famous case would the Kaare Torvholm [2] case which got arrested,
together with the sheriff and a deputy (the equivalent of) and sent to mental
institution which lead a local newspaper to raise the question if a
"schizophrenic epidemic" had reached the shores (later picked up by VG, a
national newspaper). This for reporting discrepancies with money (pension
funds and more) in the fishing industry which was used as part of intelligence
networks (at the time).

As the original thread topic:

Norwegian military has been conducting surveillance for a long time, illegally
and including Norwegian citizens. The process right now is to push through
laws which allows for this sort of surveillance (and let them keep the data
they have, which is already shared with US and UK). These laws will just
"harmonize" the Norwegian laws to those of the UK and partly US. These
operations centers are located several places, not just in this region, but
from the west of Norway (Haakonsvern) to Troms in the north (Setermoen) and
involves what is called "svarte operasjoner" ("black ops" in English). One of
these operations got public attention some years ago when it was revealed that
they were spying on the King's email traffic [3].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio)

[1]:
[https://cambodiatokampuchea.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/norwegi...](https://cambodiatokampuchea.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/norwegian-
delegation-1978/)

[2]:
[https://www.fiskersiden.no/forum/index.php?/topic/22444-fisk...](https://www.fiskersiden.no/forum/index.php?/topic/22444-fiskeren-k%C3%A5re-
torvholm-og-fraglene/)

[2]:
[http://detsomstatennorgeskjuler.origo.no/-/bulletin/show/548...](http://detsomstatennorgeskjuler.origo.no/-/bulletin/show/548522_kaare-
torvholm-saken-historien-om-stay-behind-amp-fi?ref=checkpoint)

[3]: [https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/forsvaret/forsvaret-
bekl...](https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/forsvaret/forsvaret-beklager-
snoking-i-kongens-e-post/a/576167/)

~~~
vidarh
> You should probably point out that it was the left wing surveilling each
> other. More specifically it was the Socialist Labour party (AP) which
> conducted surveillance of the communist AKP-ML (and NKP) for the reason of
> being in control of the left-wing agenda in Norway.

AP is centrist social democrats, and while an AP government _started_ the
surveillance, it continued through governments that included every single one
of the right wing and centre-right parties. It's misleading to suggest it was
"just" one left wing party keeping an eye on the others.

> Considering that AKP-ML

... notably the security services never managed to prove that they constituted
a threat in any way - if they had, they'd had justification under the law to
carry out legal surveillance of them. Their "training" consisted pretty much
of running around in the forest with toy weapons - you get much more relevant
training as part of the compulsory conscription (at least back then when most
men did serve).

It was right to keep an eye on them given the company they kept, but there was
never any legitimate basis for more, as the total lack of evidence of anything
criminal even despite the invasive illegal surveillance they were subject to
found.

But focusing on AKP is also misleading in that they were by far the smallest
of the groups subject to illegal surveillance. By the early 90's - when they
were still subject to various surveillance - they were (as were NKP) down to a
membership of about ~500 or so (for AKP my knowledge of that is indirect; for
NKP I saw their data first hand at the time).. SF/SV surpassed both of them in
size very early on (the different trajectories was one reason why the attempt
at merging SF and NKP failed - NKP pushed for too much influence relative to
their declining membership base, and the trends continued on both sides.

Both AKP and NKP merited surveillance at various points, and SF probably did
too for a short while, but the important point is that we know from the
illegal surveillance that the illegal surveillance never uncovered evidence
that they actually posed any risks, and we know that it uncovered nothing of
note that wouldn't have been uncovered with legal surveillance. That is the
big problem - they kept up invasive surveillance for decades even after their
own results showed it served no purpose, and escalated it to the point of
openly harassing people.

If anything, the evidence is clear that the Soviets for example focused on
people with ties to AP, because they were the ones with power, and much more
useful.

As for AKPs various sympathies, they certainly had "contact" with lots of
nasty groups, but having met people that were centrally involved in AKP at the
time, it's pretty clear most of their "contact" with various groups was
severely exaggerated - they were much less prominent than they wanted people
to think. But the security services would have known this given the level of
surveillance they were under. They'd have known with just legal surveillance
too.

They were academics that talked a lot and did little, and were idealists with
wildly unrealistic ideas about how the rest of the world worked. A story that
illustrates just how naive they were involves when they sent a delegation to
Albania, which under Enver Hoxha was the "shining light" of Europe for the
Maoists. But the problem was most of them at the time were hippies and had
long hair, and Albania did not tolerate long hair on men at the time. So they
had to cut it at the airport. But then the border guards refused to let them
in as their passport photos no longer matched their appearance, so the
delegation was not allowed entry and had to return. That's the type of thing
that happens to unwanted groupies, not well respected guests.. I have no
reason to doubt that story, as I heard it told in front of one of the people
that was part of said delegation, and he did not correct any of it.

The worst part given this that for all the security services obsession with
the small left wing groups, the vast majority of political violence in Norway
during the entire period was from the far right directed at the left (the
exception being some violence directed at neo nazis predominantly by anarchist
groups tied to Blitz). AKP in particular was the victim of multiple terror
incidents, and e.g. the security services have in retrospect admitted they for
example made use of the firebombing of one of AKPs book stores as an excuse to
go through AKP documents under the guise of investigating it, rather than
focus on solving the crime. When AKP claimed that documents had gone missing
at the time, they were ridiculed for it in the media, because "everyone"
blindly accepted the police claims that nobody would that.

What we've seen is that the illegal surveillance has validated strongly that
the laws were flexible enough as they were: The illegal surveillance uncovered
no risks that there's any indication would not have been known if they had
stuck to the legal surveillance. Meanwhile the far right went basically
unchecked in the 70's and 80's until the level of violence escalated too far
to be possible to ignore. It took years to establish the same kind of overview
of the neo nazi groups that were actually violent as they had on a continuous
basis for irrelevant pretend-revolutionaries who never posed a threat.

But if they'd stuck to the law they'd have been unable to e.g. harass people
in public by telling them to their face how they'd taken all privacy away from
them.

------
strictnein
> "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.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Why must intelligence be secret?

~~~
strictnein
Why doesn't Apple release their internal roadmap? Because others would take
advantage of that information.

Same thing with intelligence. People don't know your gaps in intelligence
gathering if it's all secret. If they do, they'd take advantage of of that
information and just work around them.

------
ancorevard
This 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.

~~~
mtgx
How do you know they only "filter for non-Norwegians"? According to some
people in this thread, the intelligence agencies should operate in complete
secrecy.

~~~
oh_sigh
I don't think OP made that claim - merely that _if_ that is how they were
operating with the dragnet, it would not be illegal.

------
willstrafach
Can 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.

------
erokar
If 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
NRK (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-
da...](https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/antennene-som-samler-inn-data-om-
norske-borgere-1.13881286)

[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-1.139...](https://www.nrk.no/ytring/e-tjenesten-folger-norsk-
lov-1.13941834)

~~~
Neuron4ger
To be fair, neither VG, Dagbladet or TV2 have covered this, at all. These are
all major news agencies.

------
sigmar
"Potentially" from the headline was was dropped from the title.

~~~
strictnein
And not "Norway Potentially Used NSA Tech..." but "Norway Used NSA Tech for
Potentially Illegal Spying".

~~~
Scipio_Afri
The 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)

------
45h34jh53k4j
There 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
You're telling people to go back to sleep, we should be telling you to wake
up.

~~~
unit91
I think your sarcasm detector is malfunctioning this morning.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Sarcasm is low form of communication. It doesn't work.

