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Deutsch: Norwegische Gruppen schließen sich dem Justizzentrum gegen das schwed...

The Norwegian organisation of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has filed a petition, known as a Third Party Intervention, in support of the case brought to the European Court of Human Rights challenging the Sweden's FRA law that authorizes the Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt - FRA) to wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden's borders.

The legislative package which was passed by the Parliament of Sweden on 18 June 2008 and took effect on 1 January 2009, was fiercely criticized and opposed in Sweden by the public, opposition parties, the appeal courts for Skåne and Blekinge, Sweden's Customs Agency, the Data Inspection Board and even politicians belonging to the alliance government.

A case was filed in July 2008 by the Sweden-based Justice Center (Centrum för Rättvisa - CFR), which argued FRA's expanded powers to monitor cross-border communications traffic violated Article 8 and Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing the citizens' right to privacy and ensuring the citizens with the possibility to hold national authorities to account for possible human rights violations.

According to Lawyer Robin Lööf of the European University Institute in Florence who reported the Swedish law to the European Commission in August 2008, the law is in clear breach of fundamental rights governing the movement of goods and services in the European Union.

Clarence Crafoord, head attorney with CFR welcomed the Third Party Intervention of the Norwegian group considering the initiative "offers additional perspectives about the problems with the FRA-law and it's good that it makes clear to the European Court of Human Rights that the law affects both Swedes and citizens in other countries."

The Norwegian petition cites a report issued by the Norwegian Postal and Telecoms Agency in November 2008 which showed that most electronic communications traffic into and out of Norway as well as a large part of the domestic traffic passes through Sweden, the Swedish law therefore affecting the privacy rights of Norwegian citizens.

Although the Swedish government brought some changes to the law with an amendment in September 2008, in ICJ-Norway's opinion the changes apply only to Swedish citizens or people residing in Sweden. The group believes that Norwegian citizens' communications are the "explicit target for the secret monitoring by Swedish authorities".

"Norwegian citizens are still left lawless under the present legislation.(...) They are faced with the constant risk that their private communications which happen to pass Sweden's borders could be subject to interception and be subsequently stored, distributed, and misused by and at the absolute discretion of the Swedish authorities," writes ICJ-Norway in its petition.

ICJ-Norway points out a series a deficiencies in the formulation of the law which includes vague definitions of the targeted communications, the lack of clear regulations on information storing, the lack of independent judicial control and the lack of possibility of response for the citizens whose communications are intercepted.

Norwegian group joins case against Sweden's wiretapping law (13.02.2009)
http://www.thelocal.se/17578/20090213/

Swedish surveillance law 'breaks EU rules' (13.08.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/13664/20080813/

Goverment getting closer to surveillance law compromise (25.09.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/14554/20080925/

Snoop law to be tried in European court (15.07.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/13052/20080715/

EDRI-gram: ENDitorial: Wiretapping - the Swedish way (27.08.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.16/wiretapping-swedish-way