The Privacy Dilemma

The roulette ball of privacy. Click picture to expand to full-size.



I read that the massive Swedish objections against the Swedish Big Brother style Surveillance Law, "FRA-lagen" has turned into demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament. This might sound bigger than it is, in international terms. This is no anti-G8 demonstrations with masked demonstrators and burning cars, but nice bill-paying, middle-class Swedes turning up outside the parliament with signs saying "stop the FRA law" and stuff like that, giving speeches and so forth. However, I am not sure what the protesters want to achieve and even if it's possible. This is because of the privacy dilemma.

The Mr Green corporate blog rarely deals with political issues, but since the so called "FRA-lag" is making it possible for the government to legally listen to the emails, phone conversations, surfing and all things digitally performed by the Swedish citizens and their friends, we are concerned even from a corporate point.

The monitoring is allegedly done to protect Swedish interests both in Sweden and abroad. The information obtained is traded with other intelligence agencies to for example protecting the Swedish forces in Afghanistan. This was of course done before, but without legal grounds.

Protesters do not like the FRA-lag for different reasons. One main objection against the law seems to be the violation of privacy, especially on the Internet, posed by the FRA-lag. On an individual basis it is apparent to many people that the FRA-lag is not good for you. Still, what kind of safeguards or changed procedures would satisfy both the privacy needs and the other objectives of the public and nation state?

The question is of course what privacy is as such. And what the possible benefit of the FRA-lag is. These two things need to be carefully balanced.

Someone would like to be able to show his or her face in public without being haunted or pursued for his or hers views or what he or she recently read at the library or the web sites visited during the last web surf sessions.

Others would like to be able to send bomb recipes over the Internet without being monitored. After all, they are chemists and not terrorists.

Others again would like to have a lot of immigrants monitored because they might be terrorists.

Another group wants the Swedish government to do all it can to protect the forces in Afghanistan. If this means monitoring a few "innocent", well so be it.

Privacy is very subjective and therefore it is hard to agree on a constitution for privacy. However, without a starting point for privacy, there is not possible to stop future "FRA-lagar". It does not look easy to find such common ground.

Privacy could consist of some corner stones:

1. The right to think anything

2. The right to read anything

3. The right to meet anyone

4. The right to say anything

...anonymously, without prior censorship or monitoring. However, it is evident that even something as basic as this, does not make sense.

There are limitations:

1. Agreed censorship, such as censorship of child pornography or Mein Kampf

2. Public security

3. Agreed freedom of speech limitations, such as defamation

4. National security

If you read certain banned literature in some countries, you will be detained (i.e. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in Germany or child pornography in Sweden).

You can not meet just anyone. If you meet an international criminal or terrorist you will be monitored and perhaps even detained. You can think anything, but if it is a plan to commit major crimes, you may be punished even for planning them in your head only for public security reasons.

If you say things that are tarnishment, defamation or otherwise aimed at starting criminal offenses such as organizing a mob (without the proper demonstration credentials) or telling people to commit a major criminal offense, you may be stopped. Also you may be stopped if you use someone's copyrighted work without the proper license and without fair use provisions.

National security reasons, such as the need to have some information to trade with other states or the need to protect the state as such may also limit privacy, just as the "FRA-lag" is used.

The "FRA-lagen" gives absolute power to the government, without proper monitoring of the panopticon IT solution used by the authority FRA entitled with carrying out the monitoring. It also limits our perceived freedom on the Internet.

However, as you might agree, I think this Internet freedom is just a perceived freedom. We never had absolute freedom or privacy on the Internet. There was always someone there listening. This happens on a DNS level, at your ISP, in the cables and so forth. I am not talking about hackers. Further, as long as we are organized in national states or countries I find it hard to believe that we can achieve absolute privacy. This is because enforcement mechanisms must be tightly connected to the limitations of privacy, hence catch 22-creating a need for less privacy.

The privacy dilemma is of course that we want privacy to ourselves, but we want to limit privacy to most wrong-doers. If you find someone who argues for absolute privacy to the fullest extent, I think you will at the same time find someone who is willing to leave the concept of countries or national states as such. I am not saying that Mrs Ayn Rand was wrong, but let's not move so fast now, shall we?

So if you protest against the "FRA-lag" - what exactly are you suggesting instead?

My personal take on this is that a "FRA-lag" is indeed needed, preferrably with proper safeguards and watchdogs, but we also need to be able to use strong cryptography and tunneled surfing with a lot of noise inserted to make sure that we make it harder for all the people that today are listening but should not. This should be a right in the constitution - because it is not evident. For example, just a few years ago strong encryption was deemed as a weapon and subject to export controls in Sweden.

Still, even strong encryption will never create absolute privacy, because it is a sham.

Mikael Pawlo
Managing Director
Mr Green