OSINFO - Open Sources Information

Text of report by Swedish nation-wide liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter website, on 10 April

[Report by Swedish news agency TT: "Proposed Bill on Security Service Surveillance"]

The Swedish Security Service should be authorized to use telephone tapping and camera surveillance in the future as well when investigating illegal paramilitary activities, according to a government proposal submitted to the Council on Legislation. The legal category of illegal paramilitary activities, was created in the 1940's. Today, it mainly concerns criminal groups that belong to the white-power movement and radical left-wing groups suspected of wanting to overthrow the democratic system. The government's investigators proposed last autumn that the category be eliminated, because there was concern that the use of telephone tapping, for example, would become far too widespread. But the government has decided to listen to the crime-fighting agency's wishes. The proposed bill would add three additional offences for which the security police could use telephone tapping and other so-called coercive means: crimes against civil liberties, such as threats to politicians and journalists, the financing of terrorism, and industrial espionage controlled by a foreign state. The bill does not affect the work of the normal police force, because the main rule is that telephone tapping and camera surveillance are only employed when the suspected offence carries a minimum sentence of two years in prison.

Source: Dagens Nyheter, website, Stockholm, in Swedish 10 Apr 08