The last couple of days there have been unrelated articles telling the story of more and more control put in place in Southern Scandinavia / Denmark.
Here are summaries of two newspaper articles:
1. From the the frontpage of Politiken on 2014.03.05:
A new proposal to counter hacker attacks includes reducing the safe keeping of personally sensitive data in communications between the citizens and the public administration. As a result the Center for Cybersecurity will be exempt from the general legislation regarding such data, is allowed to hand over these data to foreign security agencies, is allowed to brake any kind of encryption without prior permission from a court and the the timeframe for deleting old messages is significantly increased. Also the surveillance is to be transferred from a civilian office to the office of military intelligence.
2.Today there was another headline on the frontpage of the Information. One historian, Bent Jensen who headed a governementsponsored of the cold war period in Danish politics was denied to publish information from several state etities, including the State Dempartment and the intelligence service of the police. 190 requests were denied. Cases were in the period between 1958-1991, many of the denials were more than 40 years old. The historian also discovered that some cases had ”disappeared” or were made to disappear subsequently. Some people worry that in this fashion the history is monopolized by the Government and the secret services.
As an aside, the prime minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, has since the Snowden story began, refused to comment or answer any question on the NSA leaks, even when the opposition asked for a meeting. Whether related or not, last week it was in the papers that she is one of only few candidates to a top position in the EU when some of them retire this Autumn.
Over the last years there have been other steps taken, step by step more and more. And at the same time as a lecturer at the institute noted the public institutions and the political sphere become more and more immune to critizism, even from educated and well argued people. "immune to criticism" is a polite way to say that democracy is on retreat or has been replaced.
I left the title of the post a bit open, maybe there are other small stories from other (small/large) countries.
Here are summaries of two newspaper articles:
1. From the the frontpage of Politiken on 2014.03.05:
A new proposal to counter hacker attacks includes reducing the safe keeping of personally sensitive data in communications between the citizens and the public administration. As a result the Center for Cybersecurity will be exempt from the general legislation regarding such data, is allowed to hand over these data to foreign security agencies, is allowed to brake any kind of encryption without prior permission from a court and the the timeframe for deleting old messages is significantly increased. Also the surveillance is to be transferred from a civilian office to the office of military intelligence.
2.Today there was another headline on the frontpage of the Information. One historian, Bent Jensen who headed a governementsponsored of the cold war period in Danish politics was denied to publish information from several state etities, including the State Dempartment and the intelligence service of the police. 190 requests were denied. Cases were in the period between 1958-1991, many of the denials were more than 40 years old. The historian also discovered that some cases had ”disappeared” or were made to disappear subsequently. Some people worry that in this fashion the history is monopolized by the Government and the secret services.
As an aside, the prime minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, has since the Snowden story began, refused to comment or answer any question on the NSA leaks, even when the opposition asked for a meeting. Whether related or not, last week it was in the papers that she is one of only few candidates to a top position in the EU when some of them retire this Autumn.
Over the last years there have been other steps taken, step by step more and more. And at the same time as a lecturer at the institute noted the public institutions and the political sphere become more and more immune to critizism, even from educated and well argued people. "immune to criticism" is a polite way to say that democracy is on retreat or has been replaced.
I left the title of the post a bit open, maybe there are other small stories from other (small/large) countries.
