Response to interpellation 2022/23:137 on secret coercive measures and privacy
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerned secret coercive measures and privacy. M believes that law enforcement authorities need more powerful tools, including expanded opportunities for secret coercive measures for preventive purposes, to combat gang crime 1. M argues that the balance between effective crime fighting and personal privacy must be shifted 2 3. M advocates that preliminary investigations should not become public until the trial is over 3. M is prepared to give the police and prosecutors the opportunity to use coercive measures even against persons under 15 years of age 3. M believes that the focus must shift towards effective crime fighting. V expresses concern about a surveillance society 4. V argues that the police must use existing resources effectively 5. V wants to build a just society based on safety and mutual trust 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Gudrun Nordborg has asked me what measures I intend to take to guarantee a strong protection of personal privacy in the use of secret coercive measures. I would first just like to emphasize that I think it is excellent that that question is raised. The balance between effective crime fighting on the one hand and personal privacy on the other is complex in every era but is undeniably brought to a head in our time.
My starting point is that we have seen a frightening development regarding gang crime, not least in Sweden, in recent years. It is a crime that is a threat to the system, and my and the government's task is therefore to do everything in our power to reverse that development.
To do this, powerful measures will be required, and an important part of that is to provide law enforcement authorities, the police and prosecutors in particular, with new and effective tools in that work. This includes, among other things, expanded possibilities to use covert coercive measures also for a preventive and precautionary purpose. We intend to submit several such proposals during this year.
At the same time, it is of course the case that all provisions on secret coercive measures must live up to high standards of legal certainty. This applies to both the rules themselves and their application. There are several mechanisms aimed precisely at legal certainty, which have the purpose of ensuring the protection of individuals' rights when secret coercive measures are used. For example, there are requirements for judicial review and also requirements that public data protection officers shall monitor the individual's privacy interest.
There is also a comprehensive oversight system. Oversight is primarily exercised by the Security and Integrity Protection Board. To ensure that the Board has the best possible conditions to carry out its important mission, the Government has also increased the appropriations to the Board. Other authorities can also exercise oversight. In addition to this, the Government makes annual reports to the Riksdag, which the interpellor takes up, with an account of the use of secret coercive measures. This also means that parliamentary control is an important part of this system.
Even though personal privacy must be protected, the authorities must also have the ability to counter the gang crime and the serious organized crime that limits life, freedom, safety, and everyday life for people across our entire country, not least in particularly affected areas. For that ability, the possibility of being able to use secret coercive measures in certain cases is completely crucial. The Government will not hesitate to do what is required to reverse the development that we have now experienced for far too long. Ultimately, it is about the citizens' safety, but it is also about safeguarding the free and open society.
Gudrun Nordborg (V)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for Justice for the answer.
We agree on certain things, but not on everything. Of course, we agree that crime must be limited and fought in the best possible way. The question is how.
Is repeated use of secret surveillance the best way? The Minister of Justice advocates for it. As a member of the Left Party, I desire an intense prioritization of other social interventions. But let us also reflect on what secret surveillance means today. What forms does it take?
In the government's report, the agencies account for what they have done. During the year 2021, it concerns the following:
In the question regarding secret interception of electronic communication, there were 3,926 permits concerning primarily 1,384 persons.
In the question regarding secret surveillance of electronic communications, there were 12,989 permits concerning 3,310 persons.
In the question regarding secret camera surveillance, there were 242 permits concerning 235 persons.
In the question regarding secret room bugging, there were 166 permits concerning 79 persons.
In the question regarding secret data interception, there were 589 permits.
In the question regarding the preventive law, that is, measures to prevent certain serious crimes, there were 0 decisions.
Regarding the acquisition act, that is, the acquisition of information on electronic communications that has occurred in the law enforcement agencies' intelligence activities, there were 599 decisions.
Furthermore, it should be added that Säpo has also acted, which has led to 494 decisions.
I mention this to show that it is not a matter of a few cases, and many people are primarily affected - sometimes additional people.
Just as the Minister for Justice also mentioned, further work is underway in the Government Offices to present even more repressive proposals, including regarding the expanded use of secret wiretapping, greater possibilities to use preventive coercive measures without suspicion of a crime, as well as the investigation of visitation zones.
What will be the cumulative effect of this? The Minister of Justice hopes that the measures will create safety and trust for the state from the citizens' side. I see a concern with the successive steps towards the emergence - we are not there yet - of an unpleasant surveillance society. It is a series of agency decisions that are being made, and we stretch boundaries all the time when it comes to constitutionally protected and convention-protected human rights.
Can the Minister for Justice also see that there is a risk that the citizens' trust in our social system will be undermined by the decisions?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I thank Gudrun Nordborg for a straightforward question. I will give a straightforward answer: Yes, I can see those risks.
There is undoubtedly a risk when we move the balance point between effective crime fighting on one hand and personal privacy and other rule-of-law values on the other in the direction of more effective crime fighting. Trust in openness and transparency, if not undermined, is at least chipped away at. That is a reason why it is extraordinarily important that we have that debate. It is a real conflict of interest that is latent, not new. Nor is it that one interest trumps the other. In practice, it is a matter of a balancing act, and the conditions for that balancing act also change over time. One speaks of proportionality as an important part of the balancing act, i.e., that there should be a reasonable balance between goals and means. That balance, the proportionality, is naturally affected by how society develops otherwise.
My own journey on the issue is such that I come from a very clear privacy corner, but I have moved myself for the simple reason that I believe societal development has taken such a turn that it is of extraordinarily great value that our law enforcement agencies, under the control that is carried out by courts, data protection officers, supervision and other, are given more powerful tools to have better conditions to both solve already committed crimes and preferably prevent serious crime.
Let us look at the concrete issues concerning wiretapping. Yes, I am of the opinion that more people risk being wiretapped. The simple reason is that far too many and ever more are involved in a type of crime that makes it justified to use secret coercive measures, including as is today within the framework of a preliminary investigation, and it will nevertheless be the main rule even moving forward. But it is quite true that the Riksdag has pushed forward, and the Government Offices have inherited, an investigation that also aims at the possibility of using secret coercive measures for crime prevention purposes. It is a possibility that exists today.
Gudrun Nordborg mentioned, among other things, the preventive laws, which aim to counter terrorism and espionage. There are tools there that the government and I believe should also be placed at the disposal of the law enforcement authorities in order to prevent, not least, the shootings and explosions we have seen recently.
It is inherent in the nature of the matter that more people will potentially be subject to wiretapping. But this we largely control based on how we design the legislation. It can be clearly defined in different ways, for example by speaking of group and organization. It is also a matter of delimiting just organized crime, which already occurs in various places in the legislation. One can also discuss which crime categories should be covered by the possibility. I have seen a number of referral responses regarding our desire to proceed with preventive coercive measures. They can, in principle, support that law enforcement agencies also receive the possibility, but they may think that there should be fewer crimes that should be subject to the possibility – and so on.
Let me conclude where I began. I gladly acknowledge that there is a conflict of interest and that one must be aware that additional risks and other factors will shift the balance point – even if that shift is, in my opinion, necessary.
Gudrun Nordborg (V)
Madam Speaker! I understand the position, and I have heard it from police and prosecutors. I can understand that when one is in the middle of tough processes, with a lot of violence around them, one wants to resort to everything. But boundaries must exist.
Let us look at the legal certainty, that is to say, that there should be a judicial review. We can see that regarding these cases, there are extremely few rejections. Do the police and prosecutors always get what they want? Are the applications well-substantiated? Are those who apply conscious and restrictive when they seek their permits?
The public representative is a kind of guarantor, but we must hope that these representatives act with utmost seriousness at all times and raise objections if it is justified. We do not really know that.
Notification is also provided to the person who is the subject of a decision when the measure is completed. If there is a preliminary investigation or an indictment, one may see parts of the material, but if it does not lead to legal action, a notification shall be received. However, it is difficult to determine what this notification shall contain; it is more that something has occurred, not what has been gathered regarding a person. How deep was the violation? Here, I also feel concern.
Several of these measures involve wiretapping, documentation, and reading of material where more than the person who is specifically pointed out is involved and becomes included in this. Many say that this does not matter much if one has clean milk in the bag; then one does not need to be afraid of this. But I feel a concern in view of the societal development we have politically that in the future, more groups can be drawn in in a difficult manner.
I can also see in the reports that some success stories are being reported to the government. I am pleased that these cases were resolved because they were serious cases, but I still think the balance is difficult.
When it comes to solving crimes, we have failed. We have given very many resources to the police. But especially in the Stockholm area, people are now working in a different way by notifying special events and can thereby finally cooperate between different investigations and share information with each other. Now we see effects of this in the form of arrests and detentions, which leads forward.
It was thought that the unified Police Authority would have functioned long ago and that the substantial resource reinforcements that have been given to the police would have had an effect.
I believe that we must find many more ways to tackle serious crime. We must provide the police with resources but also demand that they are used effectively and not lean on "if we had had secret coercive measures it would have gone much better." That argumentation worries me.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Let me also begin this round by confirming that there is a latent conflict of interest between effective crime fighting and personal privacy. It is in no way new, but rather a quite eternal question when it comes to the balance in the rule of law. It is, however, not static but is influenced by societal development.
My perception is that if one has an experience-based approach to the issue, there are patterns in what is demanded by law enforcement authorities, not just in Sweden. We certainly have a brutal peak on this iceberg with 62 fatal shootings during the last year and a number of explosions, and we all know how the start of this year has looked.
This undoubtedly stands out in an international comparison, but we are still not alone in having problems with serious organized crime. Roughly the same things are demanded everywhere, but boiled down to the Swedish experience, it is about secrecy barriers between authorities. There is also a privacy aspect here.
There is, however, no doubt that the difficulties in sharing information between, for example, school and social services in relation to law enforcement agencies is a major limitation when it comes to the possibility to both prevent and solve crimes. It is also a privacy issue.
We know from experience that the probability of both preventing and solving crimes increases through the presence of fixed surveillance cameras. It is also a privacy aspect, but there is solid empiricism that demonstrates the effectiveness of that tool.
A preliminary investigation becomes public when a prosecution is filed. There is an openness and a transparency in that, and also a privacy aspect. But it is clear that the effect of it is that a lot of time can pass from the moment a prosecution is filed until the court hearing itself begins, for example, the influence on witnesses and other things.
It may therefore be justified to say that the preliminary investigation should not become public until the trial is over. This would greatly streamline crime fighting because many witnesses would then dare to participate all the way. On the other hand, public access, transparency, and privacy interests would suffer as a result of this.
It is thus a latent trade-off, but I mean that societal development means that the weight of emphasis should be shifted. I am, however, fully aware that one must then safeguard the interest of privacy in a different way.
I find the Stockholm reference interesting. But to make it even more complicated: Stockholm's development over the last few months underlines that this crime is creeping far down in age. If a 15-year-old or 16-year-old is suspected of a crime, the police or prosecutor can empty the young person's mobile phone, but one cannot do that if the one who detonated or shot is 14 years old. It is de facto a major limitation for the possibility of solving the crimes in these concrete cases.
Should we give the police and prosecutors the opportunity to use coercive measures even for younger ages? I am inclined to say yes to that. But there is no doubt that, in addition to the interest of privacy, the question of where the limit should be drawn when it concerns children and young people will also arise.
This underscores, however, that there is something very justified in the tools that the law enforcement authorities are requesting, and I am prepared to give them "the benefit of the doubt". It does not, however, mean that I do not see that there are, for example, privacy risks that must be handled in a different way.
Gudrun Nordborg (V)
Madam Speaker! Now, interesting new questions have arisen. This matter of publicity and secrecy in various ways, we must handle in a smarter way than what is happening today.
Decisions have been made that some preliminary hearings can be held, also before the main trial, and I believe that this can protect witnesses and others. There are ways to proceed in that regard.
No matter how we turn and twist the procedural questions, we must see which structures nourish this criminality. Sweden was for a long time a country with lower crime than many other countries, and there was a direct connection to the strong welfare state with functioning care and school and with access to work and housing. But not least the privatizations have led to several places becoming politically abandoned, which for many years has opened up for criminality without society forcefully opposing it.
Vänsterpartiet has worked and is working to ensure that we have a society where no one has reason to see crime as a solution. We want to give all children – regarding the young – an upbringing that gives them a good start in life, from preschool to school and into the first job. We want to seriously reduce violence and crime by building a just society based on safety and mutual trust. But the simple and obvious thing that everyone needs seems to be the very hardest.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! It is clear that the long-term work is about other things than secret coercive measures. It is, of course, about societal development in large. I also believe - just to say it - that the rule of law and the social state, as it is called, must step forward together to a very high degree, not least regarding the young perpetrators and criminals or, for that part, young people on the slide who have not yet ended up in crime.
I must take the opportunity to say that I think there is sometimes a simplified division where the rule of law would stand for the hard and the welfare state for the soft. I actually believe that even the harder measures in the welfare state will need to be taken in a different way than until now. It is clearly being put to the test now when we see children at very young ages engaging in very serious crime and who are in the clutches of truly serious criminals. In the societal development that we are now seeing, our entire order—everything, one could say—is fundamentally at stake: the point in time when social services can take sharp intervention measures without parents' consent, the effects of different interventions from social services, what type of housing children who are taken into care should be in, the interface between the municipal and the state form of criminal justice, the age of criminal responsibility, the age at which secret coercive measures can be used, as well as the question of sentence reductions.
The rule of law and the welfare state must, therefore, undoubtedly work in tandem. When it comes to secret coercive measures, which is the main issue for our discussion today, they can also have an important function in preventing crime. They shall be used with judgment, and we shall have various privacy, protection, and legal certainty guarantees when we use them, but we must shift the focus towards effective crime fighting.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.