Norway’s Police Intelligence Agency (PST) has been given permission to store all comments written on public platforms for five years and maybe more.
Following the announcement by Minister of Justice, Enger Mehl, human rights advocates condemned it as having a “chilling effect” on the public debate, while provincial data authorities claimed it would result in “limitless gathering” of potentially sensitive information.
Ms Mehl (pictured) said the PST needed to monitor and store what was written on public platforms in order to chart and uncover potential threats to Norwegian society.
“We face new and unknown threats that it is important for the PST to be able to pick up, for example, development of a violent climate of extremism,” Ms Mehl said at a press conference.
“The PST has to follow the internet, where potentially dangers players are.”
She said the Government wanted to make sure the PST was able to uncover new threats, and follow developments in extremism, espionage and possible terrorism.
Officials at Norway’s Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet were both sceptical and critical.
Authority Director, Line Coll said the move involved limitless collection of information about Norwegian citizens’ activity on the internet, which could give the PST an intimate glimpse into everyone’s lives.
“It overlooks the fundamental principles of privacy and lacks control mechanisms that would preserve our human rights in a satisfactory manner,” Ms Coll said.
Head of the PST, Hedvig Moe said the new law would not involve any massive surveillance.
“We won’t be reading folks’ email or invade sites that are password-protected,” Ms Hedvig said.
The PST had wanted to store data for 15 years but the Government reduced that to five.
The proposal is likely to win majority support in Parliament, since Opposition parties were poised to offer PST even broader authority to store information from open sources.
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