Will let PST store information from open sources for 15 years

Today, the Police Security Service (PST) is not allowed to store openly available information from, for example, online newspaper articles, open public registers, open discussions in social media, comment fields and blogs.

Now the Solberg government is proposing an amendment to the law that allows for such collection and storage for up to 15 years.

The Bar Association says they should properly review the bill and write a consultation response, but are already critical.

– Based on what is described now, this will include everything we ordinary people write in the comments field, on Facebook or other places where you have ongoing debates. With today’s technology, PST will be able to scrape and systematically store everything that is written by all of us in a database with it. It’s obviously quite violent, says Jon Wessel-Aas who is the leader of the Norwegian Bar Association.

He says people then have to reckon with everything they write in a comment field, more or less well considered, will be stored at PST, for some possible future use, even if you later choose to delete it . You can be confronted with that many years later. – It has a privacy page, it indirectly becomes a large personal register of what people have said and meant. But it will also obviously have a cooling effect on freedom of expression, that people will refuse to participate in public debates in open forums. And perhaps those who PST is most looking for will go even more under the digital world to put it that way, with encrypted services and discussion forums that are much more difficult for them to have an overview of and thus work against their purpose, says Wessel- Aas to NRK.

PST: – Must be purpose-driven

PST chief Hans Sverre Sjøvold says he understands the objections, but says the collection and storage should be purpose-driven.

– We do not want to have an overview of the various debates that take place in Norwegian society, which definitely do not concern our mission, he says before he ends.

– But it must be possible to discuss privacy and security in the same room. Because the state that is supposed to ensure the privacy of the citizens must also ensure the security of the citizens.

• withdraw the bill The bill is probably one of the last outgoing Minister of Justice Monica Mæland sends out for consultation before she resigns from the rest of the government. She thinks it’s not problematic that she sends this out now.

  – I do not see that this is very politically controversial. I rather see that the Storting has also asked if PST has the authority they need to do a good job.

  But it says a new government is completely free to withdraw the bill if they so wish, says Mæland. The Labor Party and the Center Party say they can not comment on individual cases while they are in government negotiations. SV did not want to comment on the bill until it has been sent out for consultation.

  The consultation deadline is set for 7 January next year.