Tilrettelagt innhenting – necessary to ensure national security, or an unreasonable incursion into Norwegian’s privacy?

Abstract

The introduction of bulk interception (in Norwegian: “tilrettelagt innhenting”) into the Norwegian intelligence service’s toolbox represents both a continuation of the long-standing security-liberty debate, and a significant development in Norwegian security policy. This development puts Norwegian democracy in a new and difficult situation to navigate, in order to achieve a proper balance of values. This thesis focuses on the possible implications of bulk interception on both Norway’s national security, and individual Norwegians privacy. The original security-liberty debate has been somewhat reconfigured to now being considered a security-privacy debate due to advent of new technological developments, in which we share much more personal data than before, in addition to digital tools to collect and analyze the data these technologies generate. The result has been a situation which puts pressure particularly on privacy, but also provides opportunities with regards to security. A discourse analysis has been performed to achieve the objectives of this thesis, as the public debate regarding bulk interception has generated plenty of written material. One of the key findings is that proponents argue that there are several other allied countries that already have a system for bulk interception, which speaks to its value, and that the threat environment makes the system a necessity for security. On the other hand, critics argue that there is limited documented value, it is a form of “mass surveillance”, and that the system is a violation of the right to privacy. However, the key conclusion to be drawn is that the democratic control mechanisms play the crucial role in achieving a proper balancing and therefore must have the resources and expertise to perform that role.