Vantage Point North

Finland: Rushing Intelligence Finnish government presented a bill for the nations first law governing intelligence issues. The government is attempting to rush the law, that requires amending the constitution, as an urgent one. It’s very uncommon to rush constitutional changes in one parliamentary term. To pass, such a law has to be accepted by 5/6 of the parliament. Although Finland was famous for its ability to gather and break Soviet and Russian communications all the way from World War 2 up until the late 1990’s, there hasn’t been a law that would allow either the military or the Suojelupoliisi (Finnish counter-intelligence) to conduct online surveillance or information gathering operations abroad. Finnish signal intelligence working under Lenin’s nose The Finnish Defense Forces have been restricted to traditional signal intelligence on the radio transmissions that reach Finnish territory. These restrictions have severely hampered the Finnish intelligence community...