Norway: Inquiry into secret surveillance
01 May 1996
On 1 February 1994, the Norwegian Parliament appointed a commission, chaired by supreme court judge Ketil Lund, to carry out an inquiry, into public allegations concerning illegal surveillance of Norwegian citizens. Other commission members were a professor of history, an attorney, a high ranking military officer and the Ombudswoman for equality. The inquiry followed years of allegations about presumed illegal surveillance activities undertaken by the Norwegian surveillance police, responsible for internal security, as well as by the military intelligence agencies. The commission published its 1,185 page report on 28 March 1996.
While the report acquits the military of most allegations, the criticism of the Norwegian Surveillance Police is crushing. The report documents concretely, a wide range of blatantly illegal and/or unacceptable surveillance activities on the part of the Surveillance Police between the late 1940s and the late 1980s.
Between the late 1940s and the late 1960s, Norwegian communists were exposed to extensive room tapping, which was and is illegal in Norway. They were also exposed to widespread illegal telephone tapping. Their headquarters and meetings were tapped, and a large number of individuals were registered (had filed opened on them).
During the 1970s and 1980s, a new Marxist-Leninist group, which established the Workers' Communist Party in 1973, was exposed to similar widespread illegal and/or unacceptable surveillance activities. Their party headquarters and summer camps were under close surveillance. In the summer camps, children from the age of eleven were registered with the Surveillance Police. Informants were extensively and systematically used in schools to surveil pupils down to 9th grade. The Socialist People's Party has also been exposed to extensive surveillance. A large number of non-governmental organizations with links to the parties in question have been under surveillance.
Throughout the period there had been close contact and cooperation, collusion, between the Surveillance Police and the Norwegian Labour Party. Key figures in the Labour Party took concrete initiatives to organize surveillance, including extensive illegal room tapping, and large amounts of information were exchanged. The Labour Party, it should be mentioned, was in power in Norway during a large part of the period in question. There have also been triangular relationships between the Surveillance Police, the Labour Movement and various industries important to Norway's defence, in order to avoid the employment of communists. The commission concludes that "the participation of the Surveillance Police in the extensive cooperation concerning exchange of information, to a considerable extent obtained by illegal room tapping, is a serious case of illegal state administrative activity, altogether perhaps the most serious case ever revealed in this country".
The courts are also scrutinized. In Norway, telephone tapping requires a court order. The courts are heavily criticised for their handling police requests for telephone tapping. In the capital city of Oslo the judge, after receiving the request, simply walked over to the police headquarters and signed a pre-written document permitting telephone tapping. Permission were routinely renewed without any scrutiny of the development of the investigation or new evidence. Other control mechanisms, such as the Control Commission. are strongly criticised. In numerous instances, individuals had their work-telephones in political parties and organizations tapped, and extensive surplus information about general organizational activities has been stored. This is illegal in Norway.
After receiving the report, the parliament decided to downgrade it and make it public. The report has caused great public alarm and debate. Leaders of almost all party groups have been strongly critical of the surveillance activities revealed. Today's leaders of the Labour Party have<