Finnish government allegedly blackmailed to pass new law

[Tiriol]

Helsingin Sanomat newspaper's claim about Nokia blackmailing Finnish government as reported by YLE News; Prime Minister Vanhanen denies knowledge of any ultimatum.

Ministers and Nokia Argue Over Ultimatum Claim
published yesterday 04:55 PM, updated yesterday 08:40 PM

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen says he is unaware of any ultimatum issued by mobile phone giant Nokia to leave Finland if legislation allowing employers to monitor staff e-mails is not enacted.

The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported on Sunday that Nokia had threatened to leave Finland if new legislation allowing firms to closely monitor employees’ e-mails was not enacted.

Nokia's Director of Communications, Arja Suominen has denied the accusation saying the claims had taken the company by surprise. Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén also said she believed no such ultimatum had been given.

Speaking in a YLE interview programme, Vanhanen said such a threat might have been made at “a lower level” but he insisted no information had reached government ears.

Many legal experts have criticized the legislation saying it contravenes employees’ rights. Vanhanen believes the law is justified in order to prevent industrial espionage. He added it would be blue-eyed to think such activities did not occur in Finland. It was essential to protect Finnish innovations, he stressed.

An official involved in drawing up the proposed legislative reforms told Helsingin Sanomat, Nokia’s threat to leave Finland if the law was not passed had been received via the Confederation of Finnish Industries(EK). He said the company had applied considerable pressure in order to secure a favourable atmosphere for passage of the legislation.

Parliament will vote on the so-called Nokia Law in two weeks time. Its acceptance is considered as certain.

YLE

Quite frankly, I've been rather unimpressed by our current government and if Helsingin Sanomat has any evidence, I hope they come clean with it and ensure that the infamous "Lex Nokia" won't pass. It has all the elements of being easily abused and it also happens to violate, according to our experts on legislature, our Constitution. I wouldn't shed one tear if Vanhanen's second (current) cabinet would roll over because of this.

[Ryan Thunder]

He added it would be blue-eyed to think such activities did not occur in Finland.

Do clarify the meaning of this statement. I am blue-eyed, after all, and am probably more likely to support something like this than many others. (note: "likely" != "does")

[Dominus Atheos]

He added it would be blue-eyed to think such activities did not occur in Finland.

Do clarify the meaning of this statement. I am blue-eyed, after all, and am probably more likely to support something like this than many others. (note: "likely" != "does")

Sounds like an incorrect translation for round-eyed, as in naive.

[Tiriol]

He added it would be blue-eyed to think such activities did not occur in Finland.

Do clarify the meaning of this statement. I am blue-eyed, after all, and am probably more likely to support something like this than many others. (note: "likely" != "does")

Sounds like an incorrect translation for round-eyed, as in naive.

True in some sense; the correct term in Finnish is "sinisilmäinen" which happens to mean naïve (and is translated as blue-eyed). I think that the translator just directly translated what Prime Minister said and didn't check if there would be a more common English phrase for it.

[Glocksman]

Another US English slang term would be 'wide eyed'.

[Ryan Thunder]

Another US English slang term would be 'wide eyed'.

Ah. Odd, that. Not like I'm really one to talk, writing in a language with almost humourously convoluted phoenetics ("silenced" letters, my ass.)

But still, "blue-eyed" sounds like a very odd way to call someone "naive".

[Broomstick]

But still, "blue-eyed" sounds like a very odd way to call someone "naive".

Among many dark-eyed peoples their babies are born with blue or bluish eyes - I can't speak for how this came to be a Finnish phrase, but my wild ass speculation is that it may be some reference to seeing something with immature eyes or the like.

[His Divine Shadow]

He added it would be blue-eyed to think such activities did not occur in Finland.

Do clarify the meaning of this statement. I am blue-eyed, after all, and am probably more likely to support something like this than many others. (note: "likely" != "does")

Sounds like an incorrect translation for round-eyed, as in naive.

Swedish phrase for round-eyed / naive is blåögd or blue eyed, so thats probably it.

[K. A. Pital]

7 posts and nothing on-topic, when one post with a concise explanation would've sufficed. Perhaps it's time to get back to discussing the article and it's implications, not linguistic clarifications.

[Gerald Tarrant]

RE: the OP. I've heard of MEP's (and some US congressperson's) decrying "tax shopping" where companies find the country with the most advantageous corporate tax rate (and treaties that allow them to continue to operate normally), and then build a corporate HQ there in order to lower their tax burden. The outgrowth of that is that there have been a few attempts by MEP's to stop tax competition, or to try and get some EU wide tax standard. I wonder if cases like the Nokia one might not provide an excuse for a similar EU standardization of labor practices.

Even if the blackmail turns out to just be a fiction, this case highlights the disadvantage that a nation state has when dealing with multi-nationals that are potentially very mobile. I imagine there are EU trade rules, and WTO trade rules that limit the ability of a country to punish an "expatriate industry".

[Dahak]

I would say it is a somewhat empty threat. Being multi-national doesn't mean they can just swap around types of work easily. Manual work or construction work to a degree, but I guess a lot of research and product development is done in Finnland directly; facilities might be easy, but the knowledge of the people is something they can't replace just as easily if the people don't want to be moved. I am not sure if the monetary loss of such relocation outweighs the "benefits" of legally reading employee's mails in Finnland.

As for "blue-eyed": that means "naive" in German, too. It allegedly comes from the 19th century, where the "classic" romantic hero (blue-eyed, blond) was analysed in a more critically way.

[Tiriol]

I'm going to wait and see if Helsingin Sanomat publishes the original article in Engish and then link it here; if not, I'll try to translate it as well as I can (unfortunately, it involves some technical terms I'm unfamiliar with in English, so the translation will be rather crude).

There is an open protestation planned to be held on Thursday, this week, before Parliament House. At least one Facebook page has been opened to protest "Lex Nokia" and as I understand it, at least two independent adresses are being gathered. However, to what this all amounts I'm not sure.

However, one of the most notorious points in this legislation is that employer isn't the only one given the right to monitor E-mail information (who sent it, to whom it was sent, when it was sent, how big it was, did it have any attachements etc.): libraries, schools, universities etc. - in short, every legal entity that has community network provided (Edi would probably know the English term better; the term means that the entity, be it an enterprise, school or even a local housing cooperative, offers an Internet connection to those who live, work or study under it). This has nothing to do with preventing corporate espionage, as many have pointed out.

[Edi]

The article happens to omit certain important details. Namely that according to the draft proposal, the law wouldallow employers to gather data on the telecommunications data of emails, meaning header information, IP addresses and such, which allows tracking who sends messages where, but actual monitoring of the contents of the email would still be forbidden.

That's an important distinction and the constitutional conflict is actually something that depends on how narrowly or broadly the constitution is interpreted. If you take the tightest interpretation, then it would be unconstitutional, but in that case so would many of the other telecommunication laws that we have, which obviously work. Furthermore, if this proposal is anything like the existing laws, the limits of who on the employer's side can monitor the telecom data will be rather strict and the penalties for violations pretty strict.

Without more detailed information on the contents of the law, I'm not willing to make a blanket judgment. Most reporters know precisely fuckall about telecom laws and even though HS has good quality reporting most of the time, I'm not certain they have done the reporting on this issue sufficiently well.

[Edi]

The term you are looking for is Internet Service Provider, Tiriol. Because anyone who does have a network and provides services to someone through it can be interpreted as such with regard to the users of the network.

Do you happen to have a link to the draft text?

[Broomstick]

I would say it is a somewhat empty threat. Being multi-national doesn't mean they can just swap around types of work easily.

I wouldn't be too hasty with that judgment - if you know the origin of the term "banana republic" you realize there is ample historical examples of corporations taking over an entire nation.

Manual work or construction work to a degree, but I guess a lot of research and product development is done in Finnland directly; facilities might be easy, but the knowledge of the people is something they can't replace just as easily if the people don't want to be moved.

Under US law, you can just move the corporate headquarters offshore (thereby making the company "foreign") while keeping everything else, including R&D and your mind talent, in the original location. Not all facilities would have to be moved under all possible permutations of this scenario, particuarly in this age of telecommuting (hey... that would probably involve sending work to and from via email or the like... hmmm....)

[Dahak]

I would say it is a somewhat empty threat. Being multi-national doesn't mean they can just swap around types of work easily.

I wouldn't be too hasty with that judgment - if you know the origin of the term "banana republic" you realize there is ample historical examples of corporations taking over an entire nation.

I know these examples, but reality shows that corporations tend to stick to some location for some time and not move around to get some benefits elsewhere three times a week. It requires planning and preparation, hence the "not easily". I didn't say it's impossible...

Manual work or construction work to a degree, but I guess a lot of research and product development is done in Finnland directly; facilities might be easy, but the knowledge of the people is something they can't replace just as easily if the people don't want to be moved.

Under US law, you can just move the corporate headquarters offshore (thereby making the company "foreign") while keeping everything else, including R&D and your mind talent, in the original location. Not all facilities would have to be moved under all possible permutations of this scenario, particuarly in this age of telecommuting (hey... that would probably involve sending work to and from via email or the like... hmmm....)

But that doesn't mean that suddenly the laws in the country the headquarters moved out don't apply; if listening to e-mails is illegal in the country just moving your headquarters away is not changing that. Even huge companies have to observe local law.
Case in point, my company was recently bought by an international one and now we're in a transition phase. The US branch had its transfer of trade (and the employees new contracts) yesterday. Europe, and especially France and Germany, will not be transferred until the third quarter of this year because of all the local laws the new owner has to observe...

[Tiriol]

The term you are looking for is Internet Service Provider, Tiriol. Because anyone who does have a network and provides services to someone through it can be interpreted as such with regard to the users of the network.

Do you happen to have a link to the draft text?

Yes, it can be found here.. The link is in Finnish, as it is from our Parliament's web page and describes the proposed legislature change.

To clarify my position a little bit, what I find suspect in this piece of legislature is that it includes every Internet service provider. The proposed change it isn't that terrible in itself and also includes requirements for notifying authorities etc. However, there still looms a spectre of abuse, although not as heavy as many claim.

But what truly and immensely bugs me is that Nokia would have (allegedly) put a lot of downright blackmail-level of pressure on the government and officials to put this piece through. As Edi said, the question apparently comes down to how strict we are in interpreting the Constitution.

[Broomstick]

Do continue this discussion - I find it refreshing to be discussing a constitutional issue that doesn't involve the US.

I would say it is a somewhat empty threat. Being multi-national doesn't mean they can just swap around types of work easily.

I wouldn't be too hasty with that judgment - if you know the origin of the term "banana republic" you realize there is ample historical examples of corporations taking over an entire nation.

I know these examples, but reality shows that corporations tend to stick to some location for some time and not move around to get some benefits elsewhere three times a week. It requires planning and preparation, hence the "not easily". I didn't say it's impossible...

It's hard to move a banana plantation quickly, yes, but in the case of an industry where certain parts, such as design studios, are more easily packed up and moved the potential mobility of the company is greatly increased. For example, there used to be a healthy medical transcription industry in the US, but once the internet became viable suddenly it all moved elsewhere (India mostly, it seems) since it was easy to outsource.

But that doesn't mean that suddenly the laws in the country the headquarters moved out don't apply; if listening to e-mails is illegal in the country just moving your headquarters away is not changing that. Even huge companies have to observe local law.

True - but if the corporation sets up their internal network so all e-mail is routed through an off-shore server where it IS legal to snoop into e-mail that could effectively bypass the laws in the countries where the e-mails either originate or finally end up. Thus, local law is observed locally yet all e-mail is examined, too.

[Edi]

True - but if the corporation sets up their internal network so all e-mail is routed through an off-shore server where it IS legal to snoop into e-mail that could effectively bypass the laws in the countries where the e-mails either originate or finally end up. Thus, local law is observed locally yet all e-mail is examined, too.

If that can be done, the laws were so incompetently written that the person responsible for it should be taken behind the sauna and put out of his misery.

In the case of Nokia and Finland, that doesn't fly. Even if the intranet and everything else is routed through offshore servers, the endpoint access is in the local loop, inside the borders, and the emails are written there and sent from there, which means that if they violate the law and get caught, they will get in shit over it. The Finnish judicial system is also very prone to taking clever little schemes like that, twisting them into a pretzel and then shoving them up the ass of whoever tried to use them to circumvent the laws and rules.

I just took a look through that legal text and all the high profile media hype about it is mostly just bullshit. Those changes that are being proposed are actually necessary to make telecoms legislation in Finland sensible. Right now certain types of computer crime investigations are hobbled by certain rules and this addresses those without compromising privacy in any great degree. The other parts are related mostly to system maintenance and development and how certain types of tools can be used to do so that were previously unavailable due to restrictions.

It has decent mechanisms for protection privacy from undue invasion. It has strict requirements as to who may do what under what circumstances. It has even stricter reporting requirements and it goes into detail what role, responsibilities and rights of enforcement the Data Privacy Advocate and the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) and other government bodies have over this.

I'm actually required to know the current laws as they are, and even if not in their entirety, these sections are precisely the ones I do need to know. I handle telecommunication data subject to this legislation every single fucking day at work and if I fuck it up so that something serious happens, it's my ass in the sling without further ado. I also happen to have enough knowledge of how the legal system works from back when I applied to the University of Helsinki Law Faculty that I can read that text and understand it along with its implications and how it relates to the constitution and other legislation. The law school entry requirements essentially entail memorizing a lot of legal theory and long sections of the most common laws like contract law, employment law etc and applying it to presented cases in the entry exams, which is where that comes from. The standards are high and I gave up after the third failure and went to IT.

So all in all the people who are raising the biggest stink about this are more than likely wearing tinfoil accoutrements. The ones that are not but are still vocal opponents most likely don't understand anything about IT systems, telecommunications systems or the law, or even all three at once. It's a fucking storm in a teacup that gets the moron hordes riled up because it's been put under a magnifying glass and now they think the tsunami is going to engulf us all.

Please make it fucking stop!

[Tiriol]

I'm going to wait and see if Helsingin Sanomat publishes the original article in Engish and then link it here; if not, I'll try to translate it as well as I can (unfortunately, it involves some technical terms I'm unfamiliar with in English, so the translation will be rather crude).

Helsingin Sanomat has finally translated and published the English version of the original article. It doesn't discuss the law that much (or with with any notable expertise), but it delves into the alleged Nokia manipulation of the political and bureaucratic system. The link leads to Helsingin Sanomat's English news section.

Nokia - stronger than law?

By Petri Sajari

In April 2005 the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) received a criminal complaint - a suspicion that corporate secrets had been leaked to the Chinese Huawei company via e-mail.
The complaint was made by Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile telephones. A Nokia employee had noticed at a telecommunications fair in Cannes in February 2005 that the power unit made by its competitor Huawei had characteristics that bore an uncanny resemblance to a product that Nokia was putting on public display for the first time at the same fair.
Nokia needed evidence of a leak, so it began to dig through the identification information of its employee e-mail.

Legal experts say that the company should not have done that; Nokia had technically violated its employees’ fundamental right to confidential communications.
But the company felt that it was the law, and not Nokia that had got it wrong.
The issue was so important for Nokia that it took out its most severe weapon. It threatened that it would leave Finland if the law was not changed, taking with it tax revenues worth EUR 1.3 billion and 16,000 jobs.
This put politicians in high gear, and that is how the Lex Nokia was started.

Parliament will decide in a couple of weeks on a proposed amendment to the law on data protection in communications. The bill is known better by the name Lex Nokia. Civic groups opposed to the measure have called it a snooping law.
Lex Nokia is an appropriate name, as the bill is a master stroke of lobbying.
Nokia has made sure that important figures from employers’ organisations to labour unions, from civil servants to legislators, have been made to understand in good time how important the bill is for Finland’s largest corporation.

The proposed legislation also reveals Nokia’s exceptional influence in Finland. The strength of the company has made many officials turn a blind eye to the problems contained in the bill.
But what does Nokia actually want with the proposed change?
The bill would give employers the right to check on information contained in messages sent and received by employees in their company e-mail. The information includes the sender or receiver of the message, the size of the message, and the time that it was sent, and the type of attachment that they contain. Automated monitoring would not require suspicion of any wrongdoing, and the employer would not be required to ask anyone for permission for the surveillance.

In addition to employers, the proposed law would give snooping rights to offices, libraries, universities, schools, and even apartment buildings that have communication networks of their own. For instance, a house manager would be allowed to monitor Internet activities of residents if there is a suspicion that the house network is being used in violation of house rules.
The bill is contradictory in that the information that is being sought is not enough to indicate if the message itself, which the employer would not have access to, contains any company secrets. Nevertheless, supporters of the bill believe that with increased supervision, employees will be more cautious about what they undertake.
Helsingin Sanomat has interviewed dozens of civil servants, politicians, and labour market figures who have taken part in the preparation of the bill.

Because of Nokia’s influential status, none of them want to discuss the issue under their own name.
“Nokia put very strong pressure to bear to win unanimous approval to the proposal already in the preparatory stages. The message that came through the Confederation of Finnish Industry (EK) was quite clear: if the bill is not passed into law, Nokia will leave Finland”, said one civil servant.
“It was a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Nokia organised big events with leaders of the central organisations present”, said one influential labour market figure.

Huawei case looms in the background. It was then, at the latest, that Nokia became exasperated that it cannot monitor the e-mail traffic of its employees as closely as it would like.
The current law on data protection for electronic communications took effect in the autumn of 2004. Already before the law took effect, the then-Minister of Transport and Communications Leena Luhtanen (SDP) set a follow-up group to examine the impact of the law.
According to those who followed the preparations of the law, there was concern expressed in the business community that a law on the protection of privacy at work would excessively restrict the rights of employers.

A follow-up group of the Ministry of Transport and Communications then began, in complete silence, to prepare changes to the brand-new data protection law.
Those who were in key positions during the drafting of the legislation say that Nokia succeeded in convincing key civil servants of the necessity of such a law. Nokia claimed to have lost large sums of money through information leaks, and nobody questioned the veracity of those claims.
Civil servants did not see any constitutional problems in the matter.
“When a matter involves a legislative proposal which affects fundamental rights, those preparing the legislation should be especially sharp and critical, if people other than officials try to affect the content of the law”, says Mikael Hidén, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at the University of Helsinki.

In the autumn of 2005 Finland got a new Minister of Transport and Communications. Luhtanen was replaced by Susanna Huovinen (SDP). Ministry civil servants presented the bill to Huovinen as a “technical change”.
One ministry employee felt that the problems of the bill and the disputes within the working group were kept hidden from Huovinen. However, the fresh minister had received word that the proposed law would violate the constitution.
Huovinen refused to bring the bill before the government. In the summer of 2006 she asked Chancellor of Justice Paavo Nikula for a statement. Nikula sharply denounced the proposal.
In the view of the Chancellor of Justice, fundamental rights should have been weighed with more precision and from more points of view than was done in the proposal.
This was a great setback to the business community, the ministry, and to Nokia. The plan to pass the bill into law quickly crumbled.
The civil servants of the Ministry of Transport and Communications started working on a new set of tactics.

In Nokia, the man responsible for turning the heads of civil servants and labour market organisations was Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Corporate Relations and Responsibility Veli Sundbäck, according to those who were the targets of the lobbying. Sundbäck, who retired at the beginning of this year, is a former high-ranking civil servant of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, who took part in the negotiations in Brussels on Finnish EU membership in the early 1990s.
Sundbäck could not be reached for a comment, and Nokia not want to comment on the bill to Helsingin Sanomat at all.

Those behind the bill noticed in 2006 that Huovinen and Milister of Labour Tarja Filatov (SDP) were not supporting the proposed legislation. More pressure was put on the labour market organisations. Those promoting the bill thought that the Social Democrats might be persuaded to back it if the strong labour unions were first convinced of the need for such legislation.
According to several civil servants, the Confederation of Finnish Industry (EK) was acting as Nokia’s errand boy in the matter. Some civil servants suspected that Sundbäck had a direct line to Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) at the time that the bill was being drafted.
When the labour market organisations were persuaded to back the bill, the Ministry of Transport and Communications began to market the proposal to Members of Parliament. Now the argument that was used was that the bill had extensive support in society. This was, in fact, the case, but what was not mentioned was that labour market organisations cannot take issue with citizens’ fundamental rights.

While the lobbying and drafting of the bill was going on, Nokia continued to spy on the e-mails of its employees.
In January of 2005, before the Huawei case, Nokia had become the target of an investigation. The reason was that Nokia had gone through the sender and receiver data of its employees at the beginning of the decade. At that time Nokia had suspected that Microcel, an Oulu-based subcontractor of the Swedish Ericsson, had received information by e-mail about the security features of Nokia’s new mobile phones.
However, the information that was gleaned did not yield enough evidence of an information leak, and the issue faded away.

In the spring of 2006 prosecutor Jukka Haavisto felt that Nokia had violated the law on communications privacy in the Microcell case. However, by that time, it was too late to prosecute.
Soon thereafter, in August 2006, Urho Ilmonen, Nokia’s head of security at the time, asked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to drop the investigation of the Huawei case. According to Nokia, the information from the e-mails was not sufficient evidence, that someone at Nokia would have been leaking corporate secrets.
In the spring of 2007 Nokia tried once again to learn about a suspected crime with the help of e-mail information. One employee in Salo had criticised the company’s management, because the bonuses that had been promised to the whole staff were not paid. The employee sent messages to thousands of other Nokia employees around the world. Nokia filed a criminal complaint alleging interference with data traffic. Prosecutor Antti Pihlajamäki felt that there was not enough evidence to justify prosecution.
All of this must have been very frustrating for Nokia.

In the autumn of 2006 the entire bill appeared to be in jeopardy on the basis of Nikula’s statement.
Already in the spring, the labour market organisations had asked Law Professor Kaarlo Tuori for an expert opinion, hoping to overturn the paper from the Ministry of Justice that was very critical toward the bill. Although Tuori proposed many changes to the bill, it offered a straw that the Ministry of Transport and Communications could grasp, allowing the process to move forward.
Later the ministry ordered a statement from Veli-Pekka Viljanen, a professor of constitutional law. However, his views were pushed to the side because they were too critical.
Finally, in the autumn of 2007, the proposal, which had been patched up many times, was almost ready. All that was left to be done was a review by the office of the Chancellor of Justice.

InJanuary 2008, Deputy Chancellor of Justice Mikko Puumalainen called the Ministry of Transport and Communications and demanded that the bill be removed form the government’s list. He said that there were still shortcomings in the proposal, which the country’s top official responsible for supervising the legality of state activities could not approve of.
A couple of months later, Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka decided that there were no legal impediments to the government’s proposal. However, he informed Liisa Ero, director-general at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, that the bill remained problematic.

The bill was sent to Parliament in April 2008.
“If the interests of one enterprise are decisive, the foundation for objective constitutional consideration will fall away”, said Teuvo Pohjolainen, Professor of Public Law.
Listening to the professors was basically a formality, because even their severe criticism was not taken into account. In November 2008 the Constitutional Law Committee made a unanimous decision when it determined that the proposed legislation was not in violation of the constitution.

The chairman of the committee, Kimmo Sasi (Nat. Coalition Party) commented on the bill in Helsingin Sanomat on November 20th, 2008: “Numerous experts have seen employers as being the equivalent of officials. We have interpreted the matter differently, because an employer is not an official, but rather a parallel citizen.”
Defenders of the bill also state that employees at the workplace, using their employers’ equipment are not entitled to completely confidential communications.
Professor Ojanen feels that this point of view goes against rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.
“It sounds a little like the way of thinking about institutional power in the 1930s. At that time the thinking was that in institutions such as prisons, people had no fundamental rights”, Ojanen says.
“On the basis of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights we are no longer in a situation in which an employee loses his or her fundamental rights when walking through the door of the workplace.”
In addition to the legal experts, the bill has been tenaciously criticised by the civic group Electronic Frontier Finland. The organisation is involved in arranging a demonstration against Lex Nokia at the House of Parliament next Thursday.

The passage of the bill by Parliament in about two weeks is almost certain. Passage of the law was advanced by a statement by the Constitutional Law Committee, which allowed its passage as a normal law (and not as a constitutional amendment).
Now a Parliamentary majority - the support of the government parties - is sufficient. If the bill was to have been passed as a constitutional amendment, a five-sixth majority would have been needed.
Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén (Nat. Coalition Party) has seen to it that the largest government parties are behind the bill. Before the proposal was passed on to Parliament in the spring of 2008, Lindén spoke about it to the “quartet” - the leaders of the four government parties.

Lindén noted that the government’s policy programme promises to improve the protection of corporate secrets.
“Legal protection of the individual will also improve, because the rules of the game will be clarified. Existing legislation already vaguely allows the handling of the information when there is suspicion of abuse”, she says.
The only minister to submit a dissenting opinion was outgoing Green League chairwoman, Minister of Labour Tarja Cronberg. Her fellow party member, Minister of Justice Tuija Brax, supported the bill, but is not speaking very enthusiastically on its behalf.
“The party’s chairwoman negotiated a deal in the quartet, under which only one of the Green ministers is opposed to the bill”, Brax says. She feels that the law improved in the final stages of preparation.

Prime Minister Vanhanen does not want to explain further why he supports the bill.
The opposition has been more critical. For instance, MP Erkki Tuomioja (SDP) feels that “the law would expand the espionage society into a grey area”.
Leading legal experts also find it incomprehensible that on the basis of the new law, private companies and organisations would be granted more power to curb fundamental rights than the police have.

“The proposed law goes against nearly all principles of justice. This cannot be avoided, no matter how much the politicians try to claim otherwise”, says Matti Tolvanen, Professor of Criminal and Procedural Law at the University of Joensuu.
“The evidence value of the e-mail information is non-existent in a criminal process. It is quite strange that a private entity would need the information for something. In a country under the rule of law, the preliminary investigation of a crime should not be outsourced to a private entity, as is not being proposed.”

Jukka Kekkonen, Professor of Legal history and Roman Law at the University of Helsinki feels that there has long been a tendency in Finland, either deliberate or unconscious, to increase the control over citizens. Lex Nokia is part of this trend. Kekkonen is also worried that authority to restrict fundamental rights is being granted to private entities.
“It shakes the fundamental principles of the Western rule of law”, he says.
Kekkonen feels that it is positive that the statements given to the Constitutional Law Committee by the legal experts were all in agreement.
“It is not very common, and that is why the voice of the legal experts should have had special weight.”

The turnover of Finland’s largest company, Nokia, was EUR four billion more than the initial budget of the Finnish state for this year. Nokia’s corporate tax in 2007 was EUR 1.3 billion - one fifth of the total yield of corporate taxation.
That is considerable leverage.
Nokia’s report on social responsibility states that the company respects human dignity and promotes human rights: “Nokia recognises, together with the international community, that certain human rights are fundamental and universal, and are based on accepted international agreements and practices, such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Professor Ojanen feels that the view the European Court of Human Rights would be needed for Lex Nokia. He hopes that some civic organisation would bring the matter before the court.
“The European Court of Human Rights has at times handled questions of abstract legislation, if there is reason to suspect a violation of the eighth article of the human rights treaty”, says Ojanen, with reference to an article in which each individual is guaranteed the right to a private life.
“If the court feels that the law violates the human rights treaty, it will give a ruling on it. It would be impossible for Finland to bypass it.”
According to Nokia, universal rights include the right to an opinion, and a right to express opinions. Information and Technology Law Professor Jukka Kemppinen wrote in a statement that he gave to the Constitutional Law Committee that in the final instance, the bill is about the right to free expression.
About the breach of that right, that is.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.2.2009

[Edi]

I'd be more willing to give the article credence if they actually provided the reasoning for the opposition. There's a lot of doom and gloom and statements of expert opposition, but all I see is unarticulated generalities. Some of the law's provisions are necessary changes, some less so.

Besides that, some of the comments betray a lack of understanding of telecoms systems. Based on the article it also seems that everyone is focusing only on the fundamental rights of people, but according to Finnish law, corporations are also judicial citizens and they also have certain rights. The oppositions seems to be of the opinion that judicial citizens have no right to oversee their own communications systems in any manner at all. This is obviously unsustainable and there must be some way of reconciling the privacy issues of private citizens and the rights of judicial entities to maintain and manage their own communication systems. The provisions in Lex Nokia do not inherently violate the constitution if things are considered from this point of view, which the Parliamentary Constitution Committee apparently has done. Besides the text of the law, the preparatory documents are also valid material for a court to consult when adjudicating cases.

If nothing else, this will go to the lower court, the appeals court, the supreme court and then to the European Court of Human Rights and we'll see it resolved in around 15 years.

[Edi]

There's a debate on TV on this law right now and holy fuck is the moderator being an asshat. The fucker cuts the head of the Constitution Committee off every fucking time things get to the actual meat of the matter. The opposition legal expert is ignoring main points of law and doesn't understand fucking anything and the EFF Finland representative is actively distorting everything as much as he wants without interference.

What a fucking farce.

[Tiriol]

There's a debate on TV on this law right now and holy fuck is the moderator being an asshat. The fucker cuts the head of the Constitution Committee off every fucking time things get to the actual meat of the matter. The opposition legal expert is ignoring main points of law and doesn't understand fucking anything and the EFF Finland representative is actively distorting everything as much as he wants without interference.

What a fucking farce.

Of course I succeeded to miss it. I still haven't quite mastered the art of watching TV at crucial moments (of course, I've had TV only for a short period of time). Did they reach any kind of consensus about the law? Or was it another "Mikkonen: kindergartens are Nazi organizations!" fiasco?

[Edi]

Don't worry, I caught it by accident too, when they mentioned A-Talk after the evening news. It wasn't quite that bad. The law professor on the opposition side actually did make good points and conceded a couple of obvious issues, but failed to address the elephant in the room. When the crucial issues were brought up by the EK spokesman, they got ignored.

The EFF spokesman, Mikael Storsjö, came across as a slimy little rat and judging by all the things I've heard of him, including from a person who did business with him, that's exactly what he is. Tried to defraud one of my old teachers and extort money from him and didn't back off before he got told in no uncertain terms that he can fuck off or have a nice little chat with the police, the prosecutor and the courts, his choice. He chose to fuck off.

All in all, the moron hordes will probably be seeing black helicopters and a police state right around the corner, but on the actual substance the debate was a crushing defeat for the law's opponents.

It was especially delicious when they brought up a recorded interview of one of the foremost experts of law who said that it should be taken to the European Court of Human Rights because of all the violations. Sasi (Chairman of the Constitution Committee) pointed out that in actual fact the law, among other things, addresses one problem in the legislation that resulted in Finland being convicted of human rights violations in that selfsame court. Priceless. The moderator naturally cut him off and plowed on with it, probably in order to keep the debate "interesting", meaning preventing the opposition from being completely humiliated.