[HN Gopher] Update: The Swedish authorities answered our protoco...
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Update: The Swedish authorities answered our protocol request
Author : netfortius
Score : 106 points
Date : 2023-05-02 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mullvad.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (mullvad.net)
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Interesting read. If anyone else got curious why Amagicom AB was
| mentioned, it seems to be the parent company of Mullvad.
|
| I'm still surprised the police left without any fuzz because
| Mullvad surely must keep track of both transactions and the
| connected computers (to limit use). But maybe that data is stored
| somewhere else.
|
| I'm also a bit surprised it took the police one month from the
| approved search warrant to them actually doing it. Unless I
| misunderstood.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Even stranger is that apparently the event the investigation is
| related to was a scam in Germany from _2021_.
|
| Seems like a complete hail mary by German police.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| It's described as blackmail that stopped institutions from
| doing their work, so possibly an encryption virus? The German
| police had an IP going to Mullvad so it kinda makes sense
| that they would ask Swedish police to get info on who used
| it? Would be an error on their part to not follow the lead?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Well my point was, if German police is making international
| requests to check out a vpn provider based on an ip from 2
| years ago, probably they're running out of ideas at that
| point, possibly even aware that the data is no longer
| there, and just responding to political pressure to "do
| something".
|
| Mullvad even pointed out that Swedish police are well aware
| at this point that there's no useful information for them
| there. That's why I think probably it's just to appease
| some politican or DA somewhere, or some other type of
| strange bureaucratic machination.
| piva00 wrote:
| > I'm also a bit surprised it took the police one month from
| the approved search warrant to them actually doing it. Unless I
| misunderstood.
|
| It took them 2 months, the decision for the search warrant was
| taken on 17 February, the search was done on April 18.
| hrunt wrote:
| > I'm still surprised the police left without any fuzz because
| Mullvad surely must keep track of both transactions and the
| connected computers (to limit use). But maybe that data is
| stored somewhere else.
|
| First, I'm not surprised because it sounds like the Swedes knew
| what the result was going to be from their history with
| Mullvad. It sounds like they performed the action because of
| the international nature of the request, but they expected the
| result.
|
| Second, the only thing that Mullvad needs to keep track of to
| run their business is which accounts have paid and when they
| will need to pay again. They do not need to keep anything more
| than that. Based on their pricing model, they do not need to
| worry about who is connected where, when, etc.
| petters wrote:
| They say that the laws do not apply to them, but has this been
| tried in court?
|
| We can be sure of one thing: of everyone started using VPNs and
| the laws do not actually apply, the laws would change
| otterley wrote:
| > Electronic Communications Act (2022:482) (LEK) Does not apply
| to Mullvad VPN AB According to LEK's definitions, LEK does not
| apply to Mullvad since we, as a VPN service provider are not
| regarded as an electronic communications network nor an
| electronic communications service.
|
| This is super interesting. I don't know anything about Swedish
| law, but I'd find it difficult to believe that a VPN provider in
| the USA would not fall into one of those two classifications. The
| devil is in the details, of course: definitions of terms of art
| such as these usually accompany the rules or laws that involve
| them - at least under U.S. law.
|
| I would _love_ to hear from a qualified Swedish lawyer on the
| question.
| hnarn wrote:
| If you are curious about the definitions of these terms, you
| can read the law in full here: https://lagen.nu/2022:482 --
| specifically paragraph 7 in chapter 1.
|
| Not sure how useful it is through Google Translate, but to your
| point: yes, there are definitions.
|
| Paragraph 19 in chapter 9 is also relevant.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| [dead]
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| > We have now received a response from the Swedish Prosecution
| Authority and the prosecutor in charge of the operation, who told
| us that the search warrant was a decision made in international
| legal cooperation with Germany
|
| Yes that's the crux of it. Similarly, - the US can't legally spy
| on it's citizens, but it could absolutely sell the same spy
| software to Australia and let Australia spy on our citizens, and
| then broker the data back and forth. Psh those pesky civil rights
| seem to go out the window as long as a foreign country is asking.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > the US can't legally spy on it's citizens, but it could
| absolutely sell the same spy software to Australia and let
| Australia spy on our citizens, and then broker the data back
| and forth.
|
| I thought that it was well known that, in fact, this was
| happening
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes One of the core
| principles is that members do not spy on other governments in
| the alliance. U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Admiral
| Dennis C. Blair, said in 2013: "We do not spy on each other. We
| just ask."[87]
|
| In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are
| intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the
| collected information with each other. Although the FVEYs
| countries claim that all intelligence sharing was done legally
| and followed the domestic law of each nation.
| [11][12][13][14][88] Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the
| advocacy group Liberty, claimed that the FVEY alliance
| increases the ability of member states to "subcontract their
| dirty work" to each other.[89] The former NSA contractor Edward
| Snowden described the FVEY as a "supra-national intelligence
| organisation that doesn't answer to the laws of its own
| countries". While many claims of illegal intelligence sharing
| among FVEY nations have been made, only once has any FVEY
| intelligence agency been shown to have broken the law with
| intelligence sharing in Canada.[10]
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Their summary at the end is a hell of a statement. Not many
| organizations would reasonably be able to say such a thing. Funny
| that a served warrant happens to be good marketing but I guess
| that's just the world we live in.
| hnarn wrote:
| The previous thread about this incident was incredibly
| frustrating to read, with many more or less openly saying that
| Mullvad was lying or somehow secretly cooperating with
| authorities in order to keep their hardware. Hopefully this post
| can convince these people that what happened isn't as incredible
| and unrealistic as they seem to assume.
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(page generated 2023-05-02 23:00 UTC)