There was an incident a week or so ago where the admin of a Finnish punk website posted a scan of an "information request" he had received from the police. This request was to provide registration information (especially email and IP addresses) of certain users of the site.
The common factor was that these users had participated in a forum thread discussing organizing a (apparently entirely peaceful) "shadow event" of the traditional presidential Independence Day reception.
The "request" came with a gag order and without any mention of an appeal process. The rationale included was a generic boilerplate "investigation or prevention of crime" with no mention of anyone being suspected of any crime or planning thereof. The gag order was, obviously and quite defiantly, disobeyed by the admin.
Now it appears that these kinds of requests are perfectly legal, do not require the authorization of any member of the judiciary, and appear to be used quite carelessly to gather information about people not officially suspected of anything. Getting "official" personally identifying information from ISPs is much harder, though, but this does not look good especially given that the new police law currently in planning stages is expected to considerably extend the electronic powers of the police.
Sure; I wrote the post in a bit of haste, just meant to share a related anecdote. The alarming thing about the case is that it seems to have come as a surprise to most observers that the police actually does have such powers in the first place.
The common factor was that these users had participated in a forum thread discussing organizing a (apparently entirely peaceful) "shadow event" of the traditional presidential Independence Day reception.
The "request" came with a gag order and without any mention of an appeal process. The rationale included was a generic boilerplate "investigation or prevention of crime" with no mention of anyone being suspected of any crime or planning thereof. The gag order was, obviously and quite defiantly, disobeyed by the admin.
Now it appears that these kinds of requests are perfectly legal, do not require the authorization of any member of the judiciary, and appear to be used quite carelessly to gather information about people not officially suspected of anything. Getting "official" personally identifying information from ISPs is much harder, though, but this does not look good especially given that the new police law currently in planning stages is expected to considerably extend the electronic powers of the police.