On this Saturday, as October draws to its end, the Finns will be celebrating All Saints' Day and Halloween. The beginning of November also means that the Finns will have only one month left of their secrecy of correspondence in electronic communications. On December 1, 2009, the Swedish armed forces intelligence service FRA will connect its data fibers to all international data traffic junction points at Sweden's borders and will start copying every single byte of data passing these junction points for its own surveillance purposes. In practice this surveillance will cover almost all instant messaging, p2p traffic, web surfing, e-mailing, telephone calls and fax traffic from Finland to Europe and further. Only a small fraction of Finnish data traffic is routed through Russia, but there the Finns face an even worse state-run surveillance apparatus.

FRA will have no technical means to store permanently the entire massive data traffic that it copies and monitors. Most of the data will be filtered away almost immediately, and only the part that FRA's smart monitoring software considers to be interesting will be set aside and stored for further analysis. What might make a piece of Finnish data traffic interesting for FRA? Perhaps its source being Nokia headquarters or the Finnish Prime Minister's Office? None of us will know in advance or in retrospect which of our e-mails or phone calls – if any – FRA decides to save to its databases and with what criteria. Nor will we ever know which of our e-mails or phone calls or sociograms - if any - FRA will pass further to American or other foreign intelligence agencies.

What we do know, is the fact that the Swedish parliament has authorized FRA to not only copy all the data passing the Swedish borders but also to mine from it various information about the communicating parties, including their ethnic background, sexual orientation, health, political and religious views, and their labor union activities. We also know that FRA has been authorized to share this information with foreign intelligence services in the name of intelligence cooperation, even with dictatorial states.

From the beginning of December it will therefore be wise for us Finns to assume that the Swedish government and the Swedish army will have full visibility into all of our international communications, unless we encrypt them with strong encryption methods. The same requirement applies, of course, to our contacts abroad, because unless they also encrypt their messages to us, FRA will be able to read our entire correspondence. VPN connections used by Finnish workers abroad for communicating with their Finnish offices should be relatively safe, although FRA will be able to see when these workers connect and how much data they transfer. Private Skype communications should also be reasonably safe, although no one will know that for sure, because Skype is a private company whose software or privacy practices are not open to outside reviewing. Private communications on WASTE-type darknets are probably reasonably safe, although FRA does have a powerful supercomputer to break encryptions. For confidential WASTE communications Piraattiliitto recommends using long, at least 2048-bit security keys while creating profiles. All typical telecommunications metadata (the communicating parties, the time and duration of the call, the location of your cellular phone, the websites you surf, your p2p contacts, all SMS messages, etc.) FRA can save easily into its databases, so the safest (pun intended) assumption is that they will also be saved.

In April 2008, in anticipation of the coming FRA-law, a major Nordic broadband and phone operator TeliaSonera moved the e-mail servers handling their Finnish customers from Sweden over to Finland. With this measure some of the domestic Finnish e-mail traffic could be protected from the Swedish Big Brother's surveillance.

On June 18, 2008, FRA-law was forced through in the Swedish Parliament with the 143-138 votes of the center-right government coalition led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt from Moderate Party. The law was vehemently opposed by the Swedish Pirate Party, which organized several demonstrations against the law in the larger cities of Sweden. Some genuine resistance came also from Sweden's Left Party and Greens. The Finnish government and its Communications Minister Suvi Lindén from National Coalition Party could nothing but raise their hands and surrender to the arguably largest and most brutal violation of the privacy and the secrecy of communications in the nation's history. This violation targeted the country's governance, almost all of its businesses and NGOs and its whole population.

On June 19, 2008, MP Jyrki Kasvi from the Finnish Green Party addressed the Finnish government with a written question where he asked what measures the government had taken to protect the privacy and the trade secrets of Finns in their international telecommunications soon to be subjected to FRA espionage. On July 2, 2008, Finnish Left Party MP Paavo Arhinmäki made another written question to the government, asking what steps the government is taking against the new Swedish eavesdropping law violating the fundamental human rights of Finns. On the same day, July 2, 2008, the Finnish Pirate Party published an open letter addressed to the Finnish Government and to the Finnish Parliament. The pirates expressed their worry about the FRA surveillance and as a practical solution they proposed a direct sea data cable connection to Germany to bypass Sweden and FRA physically.

On July 13, 2008, Green Party MP Kasvi received his reply from Communications Minister Suvi Lindén: "Finland's outgoing traffic is mainly directed over the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden and from there to the rest of the world. International telecommunications may be subject to different legislations in different countries through which they pass. The Swedish law was adopted specifically to protect the Swedish state against external threats, and is therefore acceptable by the international regulations. The Finnish government can not require that the good Finnish privacy protection laws will be applied in truly international telecommunications. Cooperation between countries is important, however, in privacy-related issues. The Finnish government will continue to cooperate with Sweden and other States in privacy-related issues. "

On July 24, 2008, Left Party MP Arhinmäki got a virtually identical answer from Communications Minister Suvi Lindén.

On October 14, 2009, the Swedish parliament voted through 159-152 the second version of FRA law, effectively starting the countdown to the December 1, 2009, connection of FRA's surveillance cables. Prime minister Reinfeldt held all center-right coalition MPs in his iron grip and the remaining critical voices within the coalition were silenced with cosmetic changes to the original law. From the Swedish parties, the Pirate Party, the Left Party and the Greens continued their protests till the bitter end but in vain. In the new version of the law the Swedes themselves got some minor safeguards to their own privacy and an independent body was formed to watch over FRA surveillance activities. For us Finns, these changes were totally irrelevant as we, together with Russians in the East and Norwegians in the West are the intended surveillance targets and therefore fair game to the Swedes.

A year and three months have now passed since MPs Kasvi and Arhinmäki made their written questions to the Government and since The Finnish Pirate Party made its practical proposition for solving the espionage problem. No direct data cable to Germany has been laid, and ignoring its summer 2008 promises the Finnish government has not even started to inform the Finnish citizens and businesses on how they can protect their communications from FRA surveillance. National education and protection measures would be needed urgently but as it seems the Finnish government will do absolutely nothing about the situation. No political or diplomatic protests have been raised against Sweden despite FRA espionage being the most serious privacy and communications secrecy violation in the nation's history.

Why is the Finnish Government so quiet and submissive about Sweden's outrageous move? Some reasons might be found from the superpower politics behind the FRA surveillance. The main target of the surveillance is no doubt Russia. Information intercepted from Russian communications will be valuable currency for Sweden in its intelligence information exchange with the United States, and opposing this activity too aggressively the Finns might put themselves into bad light in the eyes of the Americans.

However, since many Russian companies and other actors are operating from Finland, FRA will also follow with great interest communications originating from Finland. Nokia and other internationally operating Finnish companies make interesting surveillance targets as well. Industrial espionage is not on the official FRA agenda, but it is a well known fact that U.S. military intelligence has been leaked to U.S. businesses when deemed necessary by the Americans. Such information leaks were the core of the Echelon scandal that seriously agitated the EU Parliament at the turn of the millennium. In its conclusions the parliamentary Echelon committee recommended the use of encryption even in private communications between EU citizens. The Finns have now another good reason to encrypt all their confidential international communications.