FRA 'stopped political murder'
Sweden’s National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt – FRA) prevented a political murder and revealed that Soviet mock attacks were in fact “prank flights”, reports the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.
FRA’s operations are guarded with extreme secrecy. However, the agency has been under fire since the government passed a new controversial law allowing the agency to monitor cable-borne telecommunications and internet traffic which crosses Sweden’s borders.
Bugging can take place in the absence of criminal suspicions, which has upset many who also question the need for FRA.
But the agency’s surveillance helped stop an attack “with deadly results” against a person in Sweden, according to the agency’s director general, Ingvar Åkesson.
Sometime since the turn of the millennium the person has been threatened by a “murder squad” from the person’s former home country, writes SvD.
Stopping terrorism has been one of the primary arguments offered by supporters of the so called FRA-law.
FRA also revealed that a Soviet plane crash in 1985 – following a mock attack against a Swedish fighter plane – wasn’t caused by a military escalation by the Soviet Union, as previously feared.
Monitoring of the pilots’ conversations showed that the incident was a matter of “prank flights”, writes SvD.
FRA has also shown itself to be useful in later years. Signals intelligence operations confirmed that a Swedish fighter pilot who crashed and died while scouting a Russian nuclear warship in 1996 wasn’t shot down as many had suspected.
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FRA’s operations are guarded with extreme secrecy. However, the agency has been under fire since the government passed a new controversial law allowing the agency to monitor cable-borne telecommunications and internet traffic which crosses Sweden’s borders.
Bugging can take place in the absence of criminal suspicions, which has upset many who also question the need for FRA.
But the agency’s surveillance helped stop an attack “with deadly results” against a person in Sweden, according to the agency’s director general, Ingvar Åkesson.
Sometime since the turn of the millennium the person has been threatened by a “murder squad” from the person’s former home country, writes SvD.
Stopping terrorism has been one of the primary arguments offered by supporters of the so called FRA-law.
FRA also revealed that a Soviet plane crash in 1985 – following a mock attack against a Swedish fighter plane – wasn’t caused by a military escalation by the Soviet Union, as previously feared.
Monitoring of the pilots’ conversations showed that the incident was a matter of “prank flights”, writes SvD.
FRA has also shown itself to be useful in later years. Signals intelligence operations confirmed that a Swedish fighter pilot who crashed and died while scouting a Russian nuclear warship in 1996 wasn’t shot down as many had suspected.
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