Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.05.2012, Page 14

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2012
“Good things happen slowly,” Björn
Bjarnason, Iceland's former Minis-
ter of justice, wrote on his blog in
March of last year when his succes-
sor in office, Minister of the Interior
ögmundur jónasson, called for a
press conference to announce that
the police would soon be granted
proactive investigative powers.
While Ögmundur and other Left Green
MPs often criticised Björn for his ag-
gressive efforts to increase police pow-
ers during the latter’s six years in of-
fice, he is now advocating for increased
police powers as part of The State’s
crusade against purported organised
crime, which is believed to be predomi-
nantly manifested in a number of mo-
torcycle gangs, including Hell’s Angels.
A bill that Ögmundur proposed to
parliament last month does not contain
the infinite investigative powers that
the police have asked for, but it does
allow them to investigate people sus-
pected of planning acts that fall under
organised crime and are punishable by
at least a four year prison sentence.
While the case is usually presented
as the police's struggle to gain greater
justifiable investigative powers—in
which they have supposedly not fully
succeeded—the fact is that, from at
least July 1999 to May 2011, the police
had unrestricted authority to monitor
whomever they wanted due to poorly
defined regulations.
THE HEADLINE THAT NEVER WAS
“UNRESTRICTED SPYING WAS PER-
MITTED!” should have appeared as a
major headline all over the Icelandic
media last year. Yet it was strangely ab-
sent, despite an official acknowledge-
ment from the Minister of the Interior
that this was indeed the case that un-
restricted spying on Icelandic citizens
had been tolerated and allowed. The
matter concerned Mark Kennedy, the
British police spy whose seven-year
long undercover operations were ex-
posed and reported in the international
media last year. Disguised as activ-
ist “Mark Stone,” he travelled through
Europe collecting intelligence about
anarchists, environmentalists and ani-
mal rights activists. He was for instance
stationed in Iceland's eastern highlands
in 2005, where environmentalist net-
work Saving Iceland was protesting the
construction of the Kárahnjúkar dams.
In most of the countries where Mark
Kennedy operated—short of Ireland and
Germany—authorities have remained
silent about the matter. But a newly
released report on police units provid-
ing intelligence in the UK, carried out
by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Con-
stabulary (HMIC), clearly outlines the
aim of the National Police Order Intel-
ligence Unit (NPOIU) for which Ken-
nedy worked: “the main objective of
the NOPIU has been gathering intelli-
gence,” such as “knowledge about the
infiltrated protest groups, their aims
and links with other groups, their plans
and methods, and the people involved
in suspected serious crime.”
In other words, using proactive in-
vestigations to collect information in
order to prevent possible action.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs Ös-
sur Skarphéðinsson remarked during
a parliamentary discussion about Mark
Kennedy last year, the Icelandic police
did not have such powers in 2005 and
still do not. That should have made any
local co-operation with the British spy
illegal, just as any other proactive spy-
ing initiative would have been.
SO MANy MEN, SO MANy MINDS
Following the exposé of Mark Kennedy,
Ögmundur called for an investigation
into Icelandic police authorities’ possi-
ble knowledge or collaboration with the
British spy which resulted in a report
by the National Commissioner's Na-
tional Security Unit (NSU). The report
acknowledged that information about
the protest camp at Kárahnjúkar, its or-
ganisers and participants, was passed
to the Icelandic authorities. According
to the report, this information then led
to a “collaboration with foreign police
authorities concerning protest groups
abroad and the intended protests un-
der the banner of Saving Iceland.”
“This is the big news,” Ögmundur
declared on his blog in May 2011, after
the report was published. “Espionage
was employed with the Icelandic au-
thorities' knowledge and will.” He em-
phasised this point in parliament last
March, stating: “The infiltrator [Kenne-
dy] was able to operate at Kárahnjúkar
because of very unclear regulations re-
garding the police's investigation meth-
ods. Legislation was far from strong
enough, and there were rules in force
that never appeared publically.”
The rules he mentioned are instruc-
tions by the State Prosecutor from
1999. For some background: according
to laws on criminal proceedings, the
respective minister—Minister of Jus-
tice until 2010, Minister of the Interior
since—should pass regulations regard-
ing specific police protocols such as
the use of informers and infiltrators.
But these regulations did not exist until
a year ago, following a request by the
National Security Unit. Instead they
were substituted by those State Pros-
ecutor’s instructions which, due to their
less formal status (compared with laws
and regulations), were not published in
a conspicuous manner but rather filed
away in drawers and cabinets, so to
speak.
Although these instructions are
hard to come by they still are accessible
and, according to the document, their
purpose was simply to “prevent crimi-
nal activities,” for instance with the
use of an informer “who supplies the
police with information about criminal
activities or people linked with crimi-
nal activities.” Most notably, the docu-
ment's eleven pages are free of a single
definition of what criminal activities the
instructions concern, unlike the regu-
lations created last spring, which are
confined to “well-founded suspicion”
of acts or planned acts that are punish-
able by at least eight years of imprison-
ment.
This simply means that until spring
2011, the police literally had a carte
blanche regarding whom they could
spy on for whatever reasons they chose.
Unbeknownst to the public, these in-
structions allowed unrestricted espio-
nage. These powers are now lost, partly
lost due to Mark Kennedy's exposé and
the following NSU investigation.
THE PERMISSIONS TO COME
While admitting that he had not even
seen the bill submitted by Ögmundur
last month, Snorri Magnússon, Chair-
person of the Police Federation of
Iceland, still maintained to newspaper
Fréttablaðið that the proposed permis-
sions were too limited. Snorri explained
that the police want permission similar
to what their colleagues in Scandi-
navia work with which allow them, as
he noted, to “lawfully monitor certain
groups in society even though they are
not necessarily about to commit crimes
today or tomorrow, and collect intelli-
gence on them, which then might lead
to official cases.”
This is not part of Ögmundur’s bill,
which states that in order to justify the
use of proactive investigative powers,
the police must know or suspect the
planning of a violation of penal code ar-
ticle 175a, punishable with at least four
years of imprisonment. Its execution
has to be an operation of an “organ-
ised criminal association” defined as a
“companionship of three or more per-
sons with the main objective to system-
atically commit criminal acts, directly or
indirectly for profit.”
The bill has only been briefly de-
bated in parliament and has yet to go
through second and third discussion
before undergoing voting. But judg-
ing by the discussion in parliament last
month, it will receive majority support—
only members of The Movement have
seriously criticised the proactive inves-
tigative powers.
One of them, Margrét Tryggvadót-
tir, recently pointed out that the police
seem to have quite a decent overview
of the given crime groups, even claim-
ing to know their exact number of mem-
bers. Along with recent admissions that
for the last couple of years the police
have received judicial permissions for
wire-tapping in more than 99% of re-
quested instances, this got her to ques-
tion the real need for increased powers.
Author and filmmaker Haukur Már Hel-
gason echoed this criticism in a series
of blog posts last year, nominating “the
brand name Hell's Angels” as “the big-
gest favour done to expansion-greedy
police force.”
Nonetheless, the police and mem-
bers of three parties who together
make up two thirds of parliament are
asking for more. In a parliamentary
proposition submitted last year they
ask the Minister of the Interior to pre-
pare another bill, this time regarding
the aforementioned Scandinavian in-
vestigation powers. The proposition is
currently in the midst of parliamentary
process and though Ögmundur might
claim he doesn’t like it, it is question-
able if he could actually resist such a
majority will. Additionally, recent polls
suggest that the right wing conserva-
tive Independence Party will gain a ma-
jority in the coming 2013 parliamentary
elections, in which case it is certain that
the police will not have to wait too long
for the “good things” to happen.
Despite what has been presented by
official police statements and through
most media coverage, this would cer-
tainly not be indicative of a new period
of increased investigation powers. It
would be but a step backwards into an
already realised future.
Iceland| Espionage
BACK TO THE FUTURE
“This simply means that until spring 2011, the
police literally had a carte blanche regarding
whom they could spy on for whatever reasons
they chose. Unbeknownst to the public, these
instructions allowed unrestricted espionage. ”
The unrestricted spying of yesterday… and tomorrow?
Words
Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson
Photography
Juli Vol
You probably never engage in any criminal activities, right? So, do you believe the cops should be allowed to spy on you at
will? You've got nothing to hide, right? It's not as if whatever it is you like doing now might at some point be decreed illegal or
immoral or used to put pressure on you by a rogue police officer or even the police force itself, right? Right?