“c”, you would make a good Stasi member. You are obviously very passionately upset about people standing up against intrusions of privacy.

There might be some good job for you in North Korea. You can collect Hollywood movies and fashion sunglasses with Kim Il-Jong.

Would be interesting to hear Phil’s comment on this – I mean between our public tax records and his snooping employer there will be nothing private and confidential left in our nanny state! Anyway, hopefully the parliament will have the sense to amend this law heavily or vote it down, as it stands there really is no defence for it. A nasty example of corporate interferance in the democratic process. I wonder what does the Grand Theory say about occurrances like this? Seem to be fairly typical…

The biggest reason I am, personally, upset about this law is the total incompetency it shows. It’d be easy to drop this into the “malice” basket, but it’s no longer possible. All the politicians apparently care about is that Nokia/whatever(it isn’t relevant) supports it, so “it must be good”.

You’re a corrupt politician if you don’t want to give something to a corporation, because you know it’s bad, but then give it when paid. But, you’re just naive and suggestible for giving it all for free without even considering what it is. Unconstitutional, imprecise, inadequate for fighting the stated threat, and technologically obsolete before it’s even drafted. No thought is given for the ways one could abuse this law; or, on the contrary, circumvent this law.

And Nokia. I think that there are too many Kekkoslovaks in the board when an international corporation thinks it’s proper to involve itself in a potential PR disaster like this in a small, insignificant country that no one cares about. Get a clue, forget it. Internally, Nokia should enforce good information security policies instead.

One alternative way of seeing things that would probably have satisfied Nokia would be to view that all communication going on inside and to/from a corporate IT network is property of that corporation. After all, it is their servers, their infrastructure, etc.

Obviously the Finnish government doesn’t see it this way, and doesn’t make a distinction between private internet correspondence, and correspondence going on inside a corporate network on corporate-owned IT infrastructure.

The law should really contain this sentence only: “Työsopimukseen tai vastaavaan voidaan lisätä sitova pykälä, jossa työntekijä luovuttaa kaikki tekijänoikeudet työnantajalle niiden viestien osalta, jotka lähetetään työnantajan työntekijälle työn tekemistä varten hankkimilla viestintävälineillä.” That’d solve ALL of the problems, zap. No snooper grandmas allowed to snoop your Internet traffic for “possible violations of the rental agreement”, as Lex Nokia does.

I can’t help to think about how much residual Soviet era thinking influences these Finnish anti-privacy laws. First they haphazardly distribute your income information around the world, and now this?!

Lex Nokia has nothing to do with Soviet influences, but everything to do with the authoritarian right. Unfortunately the “liberal right” tradition with emphasis on constitution and rights of individual is rather shallow in this country. It was probably shot along with minister Heikki Ritavuori.

Hmm, would be interesting to hear Phil’s comment – between the public tax records and his snooping employer there is practically no privacy left in this nanny state! Anyway, a very silly law and a typical example of corrupt corporate pressure on the democratic process.

> I can’t help to think about how much residual
> Soviet era thinking influences these Finnish
> anti-privacy laws.

The only thing influencing this law has been Nokia.

I have a few stories from previous workplaces of mine in Finland:

1. I was a temporary summer worker in one small software and publishing company. One day I came in, my e-mail password had been changed. I asked what the reason was and could I get into my e-mail. The secretary felt bad about it and told me the password, so I got in and checked my e-mail. The owner came in a gave her an earful of “vittu”, “perkele”, “saatana”, and then explained to me the company is out of money and I am laid off with everyone else. The point is, that my e-mail account was confiscated just like that, and my e-mail was now being read by someone else. I had assumed that the owner of the company had that right. It was his computer, his server, etc.

2. I worked in another company partly as an after-sales support person, and partly as a software developer. It was assumed there that if you ever left or even went on holiday, you would turn over your e-mail account to someone else, so customers were not out of touch with the company. So a person would get onto my computer, and read my e-mail while I was gone. And I actually didn’t think anything strange of it. I had my own private e-mail account elsewhere, as did everyone else, so this wasn’t any issue.

I was totally unaware until recently (since this Nokia case) that my correspondence inside a workplace’s network was supposed to be treated as if it was my own private correspondence. But apparently that is the case in Finland – there is no distinction between private correspondence, and correspondence that happens at a workplace, during the workday, on the workplace’s IT network, on the workplace’s IT infrastructure, using the workplace’s e-mail address. So because the Finnish government doesn’t make this distinction, every private person’s rights are undermined.

Sirkuspelle:
“1. I was a temporary summer worker in one small software and publishing company.”

Better known as a “new media” wiener stand. Did they have a CFO on the payroll?

“The owner came in a gave her an earful of “vittu”, “perkele”, “saatana”, a”

Classic management by perkele. This is just too good.

“It was assumed there that if you ever left or even went on holiday, you would turn over your e-mail account to someone else”

So nobody in the company had heard of email forwarding?

“So because the Finnish government doesn’t make this distinction, every private person’s rights are undermined.”

So the problem is really too much privacy at the workplace. Somebody just had to put an insane libertarian twist on this. Next, we need to have the toilet in the middle of the office without walls, lest anyone spend too much time there on the employer’s time.

I would think that employers have the right to inspect company email accounts. To give employees total privacy of their email accounts is crazy. You have private accounts for your own business. Generally, company rules limit company email communication to company business only.

Is this why some businesses in Finland only have group email accounts? This way nobody has their own private accounts?

The way this law is written is just idiotic. Is should have been limited to the one issue of company emails being company property. What about employee rules adjusted to limit employee use of these services.

How is web surfing dealt with? How common are internet address web filters in Finland? I would think that these restrictions are coming if not only there already.

I think if I was working in Finland these days I would just remove employee internet and probably email as well, as far as I could. Just force staff to send faxes.

Why would Nokia really care about a law such as this? Even they are not stupid enough to think that it will change anything. It won’t. Helsingin Sanomat and their half-assed investigative journalists should attend a conference titled “Basics of honesty: for reality -challenged retards”.

Nokia has a million more pressing problems atm and some half baked snooping law isn’t going to stop their intellectual property from being leaked if someone wants to leak them. Get over your Nokia -raping fantasies and move on with your life. The government are a bunch of corrupt monkeys on a leash, oh really? What else is new?

It is plain that there is a bunch of non-tech ignorants trying to “guide” a bigger bunch of tech people. Like everybody has mentioned, there are memory sticks, removable harddisks and Skype. There are also many different devices in which you can access your personal gmail using different network connection during working hours. The only people would suffer or get caught under such a law are either stupid or ignorants. So, what is the real point in such a law? Haven’t anyone asked those politicians openly, like in some press conference, what they think about the memory sticks and removable harddisks?

This Lex Nokia thing just proves yet another time what a total waste of time and resources all these politicians can be. Well, they have tried o forbid people copying legally purchased music to personal iPod. They suggested to ban nuuska totally. Or ban cigarettes from shown in any public space. Or raise alcohol text in the name of national health. Isn’t there some other more pressing issues to deal with??

I begin to wonder why this law is actually called Lex Nokia. Is it because it resembles the fact that there is a lot of practical problems inside Nokia that are not addressed?

A moral/philosophical argument can certainly be made that as an employer has the right to know what the employees are up to during working hours, the basic information on who the employee corresponds with on the company’s e-mail system should be open to some kind of scrutiny.

Still, I wonder what Nokia thinks that it will achieve if it gets the Finnish state to jump through its hoop.

If I were a disgruntled (or merely greedy) employee of a company willing to pass on confidential e-mail, I don’t think that I would use the company’s own server for that purpose even if I were protected by some kind of privacy legislation.

After all, inside information can be leaked out just as easily, almost as quickly and much more securely from an employee’s Gmail account.

Or am I missing something?

Fred Fry:
“How is web surfing dealt with? How common are internet address web filters in Finland? I would think that these restrictions are coming if not only there already.”

Yeah, those are really great. Some LDS/$cientology company decides which web content is permissible and does not release the rules. I really dug the one that considered “game theory” unacceptable search criteria – in a bank, FFS.

The bimbo ex-minister, supposedly having spare time to do her work between husbands/boyfriends, tried hard to get those into public libraries.

“Like everybody has mentioned, there are memory sticks, removable harddisks and Skype.”

Not to mention bluetooth-enabled phones. Apparently the lobbyist department of Nokia isn’t the most tech-savvy one.

Fred Fry:
“Just force staff to send faxes.”

But you’d reserve the right to snoop those too, just in case some secretary got the idea to sit on the fax machine during the office Christmas party.

Can’t beat wanker bosses.

I tried to post this earlier, but it wouldn’t stick, so here we go again:

A moral/philosophical argument can certainly be made that as an employer has the right to know what the employees are up to during working hours, the basic information on who the employee corresponds with on the company’s e-mail system should be open to some kind of scrutiny.

Still, I wonder what Nokia thinks that it will achieve if it gets the Finnish state to jump through its hoop.

If I were a disgruntled (or merely greedy) employee of a company willing to pass on confidential e-mail, I don’t think that I would use the company’s own server for that purpose even if I were protected by some kind of privacy legislation.

After all, inside information can be leaked out just as easily, almost as quickly and much more securely from an employee’s Gmail account.

Or am I missing something?

“But you’d reserve the right to snoop those too”
– Yes, but the company is paying for:
– The office
– The Computer
– Internet connection
– AND YOUR TIME……..

That is one thing. At issue here is what people are doing while at work. Not for anything, but many of these companies are paying for employee phones as well…….

The web filters for the most-part are BS especially considering that you can see most sites just by using the Google cache function to see the pages. We have it at work but I almost never see a ‘blocked’ page. Although I can’t ready any news from the UK’s SUN because the whole site is blocked due to the page 6 ladies….

Nokia has “threatened to leave Finland” !? No way. How many thousands of people work for Nokia in Finland? It would never happen, no, it COULD never happen.

Helsingin Sanomat always has it out for Nokia, they look for every opportunity to shit on the company. Either they have a bunk source for this info, if they’re flat out lying. If the newspaper wasn’t back by Finland’s richest man, they’d be sued for libel.

This law wouldn’t help Nokia security in anyway, and every fool knows this. Even if Nokia did threaten to leave, you’d have to be legally retarded to believe such a threat.

#21: IBM, AFAIK, despite not being based in Finland, has quite a few people employed in Finland. It wouldn’t really take much to move the head office and senior management (causing a massive tax loss to the state) elsewhere. Of course they’d lose the leverage to boss the government around that they have here. Finland has relatively cheap labour, so it wouldn’t make much sense to move the “grunt work” (as you put it) to the US or to any other western industrialised country.

Regardless of any good the law would do to prevent theft of secrets, companies should have the right to inspect company emails. Not for anything, but if an employee was sending threating emails or trading kiddie porn through his nokia email account, there is no saying that the company would not get in trouble / be sued as well. Even if they are not allowed to scan the messages now, they could be held responsible for failure to oversee their employee’s activities using their equipment and facilities.

#23: What an utterly retarded argument. Hell, I could be flushing tons of mercury down this toilet right now and my client company could get sued.

You’re not posting from work, are you?

Oh, Nokia announced the closing of the Nykäskylä facility today. Looks like McD remains the only employer of university graduates in town.

Oh wow. And today, one of the brightest stars of Kykypuolue blurts out that companies have the right to strip-search their employees. When this attacted a little bit of attention, she was only joking after all. Vitsivitsivitsi…

Just for the record, we are discussing a specific government bill, not privacy in the workplace in general. The snooping law would give all “community subscribers” – universities, landlords, ISPs, etc. the unchecked right to monitor any Internet traffic. They would 1) evaluate the practical necessity 2) judge the criminality of the suspect communication 3) monitor the traffic and 4) self-report to the authorities, all of which are police powers. Interestingly, the bill does not give these same powers to the police. The bill’s so half-assed it hurts.

If you don’t want people snooping your e-mail and browsing, if this law gets through, some things you can do:

1. Use Gmail through an SSL encrypted connection. (use https at the beginning of the URL instead of http) Your web page will send encrypted packages back and forth that noone can read. Your ISP and the government will have to provide very, very compelling reasons to Google for them to reveal information about you.

2. Get your own email on a foreign ISP with an SSL encrypted connection. Many of these services allow you to also get your own domain. It’s easy.

3. You can also use proxies for browsing through an SSL (https) connection.

4. Don’t do illegal stuff in the internet. Keep it legal. But you do have a right to privacy and you don’t need to feel guilty about it. You may have to work for it though, if this law gets through.

5. Many websites allow https connections. You can try changing the http to https.

6. I only know of one program that is able to store and browse network traffic: Wireshark, which is free and open source. It also stores the content of what was sent, only a click away, so you won’t have your privacy at all unless you encrypt what you are sending, if this law gets through. Credit card numbers, pin numbers, bank code numbers, passwords, etc. are all a click away with the network traffic analysis software, if the content is not encrypted. If it is encrypted, only the sender and recipient of the data will be available.

7. Before you send sensitive information, right click the page you are on and see if encryption is on. (security) A lot of small companies still have credit card input web pages that are not encrypted. See if the URL has https in stead of http.

8. At work, use your work e-mail address for work, not for play.

9. Use Linux or MacOS. There is not the spyware and hidden stuff going on behind the scenes like in Windows nor the possibility to accidently install something malicious. I have been using Linux since 2003 and have been spyware and virus free all that time. It’s also free.

I will do a post if the law gets through.

#28: Many organisations do not allow any outbound traffic apart from port 80. Sure, you may encrypt your traffic but you need a custom setup on both ends. It’s simpler to set up a wireless modem with your 3G phone or the equivalent.

And I wouldn’t trust Google with sensitive personal/business data either.

Hmmm. This ran across my email inbox this morning:

“INTERNET LAW – Employers’ Liability for Harm Caused to Third Parties by Employee’s Use of Work Computers for Internet Pornography Involving Minors – Staff Attorneys, IBLS Editorial Board

The following opinion by a United States appellate court discusses legal and factual circumstances under which an employer will be held responsible for harm caused to third parties as a result of its employees’ activities, and underscores the necessity for employers to implement effective policies concerning computer use by employees. The case specifically involves an employee’s use of a work computer to browse websites with indecent child images and to upload nude pictures of his stepdaughter.”

So holding a company responsible for an employees actions on the net is a real possibility. Sorry, it does not name the case for non-subscribers.