1 July 2001. Thanks to Martin Olsson.
Martin Olsson
I've been planning to write a summary on Swedish intelligence for a long time now, but this project has been put on ice because of external factors I cannot control. Anyway, I've requested the following documents (not classified) from the Swedish goverment. Since they are intelligence-related I thought you might be interested. I will soon take these files offline, and this is why I write this letter.
Here are three files you might want to publish:
http://www.mnemo.nu/docs/sweintel/Utdrag%20Regleringsbrev%202001%20Underrättelsetjänst.doc
http://www.mnemo.nu/docs/sweintel/Missiv%20till%20öppen%20ÅR%202000%2001-02-22.doc
http://www.mnemo.nu/docs/sweintel/Bilaga%201%20till%20öppen%20ÅR%202000%20%2001-02-22.doc
Cryptome mirrors:http://cryptome.org/Utdrag.doc (34KB)The three files Zipped:
http://cryptome.org/se-intel.zip (81KB)
The documents are in Swedish only.
Together they form parts of a report that the Swedish intelligence community submits to the goverment every year. Of course this is only the publicly available version so its heavily censored. If you want to verify that its genuine, you might want to send an e-mail to the Swedish military or goverment (they are very open and answer most questions).
Swedish Intelligence agencies are constantly changing their names and often
split into sections and merge with other agencies. So basically, here in
Sweden, we do not have a huge "CIA" or "NSA". People in general do not know
all that much about intelligence, and they don't care. However, the intelligence
community in Sweden is very
large compared to the size one would expect for a country of Sweden's size.
I think this is partly because Sweden has been a "neutral" country for so
long. This has also driven Sweden to build their own jet figthers, etc. (JAS-39
Gripen and JA-37 Viggen, etc.), so indeed being neutral has affected the
military (and intelligence) structure a lot.
The few agencies that are mentioned every once in a while in the media, etc.,
are:
FRA (Försvarets Radio Anstalt), roughly "Defense Radio Institution"
Does purely SIGINT, somewhat similar to NSA. Pilots specially-designed Gulfstream aircraft over the East Sea (towards Russia), and rumors say that the SIGINT data is sometimes sold to the US (this has never been confirmed of course, since it would put the non-NATO neutral country, Sweden, in a very uncomfortable position).
SÄPO (SÄkerhets POlisen), roughly "Security Police"
Handles espionage against Sweden and tough/weird crimes. Also provides "civilian intel" to the regular police departments before demonstrations, etc. (such as in Gothenburg recently). Somewhat similar to the FBI.
IB (Informations Byrån), roughly "Information Bureau"
They were known to engage in "registration of people's political views", and media gave them a lot of criticism for this reason. Registration of people based on views only was (and is!) illegal in Sweden. In 1973 two young journalists wrote a very famous (in Sweden) article about IB, they were charged for breaching a ton of different acts and ended up in jail. As a result of this single article the IB was heavily reformed. This article is available in Swedish online:
http://www.fib.se/IB/index2.html
FIB, Folket i Bild, was also the original hardcopy publisher.
None of the above agencies have a website as far as I know.
To verify the docs above try contacting Swedish Foreign or Defense Departments.
Or ask the infomaster of the Swedish Armed Forces website:
http://www.mil.se
Infomaster at www.mil.se:
Peter Svensson
Högkvarterets informationsavdelning (roughly "Defense Headquaters Information Department")
Försvarsmakten (roughly "Swedish Armed Forces")
Lidingövägen 24
107 85 STOCKHOLM
Telefon 08-788 75 00
E-mail [email protected]
Except for www.mil.se, you can also look at www.ud.se (Swedish Foreign Department) and forsvar.regeringen.se (Swedish Defense Department). On those websites (which is also available in English) you can find e-mail addresses to people which should be able to verify that the above documents are geniune.
Feel free to publish my name, if you want to.
/m
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www.mnemo.nu
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