Earlier this week, the European Court of Human Rights found that Poland was complicit in CIA torture. Read what Dennis J Kucinich and Reprieve write about it.

EDRi is one of the organizations defending civil rights in the information society. Some of the topics, which they recently have published information about, are:

• Flawed Dutch government study on ISDS
• Poland: Secret services escape citizen’s control
• Germany opens investigation on Merkel’s phone tap
• Turkish government to acquire a tool to censor social media?

Read more on EDRi’s website

Today, a police report was filed in Sweden against the top leadership in Eritrea for crimes against humanity. Also, the UN’s Human Rights Council has recently set up a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in Eritrea. The situation in Eritrea forces many Eritreans to flee to Europe, often in ships that are far from seaworthy. Eritrea is a sad example of how ruthless governments are the root of many of the problems of the world, including the refugee situation and humanitarian disasters. However, we hope that the investigations regarding Eritrea will also reveal if any other governments are involved in the reported atrocities. It in known that dictatorships are sometimes supported by US, European or Chinese allies and may even be puppet regimes.

The mobile phone operator Vonafone recently published a report, where they reveal much of the mass surveillance they are forced by governments to participate in. In many countries, the authorities have direct access to all mobile phones. Some media have been surprisingly quiet about Vodafone’s report, although Vodafone is the first to publish such a global survey. We thank Vodafone for the courage and good leadership they have shown with their openness.

A family with young children is asleep at night. Early in the morning they wake up when masked and armed men enter their apartment, after destroying their door. Family members are brought to interrogation, including a 10-year-old boy separated from his parents, and not even a defence attorney is present.

The story sounds like it happend under military dictatorship. It happened in Sweden 2010 and was one in the row of abuses by Swedish Police and Prosecutors. This is now heavily critisized by the parliamentary ombudsman in Sweden. However, just like in many other similar cases, nobody is held accountable.

For further information in Swedish, read the entire decision by the parliamentary ombudsman or in the newspaper Aftonbladet.

Listen to the Swedish Radio about polio (in Swedish)

Not only has Spain recently taken a step to roll back universal jurisdiction, it may soon also pass a new bill violating human rights. Read the debate article in Swedish or English and sign the petition.

Read Amnesty International’s report on torture

The documentary about drones by Tonje Schei, which is available on the web page of Swedish television until the 10 June, shows how young people can be led into very serious crime by their government. The high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, imprisonment and suicide among veterans should come as no surprise.

This is a translation of Tomas Djurling’s recent article in Computer Sweden:

The wish of the police to use trojans to solve certain crimes will cause more harm than good, and the method has no place in a state of justice. This is claimed by security expert Tomas Djurling.

Police want to plant trojans in suspects’ computers in order to curb crime. I can well imagine that they have the desire. But have they thought through the full implications of this approach? To have this opportunity could perhaps solve some crimes, but there are so many downsides to this coin.

The German police have had the opportunity for a long time. The name of the trojan there is “Bundes Trojans or State Trojans”. The German hacker group Chaos Computer Club, CCC, discovered the trojan in October 2011. According CCC there were major security flaws in the trojan. Among other things, it lacked authentication, which meant that computers that had the trojan installed became very vulnerable on the internet. The trojan’s communication was not encrypted, which meant that information sent over the internet could be easily intercepted.

You may well find that it does not do any harm if the “crooks” have flaws in their computers, but there are several very large downsides of this for police and prosecutors. How is evidence evaluated in subsequent criminal investigations and court proceedings, if it appears that the police have opened up a suspected computer on the internet, available for anyone to use based on their purposes?

Then also anyone can “plant” information in the computers that have police trojan installed. The use of trojans for the police would probably make it much more difficult for police and prosecutors to solve crimes in a legally secure manner, which is expected of a state of justice.

The statistics of solved crimes would likely be worse. What lawyer would not miss the opportunity to challenge the evidence presented in these trials?

Other challenges are:

All those who turned out to be innocent, and were hacked with information losses, missed business or bankrupcy as a result by the trojan installed by the police. How are they protected?

What happens to the installed trojans that do not lead to investigation and trial? Should they be uninstalled hidden? What if the uninstallation fails, will it then be left or will the police do home visits, in order to uninstall the trojan on site with the previously suspected criminal?

Relatives of suspects or criminals may get hurt or violated in many situations.

The information collected by the police must be stored and handled in a secure manner throughout the investigation process. When a large and very important part of the process is done by computers connected to the internet, this process cannot be guaranteed to be secure.

How should the government protect these people’s privacy or replace the individual people or companies that get into trouble? No trojan or other software can be guaranteed to be secure over time.

This type of method is better suited in dictatorships than in western democracies. Apart from the purely legal, technical and investigative aspects, this will jeopardize the confidence in the administration of justice and ultimately in the entire state power. A trust that needs to be strengthened, not undermined.

If police and prosecutors would be able to use this method, they risk the rule of law for all in society. Hardly anyone would want that.