In recent years Sweden has been affected by an increase in organized crime, bombings, and deadly gun violence. Government surveillance measures for the purpose of preventing crime, i.e., before a concrete criminal suspicion arises, have thus become a more common practice within the work of law enforcement authorities. The act (2007:979) on measures to prevent certain particularly serious crimes(hereinafter referred to as“Preventivlagen”)is of particular importance for this preventive kind of secret surveillance measures. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate whether Preventivlagen contains adequate protection and safeguards for the freedoms and rights of individuals' privacy according to the Swedish Instrument of Government (1974:152) (hereinafter referred to as“Regeringsformen”) and the European Convention on human rights, Article 8 the right to privacy and Article 13 the right to effective legal remedies. A further aim was to examine if the law in question needs to be improved with respect to privacy protection. In addition, the new bill in SOU 2022:52 which proposes to expand Preventivlagen, was also reviewed in terms of privacy protection. In conclusion, Preventivlagen generally is foreseeable in terms of the scope of application for the use of secret surveillance measures. Furthermore, it also mostly contains adequate safeguards. However, there are certain parts that can be improved. When a proportionality assessment was made according to the requirements of the European Convention and Regeringsformen, it was concluded that Preventivlagen partly lacks some basic safeguards regarding individuals' right to notification and effective legal remedies. Also, the supervision exercised by the Privacy Protection Board was deemed insufficient. Therefore, Preventivlagen may constitute a disproportionate intervention in the individual's right to privacy in Article 8 and the right to effective legal remedies in Article 13, as well as ch. 2. § 6 Regeringsformenwhich also protects the right to privacy. It was therefore proposed that the shortcomings of the law be addressed by the legislature. The new draft bill SOU 2022:52 was also described and analyzed. In the bill, it is proposed that the catalog of crimes in Preventivlagen be expanded and that the use of excess information becomes unlimited. The conclusion in this part was that an expansion of the crime catalog and the possibility of unlimited use of excess information can have an impact on the proportionality and foreseeability aspect of the law. It was therefore proposed that the legislator strengthen the safeguards in Preventivlagen to further ensure privacy protection if these changes are introduced.

There is an ongoing discussion amongst Swedish politicians about how the Swedish police will be able to handle increased organised criminality represented in the growing threats of terrorism. In May 2006 representatives from the seven parties of the Swedish parliament debated the question whether the Swedish security service and Swedish police should be permitted to use increased surveillance with the purpose of preventing severe criminality.The question of increased surveillance is a matter often connected to matters of personal privacy. The aim of this master’s thesis is to study which arguments are being used for and against the proposed law that would permit surveillance with the purpose of preventing crime, as well as examine members of Parliaments view on privacy.The methodology used in this thesis is both argumentation analysis and rhetoric analysis. These two tools are used to examine the minutes from a parliamentary debate about the bill mentioned earlier. The results show that several arguments for and against the new law emerged during the debate. Politicians supporting the new law argued that the police force at present is ill-equipped against the increasingly organized criminality and that increased preventional surveillance is necessary in order to protect people in society. The opponents maintained that the bill results in infringement on the integrity of the individual and that there is no need for this sort of surveillance. All members of the parliament state that privacy is very important. Still, politicians supporting the new law claim that in some particular cases privacy must be sacrificed in aid of solving crime. They also state that infringement of integrity can be avoided thanks to measures taken whilst creating the bill. The results also show that there are different opinions among the Swedish parties concerning the possibilities of maintaining a balance between surveillance and privacy. Some parties claim it is impossible while other parties mean it is possible as long as the legal security is satisfactory. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the FRA-law. The focus of the study is to examine how Swedish politicians relate to the new draft of this law on intelligence. Key themes in the study are security, threats, surveillance and privacy. The power relationship between the individual and the state is also examined. Empirical data used in this study consists of a spoken plenary debate in the House which was held in connection with the adoption of the FRA law in June 2008. Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis is the method we used to examine the plenary debate. The analysis focuses on three major issues: text level, discursive practice and social practice. Within the textual level, two different approaches to the Bill were found; the majority argues for security in the form of increased surveillance and the opposition argues for the protection of privacy. Within the discursive practice, two discourses were identified; individual discourse that contains liberal overtones and collective discourse that include socialist and conservative overtones. Within the social practice, it was found that politicians and media contribute to the reproduction of power. The politicians believe that the surveillance is both necessary and problematic in relation to the protection of privacy. The results show that, when creating legislation around intelligence, it can be both complex and difficult to find a good balance between prevention of external threats from being realized and ensuring individuals' privacy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what objects that can be seized and how the management of a seizure should be conducted. Ability to take enforcement against an individual should be carefully weighed against the rights and freedoms that exist. Seizure is one of the various restraints that exist, and the regulation on which they appear is mainly in the Code of Judicial Procedure, Chapter 27th. To be able to apply coercive measures, it is fundamental prerequisite that a criminal investigation is initiated, but there exist some significant exceptions to this. There are also rules about who has the right to provide for the seizure, the decision can be taken by a prosecutor, an investigator, a police officer or, in special cases, the court. The purpose of a seizure is mainly to secure the subject of a criminal investigation, to secure objects that have been arrogated or to secure future forfeiture. Therefore it is only possible to seize objects that are relevant to a criminal investigation, and it is only movable property such as written documents or electronic objects that can be seized. Items that have been seized should be handled in accordance with the laws that exist. A protocol shall be established and supervision shall be exercised over the seizure and a seizure should end when it is no longer relevant to the criminal investigation. The regulation has recently changed and that created new improved opportunities, but despite that, the area is complex and constantly evolving technology makes it difficult.

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I den här uppsatsen har jag undersökt vad det kan bero på att det uppstår brister i polisens dokumentation av de straffprocessuella tvångsmedlen. Riksdagens ombudsmän, JO, har kritiserat polisen under flera år för att det brister i dokumentationen av ärenden. Jag har genom en kombination av kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder undersökt dokumentationen av 140 ärenden gällande innehav av narkotika för att se vilka brister som finns, hur stora dessa brister är och vad det kan bero på. I resultatdelen kommer jag att presentera hur stort problemet är och jag kommer även att komma med förslag till lösning. Den huvudsakliga teorin som använts är Lispkys teori om gräsrotsbyråkraten samt forskning av Otto Petersson, Gunnar Ekman och Rolf Granér & Maria Knutsson. Samtliga svenska forskare har undersökt den vandring en polis gör från legalistisk gröngöling till lagens autonoma, långa arm. Resultatet är överraskande med ett utslag av ca 53% av ärenden som hade tydliga drag av autonomi. Hur stort problemet är totalt sett är svårt att överblicka. Klart är att något bör göras för att komma till rätta med detta. Sen är frågan om det bara gäller dokumentation eller det är ett större institutionellt problem.

No description available.

I svensk lag finns ett antal s.k. hemliga tvångsmedel, som hemlig övervakning och avlyssning av elektronisk kommunikation, hemlig kameraövervakning och postkontroll. Ofta används dessa inom ramen för en förundersökning för att utreda ett redan begånget brott. Det finns dock även möjlighet att använda sig av hemliga tvångsmedel för att förhindra framtida allvarlig brottslig verksamhet. I dessa fall benämns de ofta preventiva tvångsmedel. Ett krav för att domstolen ska kunna bevilja tillstånd till preventiva tvångsmedel är att det bedöms föreligga ’påtaglig risk’ för att en viss person ska komma att begå något av ett antal specificerade brott. Detta examensarbete har som utgångspunkt att ’påtaglig risk’ kan betraktas som ett mellanbegrepp, och analyserar dess grunder och följder utifrån aggregering, nödvändighet respektive tillräcklighet samt villkorsbaserad sammanvägning. På grundsidan av ’påtaglig risk’ finns enligt den gjorda analysen ett antal aspekter i form av risknivåer kopplade till individen (i sin tur baserad på en rad underliggande personliga omständigheter), inklusive olika kontextuella omständigheter. De risknivåer som de olika omständigheterna bedöms medföra aggregeras i den genomförda analysen till en komparativ mellanaspekt som kan betecknas ’individuell risknivå med avseende på vilja och förmåga att utöva (viss närmare avgränsad och någorlunda nära förestående) allvarlig brottslighet’. Man kan därefter betrakta det som att det är upp till tingsrätten att fatta beslut om den aggregerade individuella risken överstiger en tänkt tröskelnivå för att klassificeras som den juridisk-tekniska termen ’påtaglig risk’ eller inte. Om ’påtaglig risk’ föreligger finns villkorliga normativa (rätts-)följder i form av att tingsrätten får bevilja tillstånd till fyra olika hemliga tvångsmedel, förutsatt att allmänna principer för tvångsmedelsanvändning är uppfyllda. Vidare förs en diskussion i uppsatsen om hur begreppet ’risk’ används i den aktuella lagen och hur ’påtaglig risk’ kan förstås i sammanhanget. / Swedish law contains regulation for the use of investigative means such as covert surveillance and interception of electronic communications, covert camera surveillance and covert inspection of letters and packages – collectively known as under the umbrella term ‘covert coercive measures‘. These are commonly used in the criminal investigation of an already committed crime. There are however provisions for the usage of such means in order to prevent certain serious criminal activities. In such cases they are called preventive coercive means. In order for the court to allow for the use of preventive coercive means, the police and prosecutor has to show that there is a ‘tangible risk’ that a person will commit one of a number of specified crimes. This thesis rests on the assumption that ‘tangible risk’ can be considered an intermediate concept, and analyses its grounds and consequences through the lens of aggregation, necessity vs. sufficiency, and criteria-based aggregation. The analysis shows that the grounds for ’tangible risk’ can be viewed as an aggregated individualised risk level which comprises several personal indicators, including contextual factors. The individual risk level can be understood as a continuous intermediary aspect. The decision-making of the court can be viewed as a decision concerning whether the individual risk level is sufficiently high to cross an imagined threshold level at which it can be classified as the binary intermediary ‘tangible risk’, or not. ‘Tangible risk’ has normative legal consequences insofar as the court may approve certain coercive measures. However, in order for the consequences to come into effect, general principles for the use of coercive means must be met. The consequences of ‘tangible risk’ are therefore conditional. Finally, the thesis discusses the use of the term ‘risk’ in the legislation, and how the term ‘tangible risk’ thus can be understood.

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Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights prescribes that everyone has the right to respect for his or her private life. A restriction of this right presupposes that the law of the Contracting State achieves certain requirements which include the need for the restrictive measure to be necessary in a democratic society. This thesis examines the case law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding secret surveillance. The thesis concludes that the European Court has established further requirements regarding these particularly intrusive measures, which consist of various minimum safeguards concerning the substantive national law. Sweden introduced a new method of secret surveillance, hemlig dataavläsning, in April 2020. This new covert surveillance measure enables the authorities to breach the systems of different types of technical equipment, to retrieve stored personal information within. The main purpose of this thesis is to analyse and determine if the Swedish law of secret data interception meets the requirement set out in the case law. The thesis concludes that the Swedish law does not meet all the requirements set out by the European Court of Human Rights. The Swedish law does not with sufficient clarity define the offences which justifies the application of the covert surveillance. The law also prescribes an authorization procedure which lack sufficient safeguards regarding the independence of the decision-making authority. Furthermore, the law does not regulate the technology and methods used for the action, and there is no legal requirement for the national court to take these into account in its decision-making. Lastly, the Swedish legislation stipulates that the individual does not need to be notified about the surveillance if there is any confidentiality regarding the information about the surveillance one year after the preliminary investigation. In these cases, the supervisory authority must safeguard the interests of the individual, which due to the lack of legally binding decisions, are not sufficient. Finally, the thesis outlines various solutions to address these problems, which consist of inter alia: that the Swedish law should set higher requirements for the severity of crimes that can justify the use of the secret coercive measure; the removal of the interim decisions of prosecutors; a legal requirement that the court in its assessment must consider and decide on the technology used to execute the surveillance; and lastly, a legal requirement that the individual should be notified about the surveillance as soon as this is possible, or alternatively, an increase of power to the supervisory authority.