New proposal for police rights in Finland invades on privacy and civilian rights

A new legislation proposal about rights of the Police Investigation and Forceful Methods contains 93 different laws and around 310,000 words. It would take several days to just skim through it. (example: On printer paper the proposal would be equivalent in length to Mika Waltari's novel ”The Egyptian”)


New or altered police rights about information technology, computer systems and network communications:

Investigating an electronic device:
Police can confiscate and investigate the contents of any electronic device only on a basis of suspicion of a crime. In Finland conducting a house search does not require a search warrant issued by judicial system, only suspicion of a senior police constable. This new legislation would give a right to conduct investigation on an electronic device in such a way that it could be done even without issuing a house search. Essentially a hunch from a senior constable that someone is doing something criminal, is enough. In essence, this would make it easier for the police to break into citizens' computer and install a monitoring program, than it is currently possible to perform even phone tapping.

Technical inspection and Police monitoring:
Would allow police to inspect and monitor private computer operations, files, devices and communications with confiscations and inspections, as well as monitoring programs installed on citizen's computer (such as keyloggers that monitor everything that is typed on a keyboard). This installation could be done by breaking into civilian's computer through network connection.The spelling of the proposed legislation also suggests that this could be done also on online-files, such as emails stored elsewhere in the internet and activities done through internet by the user to remote computers..
The argumentation for why such legislation is necessary, is left vague. Also left vague is how and for what purpose the data gathered in such ways can be used.

These changes to current legislation are proposed as a part of ”reformation of laws about police investigation and forceful police operating methods”. They are not presented as a new police rights  and activities, but merely as technical details.

Other changes affecting personal privacy of citizens:

If police are conducting a residential search (as said earlier, this does not require a court decision, merely a hunch from senior constable), the police can remove the owner of a residence from the scene if they deem that his/her presence on the scene make investigation more difficult. This would leave the police free to do anything in the residence, when the owner is not present.

A person under suspicion of being a criminal can be tagged with an electronic device to monitor his/her movements. This applies also to any devices or objects, such as cars/motorcycles, bicycles etc).

The victim of a crime can be ordered into a DNA test.

Body search performed by the police could be extended to physical body cavity searches, as well as all materials (including data storages) and this could be done even without the decision or presence of an police officer that has a right to perform an arrest.

Acquiring and using telephone operator's data on a suspect would no longer require a court decision before the action is carried out. The courts decision on wether or not the use of telephone data was correct or justifiable, can be done later.