Written by: TechAnon
Tis the season! …for more snooping and spying!
We watch them, they watch us, the others watch the first ones… we already know that there’s no such thing as security anymore but isn’t this starting to get ridiculous? Finally, after tips and a few months of private investigating, the Norwegian “Aftenposten” news has reported findings (and a generalized map) of a high quality network of surveillance equipment structured to gather intelligence right in the middle of Oslo’s government district. This corner of the world doesn’t typically hear much about countries like Norway, Sweden, Holland and the like. They don’t normally stick their noses into everyone else’s business and are generally left alone. There is also the simple possibility that this same corner is just underexposed to that part of the world too. None the less, it’s not a big surprise to hear they deal with the same “NSA style” crap that the USA (and the rest of world for that matter) has come to know as status quo.
Who exactly is being looked at?
“The Prime minister’s office, the Ministry of defense, Stortinget (parliament) and the central bank, Norges Bank. Ministers, state secretaries, members of parliament, state officials, business executives and other essential staff engaged in protecting the nation’s security, our military and our oil wealth – totaling more than 6000 billion Krone (about 92 billion dollars) – are working within this area.”*
Once initial suspicions were confirmed, the Aeger Group and CEPIA Technologies were requested by Aftenposten to attempt to map areas of “suspicious cellular activity”. Once cut loose, these agencies promptly located not one, but an assortment of areas within Oslo that contained illegal monitoring equipment disguised as “base stations” or cell network antennae as many others would recognize. Once accessed these fake base stations would capture all registered cell phones within reach. As you can imagine, this is no cheap electronic store doo-dad. This is the type of equipment that is not allowed to be sold to a private party within NATO. Well….legally. At a running estimate this network could be anywhere from $80,000 to $300,000 according to Aeger but, if there are that many systems up and running…who knows how far this could reach.
Who’s responsible? Who knows? The only way to figure that part out is to actually get hands on access to the equipment and do mapping inside buildings and (cough cough) only the police and security agencies can do that. Guess what? They’re not talking. As a point of reference, only the police, the Police Security Service (PST) and the National Security Authority (NSM) have the legal right to use such equipment within the country but, any public official that has been contacted about the matter has denied their agency owning or operating such equipment.
When approached by Aftenposten with their report in hand, “the Ministry of justice did not want to make an immediate comment on the matter”. However, the next morning there was a mysterious influx of staff from the National Security Authority to the streets of Oslo appearing to try to trace the illegal base stations.
Is it coincidence that Norway also has an agency name that translates into English as “NSA”? or is it just funny? Are they actually investigating or is it a “Dog and Pony show” to appease the masses? Since Aftenposten had to perform their own investigating before anyone else took things seriously, who would like to take a W.A.G. (Wild A** Guess) at who may be peeking at whom? Where will it happen next? Stay tuned for our next episode.
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Sources:
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20141213/1015809344.html
*http://mm.aftenposten.no/stortinget-og-statsministeren-overvakes/
