Supo monitors everyone’s Internet traffic in Finland.
Supo may gather intelligence concerning Internet traffic if there is no other way to investigate specified activities that jeopardise national security, such as terrorism or espionage by a foreign power.
Supo always needs the permission of a court to engage in network traffic intelligence gathering, and the process may only target international traffic. This means that no intelligence gathering is permitted in respect of communications between individuals residing in Finland. Communications between people in Finland that are routed through Stockholm at times of network congestion, for example, must be removed from any intelligence materials gathered.
Search criteria are applied to find traffic that is the subject of intelligence gathering in the flow of network traffic. Only IP addresses and other metadata may be used as search criteria on the public network. Words from the content of messages, such as “bomb”, may not be used as search terms.
Network traffic intelligence is neither intended nor even able to monitor cross-border communications in Finland on a large scale. Such intelligence operations target the small part of communications traffic that is known to convey information of importance to national security. Traffic screened by metadata will nevertheless necessarily also include messages that are not relevant to national security, so content searches may be applied to disclose relevant messages while the rest are discarded unopened. Any opened message that proves unrelated to the subject of the investigation is also discarded. Privileged communications protected by an intelligence prohibition, such as correspondence between medical practitioners and their patients, are similarly discarded.