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We no longer have illusions. Every time we think we are doing something private, it is not. It is tracked, stored and can be retrieved when the authorities want it, writes director Per-Olav Sørensen.
By Per-Olav Sørensen, former journalist, now director, screenwriter and producer.
Thank you very much Laila Anita Bertheussen. You have become a brilliant living example of exactly what the theatrical performance “Ways of Seeing” brought the spotlight. Big brother Norway sees you all the time. The PST knows when you go to bed and when you let the cat out.
When director Pia Maria Roll and her team performed “Ways of Seeing,” one of the main elements of the performance was making visible who is laying the groundwork for immigration and policing in Norway. How they live, where they come from, and what like-minded people they communicate with.
On the stage of the play “Ways of Seeing”, Supreme Court Justice Ketil Lund stood up and played himself. Lund is a former Supreme Court judge and chairman of the Storting Secret Service Investigation Commission, which in 1996 delivered the report on illegal surveillance, also called the “Lund Report.”
The report referred to an extensive observation of political groups, mainly communists and socialists, carried out by the Surveillance Police by order of the Norwegian government. Because the Lund report could be interpreted as meaning that Norway’s secret services in several cases violated human rights, the PST was paralyzed for several years due to “fear of making mistakes”, according to former PST chief Janne Kristiansen.
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Yes, even former Prime Minister Kåre Willoch did his best in 2011 to suggest that the 1996 Lund report was partly to blame for the terrorist acts of July 22, 2011. The Lund report clipped the wings of the secret services, he believed Willoch, the terrorist act against the government building and the massacre in Utøya could be prevented. That is a strong claim. But the combination of the terrorist attack in New York on September 9, 2001, the war on terror, and the terrorist acts here at home on July 22, 2011, totally changed the surveillance climate. The rights of the individual were erased in favor of the security of the State.
Against this backdrop and in this historical context, “Ways to See” attempts to make clear that surveillance has worsened since the Lund report came out in 1996. Norwegian socialists and communists have only been replaced by suspected Muslims and immigrants. So, to put it bluntly, the actors in the play Hanan Benammar and Sara Baban filmed the home of then-Justice Minister Tor Mikkel Wara. They also filmed the Tybring-Gjedde home of former Social Security Minister Ingvil Smine, they thought, but there they lost the address.
Vigilance was not the strong point of the theater group. But the regression was clear enough, monitor those you think control you.
When Laila Anita Bertheussen wrote her famous VG column on December 1, 2018, she won the sympathy of many because she defended her right to privacy. She would not have liked the theater groups hiding in the bushes. That is understandable. But compared to what PST says about her now, the fear of the free theater group in the bushes turns into a bad joke. These are the instances that were previously subject to her husband and that she should fear.
Bertheussen’s husband, Tor Mikkel Wara, was thus the overlord of those who now dissect Bertheussen’s life. And her friend Ingvil Smine’s Tybring-Gjedde was to serve as Norway’s security, vital interests of national security and legal security of the individual.
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Legal certainty? Do you really have it, Laila Anita Bertheussen? During the trial that is now underway, we have been told that the PST knows when to open and close the front door. When buying in Sweden. When you pay in cash or by card. When you get in the car. How far you drive When you stop. How long do you spend sitting in the car before leaving. When you are online. What you are looking for online. How long are you on the website. Who you chat with in a closed private group. What do you talk about with your friends. When you send a text message. What you write. When you call. When you move into your own house, and not least… the incredible detail… how many steps you take inside your house.
And to sum it up, all these details are posted on all news channels and on Storebror’s Storebror, SoMe.
Is this really how we want it? Do you really want it that way, Laila Anita Bertheussen? Or do you think the institutions formerly run by your husband and girlfriend could go a bit far? Where are the limits to monitoring you as an individual? When is it really enough?
For Laila Anita Bertheussen, she is not a single immigrant from Syria. Laila Anita is married to a trusted former Norwegian minister. Laila-Anita has opened her PC and searched for “printer” and not “jihad”. Laila-Anita has been in Strømstad and not in Damascus. Laila Anita’s friend is a minister, not a former Iraqi soldier. In other words, Laila Anita is not in the PST spotlight on a daily basis, but there are definitely plenty of others who are.
We no longer have any illusions. PST knows everything about all the people who bother to know something. Absolutely everything. And inside this huge pot of digital clues, you and I, all Norwegians, walk. Every time we think we are doing something private, it is not. It is tracked, stored and can be retrieved when the authorities want it. This is exactly what Bertheussen is experiencing now, in a Norwegian court. The most private of the private is presented by the prosecution with the greatest obviousness. Also parts of Bertheussen’s life that have nothing to do with the prosecution.
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The Norwegian Data Protection Authority, which will turn on the warning lights on our behalf, has been completely absent from the Norwegian debate and public for 10 years. That is why I prefer to quote the former director of the Danish Data Protection Agency, Georg Apenes;
“There is a totalitarian way of thinking behind this, a way of thinking as if it were taken from the old communist regime: if you only know enough about people, you can rule society in the best possible way. What is happening is that the state is monitoring the citizen and not the other way around. “
The monkeys were wise enough and brave enough to repeatedly yell “danger”.
Any politician in Norway bothering to take the glove? Or does everyone really think it’s okay for Big Brother Norway to know how many steps Laila Anita Bertheussen takes in her own home?
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