Forsvarets radioanstalt

Story

The National Defence Radio Establishment is a Swedish government agency, organised under the Ministry of Defence. The two main tasks of FRA are signals intelligence, and support to government authorities and state-owned companies regarding computer security.The FRA is not allowed to initialize any surveillance on their own, and operates purely on assignment from the Government, the Government Offices, the Armed Forces, The Swedish National Police Board and Swedish Security Service . Decisions and oversight regarding information interception is provided by the Defence Intelligence Court and the Defence Intelligence Commission; additional oversight regarding protection of privacy is provided by the Swedish Data Protection Authority.HistorySignals Intelligence has existed in Sweden since 1905 when Swedish General Staff and Naval Staff respectively, had departments for signals intelligence and cryptanalysis. These departments succeeded, for instance, to decode the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet cipher. After World War I, this ability mostly ceased as politicians did not see its value and did not grant funding. The Swedish Navy still continued in a smaller scale and developed the competence further. One of the first major successes was in 1933 when the cipher of the Russian OGPU (predecessor to KGB) was solved.