The transport and communication committee in the Storting, Norway's parliament, will present a new electronic communications law to update and replace existing legislation.
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Sunde is astonished by the proposal's lack of clarification of several key points that are vital to fighting crime. Currently nothing prevents mobile phones from being 'registered' by fictitious owners, and there are numerous Donald Ducks and James Bonds supposedly living at the palace.
Major operator Netcom has about 300,000 clients with unregistered phones using cash cards according to their communications chief Guri Wormdahl. Former monopolist Telenor demands a name and address when selling mobiles but do not demand identification.
Boon to crime
"This is a dream situation for certain criminal circles and we have a great number of cases where it has emerged that organized criminals use mobile phones which are impossible to trace back to their user," Sunde said.
Many European nations have now introduced logging of one to two years traffic for all firms offering any type of electronic communication. In Norway logging is currently voluntary and all such data must be deleted after three months out of respect for personal privacy laws. The new legislation does not mention either logging or privacy.
"We must concede that Norway is now terribly out of step with the rest of Europe and that, unfortunately, protection of privacy will become the enemy of the good when data is delete so quickly," Sunde said.
Widespread agreement
"It is remarkable that neither bureaucrats nor politicians have discussed and cleared these important basic questions. For us in the police, a new electronic communications law without these elements will mean hugely weakened possibilities to fight serious crime in comparison to our colleagues in many European nations," Sunde said.
The heat of the parliamentary committee, Petter Loevik of the Conservative Party, said that he was ready to accept more input on the law.
"The themes Sunde raises here are important and central for us. But I noticed that no one from the police was present in parliament two weeks ago when we had a public hearing on this issue," Loevik said.
Loevik said the letter of the law did not need to contain details but could instead refer jurisdiction on such matters to legal authorities - though the law could also spell things out explicitly.
Netcom's Wormdahl said that their company also welcomed more knowledge.
"We would like to know who our customers are and we have asked authorities several times if we could be allowed to check information on our subscribers in the national register. This has been rejected by, among others, the Data Inspectorate and the Finance Department," Wormdahl said.
