Commenting on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, security and intelligence police chief Antti Pelttari said in a press conference that Finnish intelligence services had "major shortcomings compared to practically all" other western countries.
Pelttari noted that this affects the country’s anti-terrorism efforts. He added that it’s important for the intelligence services to have the power to engage in online surveillance.
"As we have consistently said, this would be an important tool in our anti-terrorism work, and one that is used by all other western authorities. It’s a significant drawback in our official toolkit," Pelttari stressed.
The call for expanded web surveillance powers appears to have resonated with President Sauli Niinistö. He told Yle that it’s time to bring national intelligence activities "up to the level of civilised European states".
Niinistö had previously drawn attention to what he described as the "weak" level of intelligence work.
"We do get information from elsewhere, perhaps mostly due to goodwill, but we’re not able to gather a lot if it ourselves. And it's quite clear that it's difficult for other parties to gather information about what’s happening inside Finland. They are able to tell about where people are from and perhaps a bit about their backgrounds," Niinistö told Yle.
"But in terms of what’s happening here, we should have similar means as other civilized European states," he added.
Snooping laws or national security assurance?
Finland is currently moving to reform its intelligence legislation. One important aspect of the planned reform relates to granting Supo the authority to conduct web surveillance.
However there’s been stiff opposition to the project, with critics saying that such powers could erode citizens' fundamental right to privacy of their information.
The Interior, Defence and Justice ministries are however moving forward with a programme to develop civilian and military intelligence legislation, a measure that could require amending the constitution.
President Niinistö shied away from commenting directly on the proposed legislative reforms. However he did raise the question of potential conflicts between individual rights and national security.
"We have been rather conservative and I understand those views that highlight the rights of the individual. And of course they must be respected, but we are now getting back to the core problem. We want to live freely in an open democracy. We have to somehow safeguard that freedom when we see incidents such as what happened in Paris," the President noted.
"In such a case we need to deal with two principles, which may be a bit conflicting or compare them, and ask ourselves whether one of them could yield slightly, so that we could increase security, for example," he added.
The Finnish constitution guarantees the protection of personal information. In August Yle interviewed Professor Tuomas Ojanen and Assistant Professor Juha Lavapuro, who said that early-stage information gathering without any kind of concrete suspicion of crime "in no way warrants changing the constitution".