The political volatility prompted by the War on Terror and Edward Snowden’s revelations on digital mass surveillance have created immense pressure on political systems to redress contradictions between state security, transparency, and the right to privacy and freedom of speech. As noted in previous studies, discussions on state security and transparency are indispensable in the legitimations of surveillance. While mass surveillance infringes the fundamental rights, transparency and democratic oversight compensate the loss of privacy and freedom. When political discourse shifts explicitly towards patriotism and paternalism, however, the normalisation of surveillance supersedes critical reflection about its legitimacy and makes it banal.

While Snowden’s disclosures have provoked privacy advocates to call for more strict regulations, most citizens have accepted surveillance in terms of national security. In comparison to other countries, the connections between the Snowden revelations and Finnish intelligence laws have been rather thin and implicit. Given that Finland is neither a global power nor an intelligence giant, the Snowden revelations have had little do with ’us’. Instead, portraying itself as a haven of online privacy and cyber security, Finland has been one of the last countries in Europe drafting intelligence laws. This study focuses on the Finnish civil and military intelligence laws through policy documents, media debate and news coverage, and interviews with key stakeholders participating in the law making to tackle the banalisation of surveillance.
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Matti Kortesoja is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Academy of Finland funded research project “Banal Surveillance: Unravelling the Causes of and Remedies for the Privacy Paradox (BANSUR)” at Tampere Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET), Tampere University. Matti´s research interests cover social and cultural theory, politics and media. The title of his doctoral dissertation is “Power of Articulation: Imageries of Society and Social Action in Structural-Marxism and its Critique” (2016).