Security Police Might Refuse Giving Foreigner Statments
Statements Aim has been preventing terrorists from entering Finland.
Finland’s Security Police (SUPO) says that its possibilities of doing an effective job could be seriously jeopardised by recent decisions handed down by Finnish administrative courts.
As a consequence, SUPO is threatening to stop issuing statements on whether or not a foreigner seeking entry into Finland might pose a security risk.
The warning is contained in a document acquired by Helsingin Sanomat, which was sent by SUPO to the Supreme Administrative Court in April.
The aim of the statements on foreigners is primarily to help officials - mainly at the Directorate of Immigration - to prevent terrorists, spies, and other potentially dangerous individuals from entering the country.
The issue at hand focuses on the extent to which SUPO should be allowed to restrict fundamental rights on the basis of national security concerns. Persons considered dangerous by SUPO have not been told the basis of suspicions against them.
The Helsinki and Kuopio Administrative Courts have overturned at least five decisions for the refusal of residence permits to foreingers coming to Finland on the basis of SUPO assessments. The decisions leaned heavily on statements from the Security Police.
The courts found that the negative decisions by the Directorate of Immigration should have indicated why the Afghani, Pakistani, Somali, and two Iranians were seen as a “threat to state security, or to public order”.
The dispute is now before the Supreme Administrative Court. SUPO has given the court a statement concerning each of the five cases, in which it sharply opposes granting the foreign citizens in question the right to know what information it has about them, or if there is any information at all.
The Security Police says that it would probably stop issuing statements on foreigners if the people in question were to be given access to the information.
”The knowledge that there is information about a person in the registry of the Security Police could in itself endanger state security”, SUPO says.
SUPO’s sources include “information provided by the person him- or herself in a naturalisation interview, or which comes from other officials, from public or non-public sources of information, and in recent years, increasingly from foreign security officials”.
SUPO says that in some of the five cases in question, the the sources included foreign security services.
SUPO notes that it does not even have the right to pass on information without the consent of the original suppliers of the information.
The Security Police say that it is likely that foreign security services would not share classified information with SUPO if there is a possibility that it might pass it on.
“In the worst of cases, the flow of information might dry up completely”, SUPO writes.
According to SUPO, its possibilities to fight terrorism and illegal intelligence gathering “would be rendered almost non-existent” if it would not be able to protect its secret information.