Swedish Government Scrambles to Contain Damage from Data Breach

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/europe/ibm-sweden-data-outsourcing.html

by dwgirvan • 9 years ago

173 138 9 years ago

Vagantem• 9 years ago

The top ministers in charge of this scandal are impeached by the opposition. Our prime minister Stefan Löven is having a press conference tomorrow at 10am (+1gmt) and possibly the entire party will resign to hand over power to the Moderates (right wing) because of this.

johansch4• 9 years ago

I guess the most likely scenario is that the current PM tomorrow at 10am will announce that the current goverment has resigned and that it's then upon the Speaker of the Riksdag/Parliament to try to form a new government that will meet the acceptance of the parliament.

One note: the "right-wing" alliance of four parties who was behind this impeachment notice (I should use more quotes, they really are centrist as a group) parties earlier today announced that they would not seek to form an independent government with the help of Sverigedemokraterna, the anti-immigration and rightwing-ish party currently polling at around 20-25%.

Instead they would seek to form a new government together with the social democratic party they just claimed was not trustworthy.

Yes, it's odd.

(On the whole though I'm happy that we can have a political crisis like this without the country falling apart. Everyone is behaving perfectly orderly.)

Yetanfou4• 9 years ago

It is more than odd and it will only serve to steer more voters to the Sweden Democrats (SD).

For those not totally in tune with Swedish politics, the current government (S - social democrats - and MP - Miljöpartiet, 'environmental party') more or less stumbled right out of the starting blocks as the opposition voted down their budget. This would normally have ended with a resignation followed by a new formation attempt or new elections but this did not happen, the reason being the 'threat' of SD getting in a position of power. At that moment SD had the support of around 13% of those Swedish voters who actually turned up to vote. The opposition - which had just voted down the budget - now supported S and MP staying in power, enacting the budget proposed by the opposition. This became known as the 'decemberöverenskommelse' (December agreement).

Of course the ruling parties - S and MP, both left-wing - did not try to implement the budget as the opposition intended, they more or less went their own way. Already marred by a few scandals - e.g. the forced resignation of the minister for housing (MP) when his rather tight connections to the Erdogan-regime in Turkey, his mingling with the 'Grey Wolves' [1] (a Turkish ultra-nationalist organisation) and his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood became clear even to those who tried their best not to notice - the government stumbled along without any clear plan or direction. While they produce a lot of hollow rhetoric about their 'ethic values' (the Swedish concept of "värdegrund", [2]) and boast about being the "first feminist government" they have not acted decisively on real issues cropping up in the country, often going so far as to deny the issues. This has led to comparisons with the infamous Iraqi minister for Information, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf [3] who was known for stating things as he wanted them to be instead of the way they were, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence.

All this served to push more and more people towards SD, the social stigma of being associated with this party notwithstanding. If the "opposition" - quotes around the word as it is no longer clear whether the parties of the "alliance" can be considered to oppose the current government as they did support its rule under the December agreement - does go along with S and possibly MP (which by now has lost enough support to end up under the 4% threshold) they will lose even more voters to SD. In the latest poll by Sentio the combined support for the current government parties was 26.2% while SD got 26.8%, in other words there is more support for SD in Sweden than for the coalition of S and MP. The trend has been for support for SD to roughly double every four years (the election period in Sweden), from 3% to 6% to 13% to now 26%. It is unlikely for this trend to hold but it is certainly possible for them to end up with about a third of the votes in the country. Disenfranchising these voters will have a disastrous effect on the trust in politics and politicians in Sweden, a trust which is already at bottom level.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Wolves_(organization)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4rdegrund

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf

etiam• 9 years ago

Literally handing over power to the conservative block is hardly on the table. As one (probably unlikely) alternative the whole government might be dissolved, but that would pass the task of forming a new one back to the parliament.

Some domestic commentary on the options (poorly) translated by Google: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

josmar2• 9 years ago

Watching "Kingsmen" last night feels very timely.

johansch4• 9 years ago

All-right, I have to ask; what is the correlation you see between that movie and these events?

josmar2• 9 years ago

The evil weakling Swedish prime minister!

sexydefinesher• 9 years ago

Kingsmen's ending takes place in Sweden and features both a Swedish prime minister and a Swedish princess of which the protagonist has anal sex with.

JBiserkov• 9 years ago

I guess the old saying "Nobody got fired for buying [from] IBM." isn't true any longer?

johansch4• 9 years ago

Well, one person was already fired for buying this kind of IBM, but that was just the director general of the authority that leaked the data. The thing most swedes have an issue with is that the government tried to silence the leak for like two years (people really dislike being actively lied to). If they had owned it, I don't think it would have been such a big deal.

adrianratnapala• 9 years ago

It is an old truism that it is the cover-up that gets you. I.e. when we look at scandals, the thing that people generally get in trouble for was part of the cover up rather than the original scandal.

Given that this is common knowledge, why do cover-ups keep happening? Theory (A): the failed cover-ups we hear about are only a tiny fraction of the successful ones, so on average it is rational to try and cover things up. (B) cover-ups are not rational on average, but some bias in human psychology makes people do it anyway.

I am inclined to believe both, even though they contradict each other. I am also working on a (C) involving multiple parties drawing each other into the cover up in such a way that the person who takes the fall is not the principal who started the trouble.

FrenchyJiby• 9 years ago

Reading the article, I am reminded of the story of the famous Swedish ship, the Vasa [0], which sank in the XVII century because, ultimately, no one wanted to say no to the king: when the engineers saw there was a massive problem ahead ("your boat don't float"), the management didn't dare tell the King, leading to catastrophe[1].

It's a good lesson, I hope we learn it someday.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

[1] : I'll admit it is a fantastic chance for historians and tourists alike: The wreck, pulled from the waters perfectly preserved, is a must-see in Stockholm

kevin_nisbet• 9 years ago

For some reason, I think parts of this writeup were debunked, but it's still one of my favorite reads:

http://faculty.up.edu/lulay/failure/vasacasestudy.pdf [pdf]

Thank you for reminding me about the Vasa!

hutch120• 9 years ago

Another IBM stuff up... anyone remember the Australian Census screw up? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-25/ibm-to-pay-over-$30m-i...

johansch4• 9 years ago

I don't really think we can blame IBM on this one. From what I can tell, they followed the specs.

The problem was that the authority overseeing lots of very sensitive data forgot to specify that the individuals working on this project would need be a) swedish citizens, b) go through government level security clearance).

So then when IBM came back with, "hey guys, here's our list of a dozen+ guys in Serbia who need read/write access to all of the data", the swedish agencency felt like they had no choice to grant access to extra-nationals, even though it was clearly against the law.

Note: Serbia happens to be quite closely related to Russia, politically speaking. One of the admins who were granted read/write access had a ten year history in the serbian army...

dragandj• 9 years ago

Where did you get the information about dozen+ guys in _Serbia_? The article does not mention Serbia, but mentions Check Republic...

rhblake9• 9 years ago

I don't know how much blame you can put on IBM here.

- The Transport Agency decided to outsource operations, and IBM won the contract (April 2015)

- The following month, the head of the agency decided to ignore certain laws about privacy, secrecy, etc., as well as the agency's own requirements about information security

- The Swedish Security Service, Säpo (basically our FBI), immediately got wind of this and started investigating, ultimately recommending - in November 2015 - to put an immediate halt to the outsourcing

- The Transport Agency decided to ignore the advice of Säpo and handed over operations to IBM in December 2015

Here's a good timeline: http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/detta-vet-vi-om-transportst...

alfla• 9 years ago

article paywall

bjelkeman-again• 9 years ago

IBM really should be able to see that this is a very questionable contract and not take the contract.

daemin3• 9 years ago

It seems that all of the shifting of labour is working out for IBM. I wonder how long it will be before the statement "nobody got fired for picking IBM" becomes false.

But that timeline does seem quite ridiculous. To wilfully ignore the recommendations of you security services, seems almost Trumpesque.

jussij• 9 years ago

That's nothing compared to their massive $1 billion Queensland Health Payroll stuff up:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-06/qld-health-payroll-deb...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-07/government-may-sack-bu...

Radim• 9 years ago

The article doesn't mention many specifics, but I'd say when it comes to national security, Sweden has bigger (and more apparent) long-term issues than a handful of known IT professionals from Eastern Europe having access to private DBs.

azm12• 9 years ago

It blows my mind that rich country like sweden outsource super important info to ibm but on the other side accepts 'refugees' heavily.

rconti3• 9 years ago

I don't understand the connection between the two. Do you mean the financial considerations?

azinman2• 9 years ago

"It said that the project manager for the outsourcing agreement admitted during questioning that “he had no knowledge whatsoever of how to ensure security.”

You'd think someone would come in an consult on this, however, and setup basic protocols. A PM isn't expected to be a security expert -- that's what security experts are for.

cakedoggie• 9 years ago

A PM is expected to consider security though, and to be wary of sending data overseas.

Overwise they have no business working in IT. They might as well claim to not know what a network is.

mediascreen• 9 years ago

Well, their security department/group raised the issues. Unfortunately they were regarded as a hassle and where bypassed in the discussions. They seem to have made the director general sign several documents where she acknowledged that what they were doing was agains the law. As a last resort they went to the Swedish Security Service with the information and that was what started the investigation.

TrickyRick2• 9 years ago

That's what you get when the government pays 3/4 of private companies in salary. When you pay peanuts you get monkeys as they saying goes.

Also any type of consultancy work would probably have to go through "offentlig upphandling" which means the government puts out a proposal of what they want done and companies bid with the contract going to the lowest bidder. However someone has to formulate the requirements and that ends up going back on the original PM. Oh, and since the contract goes to the lowest bidder, what did you get when you payed peanuts?

_Codemonkeyism• 9 years ago

This is different because it concerns a government, but as long as the CEO doesn't go to jail for IT breaches (Sony,...) and grossly negligent IT decisions (British Airways), nothing will change with data security.

The second the law changes, CEOs will make it a personal matter sound decisions are made.

depressedpanda4• 9 years ago

Here's a summary of what foreign powers got access to:

- identities of undercover operatives - personal identity data of everyone with a driver's licence - people with protected identities - location of all army vehicles - money transport vehicles - classified infrastructure information

Even worse: when they realized they'd leaked photos, home addresses and SSNs of protected identities, they sent a clear text email asking the contractor to clear them from the database manually.

<emotional rant> My country is a joke.

SÄPO knew about this in 2015, and recommended against it, but the Transport Agency still went through with the deal. How they could even be allowed to do that is beyond me.

The director general of the Transport Agency, and the person ultimately responsible for the leak, was fined a mere $8500 (which is half of what she allegedly would earn in a _month_) for leaking highly classified information to foreign powers - an act that would be punished as high treason in any sane country. Either she knew exactly what she was doing, meaning the Russians paid a meagre $8500 for full access to a database containing top secret information, or (more likely) she was just that stupid, meaning possibly hostile powers got this information for free.

But hey, that's Sweden, where incompetent people become director generals of big government agencies, and any screw up they get caught with is excused by saying that you didn't know better.

Here, Swedes believe that Trump is such a catastrophe, and wonder why Americans could vote for him. We should instead look at our own pathetic "feminist" government, and ask ourselves how and why we got here.

But hey, luckily for everyone we don't have nukes. We'd probably accidentally give the launch codes to Saudi Arabia/Palestine, and respond by giving the person responsible for the leak a small fine while the rest of the world burned in the war that erupted after Israel got nuked. </rant>

cm2187• 9 years ago

I must say that if the data leak leads to the fall of the gouvernement, it will force everyone else to take it seriously. That would be a big advance to the credit of Sweden. (In most countries the gouvernement wouldn't fall for "so little")

rconti3• 9 years ago

I'm not familiar with Sweden's "feminist" government. Can you help foreigners understand? Was it, for example, a matter of existing staff members hiring new ones based on gender rather than on competence? Any reading material on the matter? It sounds like it's a well-known political argument in Sweden, I just don't know the background.

jjawssd2• 9 years ago

https://acidmuncher.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/feminist-trump-...

rhblake9• 9 years ago

Straight from the source, in English: http://www.government.se/government-policy/a-feminist-govern...

belorn2• 9 years ago

It is self defined, as in they call themselves feminist. You will be hard pressed to find any distinguishable feature.

You brought up hiring new staff. This government is the largest employer in the nation and has worse gender segregation than the private industry. One could be forgiven to think then that a "feminist" government would have at minimum create a recommendation in the hiring policy to address that. Nope. Government hired positions still top as the most extreme gender segregated professions in the nation and the trend with this government is more gender segregation in government hired positions, not less.

rhblake9• 9 years ago

Well, she was also fired (finally) and her career is finished. I agree it was monumentally stupid. But "punished as high treason"? Treason requires intent. She most certainly did not intend to be criminally disloyal to the country. Merely being ignorant and incompetent is not treason.

This is a major fuckup but let's be real. Our country is a "joke"? I know complaining is a national sport in Sweden, much like in many other countries, and I can rage about plenty of idiotic things going on. But on the whole, things are in general pretty good, relative to most other countries in the world. Move elsewhere and you'll just find a different set of things to be mad about (perhaps more, perhaps less; and there's always a bunch of Swedish expats who complain that things don't work like in Sweden).

staticelf6• 9 years ago

Wait what? She knew that was a possibility and that it is highly illegal and still she went through with it.

I would say that is having intent if anything. I love my country but I think she should be punished a lot harder. Arkebusering på slottsgården. But since that will never happen, 12 years in jail is probably enough.

reitanqild• 9 years ago

Agree, your country is not a joke.

It is a whole lot better than a lot of other places and I'd hope it would stay that way.

sgt1013• 9 years ago

Being ignorant and incompetent and taking a job that your national security depends on that you can't do is treason in my book.

I like Sweden, but the "on the whole, things in general" is a dangerous theme. Real problems and injustice exist in the margins and long tails, typically these can be fixed at manageable cost but not if they are ignored.

serpix• 9 years ago

You have housing mortgages that do not need to be repaid and you have no car sales tax. Two incredibly good reasons to love Sweden. <3

yAnonymous2• 9 years ago

on the whole, things are in general pretty good, relative to most other countries in the world.

15 years ago, those relativizations wouldn't have been necessary. Sweden was a poster child of a good society and now it isn't. Many things in your country did deteriorate quickly over the last decade or so, no matter how you try to coat it.

"At least we're still better than others" is a pretty sad statement by itself when you realize that you could be doing a lot better.

My country is currently going down the same road and it's saddening to see that we didn't learn from your mistakes.

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

From elsewhere in Europe, but I hear your frustration.

HearMeRoar• 9 years ago

Here, Swedes believe that Trump is such a catastrophe, and wonder why Americans could vote for him. We should instead look at our own pathetic "feminist" government, and ask ourselves how and why we got here.

Swede here. I don't even know how many times I've thought and said these exact words. Spot on.

pop72• 9 years ago

Incompetence has no nationality

archevel• 9 years ago

I realy fail to see how being a "feminist" government has any bearing on the issue at hand. Sure the government screwed up, but the rant part just takes away from the valid points you've raised.

bbotond• 9 years ago

I think he means that the selection criterion to be in the government was conformance to fashionable ideologies instead of actual competence - but honestly, that is how politics works everywhere.

xlocicicig3• 9 years ago

The screw-up was initiated by Alliansen (not the current government), by outsourcing this to IBM.

I'm not saying current government are free of blame here, but please stop trying to fit this into a "feminist" argument.

petters• 9 years ago

leaking highly classified information to foreign powers - an act that would be punished as high treason in any sane country.

If she had been convicted for intentionally leaking information to foreign powers for money, she would have been convicted for treason.

But the prosecution could not find/show intent, so she was only convicted for incompetence.

BLanen• 9 years ago

This happens in every country in the world. Don't act like you're a special case.

xlocicicig3• 9 years ago

Now, how do you fit feminism into this plot?

baalimago2• 9 years ago

"location of all army vehicles"

The defense minister has openly said that the "försvarsmakten"'s cars aren't listed in the STA's registers.

I can't find a link to prove this but i think it was said in one of the press conference's

willvarfar2• 9 years ago

I was with you for the first half, but the second half where you say the russians got stuff is silly and then the rant against 'feminist' government etc is just plain stupid.

throwawaymanbot3• 9 years ago

hehe I agree. That poster went kind of bizarre there in the end. None of these things have anything to do with a Data breach. How weird they adopted white nationalist sentiments at the end..

depressedpanda4• 9 years ago

One of the contractors who got access to the data was employed by the Serbian military for a decade. I suppose you are aware of the ties Serbia and its military has to Russia? It's not unprobable that this guy sold the information to Russia. Even if not, Sweden must treat a potential leak like this as a real leak, or else risk endangering their operatives.

Oh, yeah. The leak is _still_ ongoing: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

More info here, with Google translated for your convenience: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/07/swedish-t...

litor• 9 years ago

That isn't really the full story.

Here's a summary of what foreign powers got access to:

It's not been established that foreign powers got access to the data. It's considered a leak because confidential information is considered leaked as soon as it's not handled correctly.

Even worse: when they realized they'd leaked photos, home addresses and SSNs of protected identities, they sent a clear text email asking the contractor to clear them from the database manually.

There were two leaks. One was the information not being handled correctly, the other was the disclosure of people with protected identities in the "car registry" to companies that would use the data to send advertisements to the owners. This wouldn't have included photos or SSNs.

SÄPO knew about this in 2015, and recommended against it, but the Transport Agency still went through with the deal. How they could even be allowed to do that is beyond me.

They weren't really allowed, which is why the head of the agency was prosecuted.

Either she knew exactly what she was doing, meaning the Russians paid a meagre $8500 for full access to a database containing top secret information, or (more likely) she was just that stupid, meaning possibly hostile powers got this information for free.

The investigation concluded that she was aware that she was breaking the law but not that the leak was intentional as such, therefor it was "willful negligence".

Here, Swedes believe that Trump is such a catastrophe, and wonder why Americans could vote for him. We should instead look at our own pathetic "feminist" government, and ask ourselves how and why we got here.

That's silly.

- IT operations used to be run by another government agency called The Transport Administration (vs. The Transport Agency). - The decision to outsource was done under the former government by the the former head of the agency in 2012. - The previous contract on IT operations was already cancelled, the staff was being let go, the facilities cleared and would no longer be available come January 2015. - The former head of the agency retired in February/March 2015, the deal with the IBM was concluded by the new head of the agency in April 2015. - The event is one in a long line of outsourcing and public-private partnership failures. Including the Public Employment Agency, Social Insurance Agency, Karolinska University Hospital etc.

The only reason this outsourcing failure is big news is because the government is weak, "the alliance" in opposition is even weaker and there's an election next year. Anakata of The Pirate Bay fame hacked Logica (another consulting company) in 2012 accessing confidential data from multiple government agencies.

specialist• 9 years ago

Data breaches, loss of privacy are common, everywhere. The novel aspect here is this news wasn't buried.

Yes, please be outraged.

But please also realize its the norm. We (society) do not have the laws, rules, procedures, or technology to prevent or mitigate it.

Edit: Just quickly read up on this incident. They did try to bury it. But I read one account that stated one the Pirate Bay guys daylighted the breach. Delicious irony. So this scandal is now at stage 4: Assign the blame. Next is stage 5: Rinse, lather, repeat.

depressedpanda4• 9 years ago

For those of you who got triggered by "feminist", please do note the quotes. I.e., it's their claim, not mine[1]. I personally don't see that they've done much for gender equality, so they only make that claim because it's fashionable.

In the end it doesn't matter how feminist a government is if it cannot properly rule a country, and their actions speak louder than empty words.

What I personally find so galling about the whole debacle isn't that Maria Ågren wasn't punished enough, but the signals the state sends to the people. She got away with a slap on the wrist, and she will continue to earn $14 000/month in the forseeable future[2].

If someone becomes a director general of a state agency their resonsibilities and culpability should increase with the salary. Criminal incompetence is still criminal, and should be prosecuted.

Instead, our government tried to bury the leak.

[1] http://www.government.se/government-policy/a-feminist-govern... [2]: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/maria-agren-plockar-ut-lo...

rconti3• 9 years ago

The further the data gets from the original designers of the system, the less likely it's being protected properly.

I've seen this time and again not just in outsourcing but also in regime change at companies where employees and management turn over.

Pretty soon you've got a whole host of legal contracts with customers and regulatory promises saying you provide X, Y, Z encryption, data redundancy, offsite backups, support contracts, and so on -- but you're doing none of it.

I wonder to what extent outsourcing ends up being cheaper precisely because they're not following the framework that the in-house crew implemented and hopefully stuck with.

holografix• 9 years ago

Frankly I pin this down on IBM Sweden who knowingly cut corners in order to land a juicy government contract and satisfy its margin targets. Clearly not caring about the customer's best interest.

pkaye• 9 years ago

The biggest crime is that they decided to use IBM in the first place.

jacobush• 9 years ago

Also.

tscolari• 9 years ago

"no one was ever fired for buying ibm" no so true anymore =p

tofflos2• 9 years ago

Hopefully we can have a public discussion about ethics and vendor responsibility once the dust settles. If the government was so negligent that we may get a new one, then perhaps the vendor should have been aware of it? Perhaps they shouldn't have suggested such a solution in the first place? Perhaps they should have outright refused? Perhaps they should have demanded that the government change the law before proceeding? In what country do you get a free pass from the law just because the customer says so?

These vendors are being paid big money, and unlike our elected government officials, they are expected to be knowledgeable - experts in their field.

cerved• 9 years ago

How would the vendor know the client has sensitive information that they shouldn't share. Sounds like a client responsibility.

IT sales people are rarely experts.

tofflos2• 9 years ago

I agree that would be the case if the vendor was providing infrastructure or platform as a service. But I don't think that's the case here.

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

- identities of undercover operatives...

This is terrible. When will people learn to NOT use computers at all for some things. Use typewriters and spend a little bit more on administrative workers. You trade in processing efficiency for making these catastrophic breaches rarer.

daemin3• 9 years ago

I think for actual security you need to practice physical security. No matter if the data is stored on paper or electronically, you will still need to air gap it, and have security and clearance protecting that data.

To put it into perspective Manning only got the data out because they were lax about securing the CD-burner in the computer he was using.

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

Absolutely. But computers and centralized data make physical security easier. Old fashioned typewriters, paper files, and manual indexes for searches are safer (for very specific things), because you simply just can't haul all of it out. For a decent set of paperwork you'd spend months or years xeroxing everything. Leaks may happen but may be smaller. Processed and redacted data may still be put on computers for searching. It's a tradeoff with obvious serious disadvantages, but one that can save the operations and even lives of the good guys.

3pt14159• 9 years ago

I say this all the time, but I always get mocked for it. "There are hundreds of thousands of Americans with clearance, how are we supposed to administrate that without computers."

But what's the alternative? Even if you air gap things very, very aggressively you still get owned. The CIA has said that air gaps have never stopped them. Ok, so what are we going to do? Getting data out from computer systems is too easy. Things should be pen and paper and maybe specialized typewriters (there are ways of bugging typewriters or using sound recordings of the typing to reconstruct sentences).

At the very least we should keep our foreign agents out of our databases.

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

Let's assume people stop mocking this idea and ditch computers for the most recent and highly classified data. Over decades of replacing everything with computers and retiring oldtimers, we probably lost a whole set of skills to run physical paperwork, keep it secure and detect breaches.

staticelf6• 9 years ago

The biggest problem with this story is not that it happened, it is that it could happen again. IT issues is heavily underestimated in government agencies and corporations [1], viewed like it' nothing important. The same goes for politicians, they don't give so much attention to IT at all.

The problem is of course lack of knowledge. They don't understand how important it is and that it is one of societies most critical infrastructure today.

Hopefully this incident will be a lesson to politicians and government agencies to care more about security and IT in general.

[1] http://www.sakerhetspolisen.se/publikationer/fallstudier-och...

pop72• 9 years ago

Our leaders have no incentives to solve these problems. Most of the leadership class today get to their positions not by trying to address any such problems. The skills they pick up along the way have nothing to do with what's reqd in these cases.

belorn2• 9 years ago

There is a lot of resistance, universally it seems, to the concept that outsourcing is different to in-house development/administration. It doesn't even seem like its a knowledge issue, but rather willful ignorance. Cost, convenience, and less likelihood to be blame for faults is more important than security and control.

To take one example, only government entity that I know that don't outsource email would be the military, and even there I doubt the in-house use is 100%.

sgt1013• 9 years ago

It's darwinian; if you don't deliver the savings you are out. One solution would be rigorous research that demonstrated that insourced onshore operations were more effective and cheaper in the long run. But no such research exists, is that because it's hard to do or is it because the result is that offshoring and outsourcing is cheaper and as good?

apecat• 9 years ago

There's a really good breakdown of the Swedish Security Service's (Säpo) report on this case in Swedish, written by a knowledgeable journalist. It's fairly ok in English through Google translate. http://www.breakit.se/artikel/8326/jag-laste-sapos-gransknin...

baalimago2• 9 years ago

Funny thing about that article is that they're themselves using google analytics

kaybe• 9 years ago

I just hope the other governments watch, learn, and maybe maybe listen to us once in a while.

raverbashing4• 9 years ago

"With friends like these, who needs enemies"

And in this case people did get fired for buying IBM

xlocicicig3• 9 years ago

This is rather hilarious, as most of Sweden's IT sector learned over a decade ago that outsourcing is worthless

1337biz• 9 years ago

I don't know why they are making such a big deal out if it?!

I always thought Sweden is such a transparent society with open insights into how much everbody is earning and so on.

What do they have to hide? /s

Bromskloss• 9 years ago

How sure can you be anyway that vetted and authorised people won't do evil with the data they are entrusted? That's what this has me wondering.

throwawaymanbot3• 9 years ago

This is a very very curious incident. Advice from SAPO was not taken. And almost literally everything has been exposed because someone in the transport authority wanted to proceed? Incredible. Kompromat was it?

Swedish Government Scrambles to Contain Damage from Data Breach

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