Like in most countries, changing the constitution in Finland takes time. The Finnish constitution can be changed in one of two ways:<p>A) The parliament accepts the change by a simple majority vote, and the change will "rest" until the next election. After the election, the change will pass with a 2/3 majority vote by the new parliament.<p>B) The parliament deems that the change is urgent by at least a 5/6 majority vote. Then the change will be voted upon and will pass with a 2/3 majority vote.<p>Finland is not “changing the constitution“. Not yet, at least. Such a change has been _proposed_ by a group appointed by the ministry of justice, and is now being _discussed_ in public. None of the above steps to actually change the constitution has taken place yet. I find it unlikely that a 2/3 majority vote for a change like this can be achieved with the currently elected parliament.<p>The annoying thing I find about the news coverage about this is that they make it sound like it's already decided. We're seeing headlines to the tune of ”here are the new wiretap rights for Finnish Security Service”. It is not decided yet.
This would be a big misstep for Finland. At the moment, the old forest industry & export is dying off, with no replacement in sight. A viable candidate would be datacenters, which would benefit from the existing factory halls and cooling, climate, and possible future green tech solutions. Along with no domestic mass surveillance, no secret courts and no NSLs, this could be a great "pivot" for the existing infrastructure.<p>If this change were to pass, however, there will be little internet related tech locating to Finland, which is what the government is actually hoping to happen.<p>Also of interest are the reasons behind the proposed change. There has been little to none "national security" issues in Finland, so it's somewhat odd to see it pushed as the main reason.<p>The director of the surveillance police has actually stated in the past that they rely a lot on information passed to them from other surveillance agencies, and that they don't really have anything to give back. I think this is more about amassing data for exchanges between agencies, rather than an any actual threat.
Up to date article (5 days ago) on this from the national public-broadcasting company: <a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_constitutional_changes_to_broaden_official_surveillance_powers/9223709" rel="nofollow">http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/working_group_tables_const...</a>
A great blog post about topic in Finnish:
<a href="http://kasvi.org/?p=670" rel="nofollow">http://kasvi.org/?p=670</a>
Google translated version:
<a href="https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fkasvi.org%2F%3Fp%3D670&edit-text=" rel="nofollow">https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...</a>