The National Defence Radio Establishment (Swedish: Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA) is a Swedish government agency organised under the Ministry of Defence. The two main tasks of FRA are signals intelligence (SIGINT), and support to government authorities and state-owned companies regarding computer security. The FRA is not allowed to initiate any surveillance on their own, and operates purely on assignment from the Government, the Government Offices, the Armed Forces, the Swedish Police Authority and Swedish Security Service (SÄPO). Decisions and oversight regarding information interception is provided by the Defence Intelligence Court and the Defence Intelligence Commission; additional oversight regarding protection of privacy is provided by the Swedish Data Protection Authority.
History
Signals Intelligence has existed in Sweden since 1905 when Swedish General Staff and Naval Staff respectively, had departments for signals intelligence and cryptanalysis. These departments succeeded, for instance, to decode the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet cipher. After World War I, this ability mostly ceased as politicians did not see its value and did not grant funding. The Swedish Navy still continued in a smaller scale and developed the competence further. One of the first major successes was in 1933 when the cipher of the Russian OGPU (predecessor to KGB) was solved. In 1937, the Swedish Defence Staff was established and the Crypto Department, with its Crypto Detail IV, was responsible for cryptanalysis. In 1940, when Germany occupied Denmark and Norway, the German Wehrmacht requested to use the Swedish telephone network for its communication. This was accepted and Crypto Detail IV immediately started to intercept. The traffic was almost always encrypted by the German state-of-the-art cipher machine Geheimfernschreiber. This device was believed to produce indecipherable messages, with its 893,622,318,929,520,960 different crypto key settings. After two weeks of single hand work, the Swedish professor of mathematics Arne Beurling, decoded the cipher of the Geheimfernschreiber with only use of pencil and paper. This achievement was described by David Kahn, in his book The Codebreakers: "Quite possibly the finest feat of cryptanalysis performed during the Second World War was Arne Beurling's solution of the secret of the G-schreiber." During World War II, some 296,000 German messages were intercepted and in 1942 the Swedish Government took the decision to establish Försvarets Radioanstalt. The first stationary collection site was located in the middle of Stockholm, but in 1940 it was moved to a number of villas in the suburban island of Lidingö. More sites were established in Sweden and in 1943, FRA moved its headquarters to Lovön, some 15 km from Stockholm. In the 1960s, even the location of the FRA headquarters was still highly secret.
Notable events
Operation Stella Polaris
In the final stage of the Continuation War, 1943–44, when the Soviet Union threatened to occupy Finland, Finnish intelligence requested to transfer about 200 specialists and advanced intelligence equipment to Sweden to establish an exile organisation. A transfer of a small contingent personnel and materials, Operation Stella Polaris, was carried out over a couple of nights in September 1944. Stella Polaris gave Sweden access to a wealth of qualified materials and signals intelligence officers, some of which were also employed. For Finland, it resulted in a domestic political affair and due to the Communist Party's strong influence in the government, several of the so-called "Soviet Hostiles" involved received prison sentences.
The Catalina affair
On 13 June 1952, the Swedish Air Force aircraft Tp 79 Hugin (DC-3) disappeared during a signal intelligence reconnaissance mission east of the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The Swedish government initially claimed that the flight was only a navigational exercise, but later admitted that the aeroplane had U.S. electronic surveillance equipment and five specialists from FRA on board. Three days later, a Swedish Air Force search-and-rescue plane of the type Tp 47 (Catalina) was shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter, but the crew was rescued by a nearby West German freighter ship. The Soviet Union denied any involvement in the disappearance of the DC-3, despite the fact that a raft from the aeroplane was found during the search with shrapnel from MiG-15 ammunition. In 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted to Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander that the Soviet Union was indeed responsible for shooting down the plane, but this was not made public, not even to the relatives of the crewmen. Russia officially acknowledged the shooting down in 1991. In 2003, the wreck of the shot-down DC-3 was found about 55 km east of Gotland. Several of the crewmen's remains were found in the fuselage and the damage to the plane showed that it really had been shot at by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter.
Organizational structure FRA's operational activity are organized into four departments: The Signals Intelligence Service (Swedish: Signalunderrättelsetjänsten), The Department for Internet Operations (Swedish: Avdelningen för cyberverksamhet), The Department for Internal Support Services (Swedish: Avdelningen för verksamhetsstöd) and The Department for Technical Development and Other Technical Assistance (Swedish: Avdelningen för teknisk utveckling och annat tekniskt stöd). In addition to this there is also a command staff and a number of specialist functions reporting directly to the Director-General.
Leadership
Facilities and equipment
The main headquarters is located on the island of Lovön in Stockholm County. The government allocated a total of SEK 860 million for the FRA in the annual budget for the fiscal year of 2014; an increase in spending with 38 million compared to the previous year, due to "greater technical costs and changes abroad". In 2009, the number of employees was "just below 700", according to the FRA. Interception of signals is done from fixed sites on Swedish territory, from the SIGINT ship HSwMS Orion operated by the Swedish Navy, to be replaced by HSwMS Artemis, and from two S102B Korpen aircraft operated by the Swedish Air Force.
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