Apps, 2013
Telephone and GSM bugs
Spring Show, Konstfack, Stockholm

Undisclosed GSM bugs hidden within the building and within another exhibition (24 Spaces, Malmö Konsthall) that call a telephone when sound above a certain decibel is detected.

(text on wall panel)

During the Second World War my neighbours’ grandmother was employed to secretly produce something within the former L.M. Ericsson, now Konstfack building. She never revealed what that was and took her secret to the grave.

After the German invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway in 1940, Germany demanded and was subsequently provided use of Sweden’s West Coast cable. Wartime arrangements allowed foreign rented lines that passed through their territory to be tapped, without breaking Swedish law. Within a dilapidated apartment at Karlaplan 4, Stockholm, an extremely secretive operation to decipher intercepted Geheimschreiber teleprinter messages was established. Arne Beurling, Professor of Mathematics in Uppsala was recruited and miraculously, after only two weeks, cracked the German cipher machine. Beurling with the engineer Vigo Lindstein constructed special decryption machines at L.M. Ericsson called the Apps.

The breaking of the Geheimschreiber assisted in establishing the Swedish Signals Intelligence, FRA as an independent authority in 1942. Sixty-seven years later the FRA-law took effect that authorises the Swedish state to warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses its borders.

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 3 page spread taken from exhibition    handout