Swedish Security Service
| Säkerhetspolisen (Säpo) | |
Coat of arms of Säpo
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | October 1, 1989 |
| Preceding agency |
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| Headquarters | Bolstomtavägen 2, Solna, Sweden 59°21′09.5″N 18°00′38.3″E / 59.352639°N 18.010639°E |
| Employees | Approximately 1,100 (2014) |
| Annual budget | SEK 1.142 billion (2015) |
| Minister responsible | |
| Agency executive | |
| Parent agency | Ministry of Justice |
| Website | www.sakerhetspolisen.se |
The Swedish Security Service (Swedish: Säkerhetspolisen , abbreviated Säpo, until 1989 Rikspolisstyrelsens säkerhetsavdelning abbreviated RPS/Säk) is a Swedish government agency organised under the Ministry of Justice. It operates like a security agency responsible for counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, the protection of dignitaries and the constitution. The Swedish Security Service is also tasked with investigating crimes against national security and terrorist crimes. Its main mission, however, is to prevent crime, and not to investigate them. Crime prevention is to a large extent based on information acquired via contacts with the regular police force, other authorities and organisations, foreign intelligence and security services, and with the use of various intelligence gathering activities, including interrogations, telephone tapping, covert listening devices and hidden surveillance cameras. The Service was, in its present form, founded in 1989, as part of the National Police Board and became an autonomous police agency January 1, 2015. National headquarters are located at Bolstomtavägen in south-east Solna since 2014, drawing together personnel from five different locations into a single 30,000 m2 (320,000 sq ft) HQ facility.
The origins of the Swedish Security Service is often linked to the establishment of a special police bureau (Polisbyrån) during the First World War in 1914, which reported directly to the General Staff, predecessor of the Office for the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The bureau's main mission was protecting national security (e.g. counter-espionage), and its first chief was Captain Erik af Edholm. Operations shut down after the end of the war in 1918, although some intelligence activities carried on at the Stockholm police, managed by a small group of approximately ten police officers led by Chief Superintendent Eric Hallgren, who later was to become the first chief of the General Security Service (Allmänna säkerhetstjänsten). Operations were mainly focused on monitoring communists from the start of the war until the early '30s, when the service also began to focus on Nazis. In 1932, operations was transferred to the newly formed State Police (statspolisen). The group of officers working at the State Police did not have the means to monitor phone calls or to intercept and open mail. This, and the general lack of staff and financial resources worried the chief of Sweden's military intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel Carlos Adlercreutz, who felt the country needed a more powerful security agency if Europe once again ended up in war. Thus, in 1938 the General Security Service was formed, following an initiative by Adlercreutz and Ernst Leche at the Ministry of Justice, among others. The entire organisation and its activities were top-secret. During the Second World War the agency monitored about 25,000 phone calls and intercepted over 200,000 letters every week. In 1946, following a post-war parliamentary evaluation, operations were significantly reduced and once again organised under the State Police, mainly tasked with counter-espionage. In 1965, the Swedish police was nationalized, and all work was organised under the National Police Board in the Department of Security (Rikspolisstyrelsens säkerhetsavdelning, abbreviated RPS/SÄK).
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