Restrictions on Use of the National Security Search System

The National Security Search System is both an investigative shortcut and a legal danger: it can expose records across the internet, but only the Norwegian Police Security Service is authorized to use it, and only in a crisis. Harry Hole’s unauthorized use turns that restriction into part of the investigation itself. He has to find a way to exploit the system without leaving a trace that would expose him or his colleagues to prosecution.

Capabilities and Origins

Harry explains that his access dates from his work with the Norwegian Police Security Service during the Redbreast case. The system uses hidden internet access points established through MILNET, the American military network, before the commercial internet developed from ARPANET. Its search engines deploy Trojan horses that update passwords, codes, and extensions when a computer goes online, allowing them to reach information such as flight bookings, hotel reservations, toll-road passages, and online banking.

The system has existed since 1984, and Harry discovers that the password he was given years earlier still works. Its reach offers a way to search for connections without asking questions that might alert a suspect or compromise a covert inquiry. In an earlier explanation to Kaja Solness and Björn Holm, he describes the method as looking for links without speaking to anyone: the investigators can search widely while avoiding interviews that might reveal their interest.

Authorization and Traceability

The system’s extraordinary reach does not make it generally available to police. Harry tells Katrine Bratt that only the Norwegian Police Security Service may use it, and only during crisis situations. As with an ordinary online search, activity can be traced back to the computer from which it was conducted. If the trail leads to Harry or another officer at police headquarters, the unauthorized access could expose them to criminal prosecution.

Harry therefore asks Katrine to help not because she has formal authorization, but because a search traced to the communal computer at a psychiatric clinic would lead somewhere less likely to bring prosecution. Katrine recognizes the logic: the cover depends on her status as a psychiatric patient, rather than on any lawful extension of her investigative authority. Harry confirms that this is the purpose of the arrangement and also relies on her discretion. The workaround protects the officers by shifting the apparent origin of the searches; it does not change the system’s rules or make their use authorized.

Use in the Murder Investigation

With access established, Katrine uses targeted searches to uncover records that place missing and murdered women along connected routes. A railway booking shows that Adele Vetlesen bought a ticket from Drammen to Ustaoset for November 7; Borgny Stem-Myhre bought a ticket from Kongsberg to the same mountain area on that date. Further transaction searches reveal that Iska Peller’s account was charged on November 20 for two beds in each of four mountain huts, roughly a day’s walk apart. The last, Hävasshütte, was only half a day’s walk from Ustaoset, and the records place the women in the area at a consequential time.

The results are leads rather than a complete solution. Harry cautions that the bookings establish proximity and likely company, not by themselves a proven connection to the murders. Even so, he acknowledges that Katrine has fulfilled her side of their arrangement: searching records without conducting exposed interviews has produced a meaningful reconstruction of the women’s movements.

A Tool That Can Mislead

The system’s power is also a liability for reasoning. In the investigation, evidence that appears to point toward Tony Leike—including a call to Elias Skog’s phone from Leike’s home line and a murder weapon associated with the Congo—initially supports suspicion of Leike. Beate Lonn later asks whether those clues might have been arranged to direct attention toward him. Harry recognizes that the team had failed to examine an alternative explanation because it believed it was close to its target and did not want to weaken its own case.

That reversal gives the system’s data-rich method an important limit: access to extensive records can reveal patterns, but patterns do not establish who created them or what they mean. Search results can connect journeys, payments, and communications; investigators still have to test the explanation those connections seem to offer. The system accelerates discovery, while its secrecy and the investigators’ confidence in their conclusions risk making an unverified pattern look like proof.