That isn't really the full story.
> Here's a summary of what foreign powers got access to:
It's not been established that foreign powers got access to the data. It's considered a leak because confidential information is considered leaked as soon as it's not handled correctly.
> Even worse: when they realized they'd leaked photos, home addresses and SSNs of protected identities, they sent a clear text email asking the contractor to clear them from the database manually.
There were two leaks. One was the information not being handled correctly, the other was the disclosure of people with protected identities in the "car registry" to companies that would use the data to send advertisements to the owners. This wouldn't have included photos or SSNs.
> SÄPO knew about this in 2015, and recommended against it, but the Transport Agency still went through with the deal. How they could even be allowed to do that is beyond me.
They weren't really allowed, which is why the head of the agency was prosecuted.
> Either she knew exactly what she was doing, meaning the Russians paid a meagre $8500 for full access to a database containing top secret information, or (more likely) she was just that stupid, meaning possibly hostile powers got this information for free.
The investigation concluded that she was aware that she was breaking the law but not that the leak was intentional as such, therefor it was "willful negligence".
> Here, Swedes believe that Trump is such a catastrophe, and wonder why Americans could vote for him. We should instead look at our own pathetic "feminist" government, and ask ourselves how and why we got here.
That's silly.
- IT operations used to be run by another government agency called The Transport Administration (vs. The Transport Agency).
- The decision to outsource was done under the former government by the the former head of the agency in 2012.
- The previous contract on IT operations was already cancelled, the staff was being let go, the facilities cleared and would no longer be available come January 2015.
- The former head of the agency retired in February/March 2015, the deal with the IBM was concluded by the new head of the agency in April 2015.
- The event is one in a long line of outsourcing and public-private partnership failures. Including the Public Employment Agency, Social Insurance Agency, Karolinska University Hospital etc.
The only reason this outsourcing failure is big news is because the government is weak, "the alliance" in opposition is even weaker and there's an election next year. Anakata of The Pirate Bay fame hacked Logica (another consulting company) in 2012 accessing confidential data from multiple government agencies.