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The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

commit.pizza

81–90 of 261 posts

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#81
post #23

Freedom of expression is a big deal in Sweden. Tryckfrihetsförordningen (the other constitutional part besides Yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen) dates back to 1766. It's the oldest law ensuring freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Heja Sverige!

Freedom of expression is actually relatively limited in Sweden, but freedom of the press is almost absurdly well protected. It's more about ensuring the dynamics between institutions than the liberties of individuals.

> Freedom of expression is actually relatively limited in Sweden

I was curious about this so found https://www.riksdagen.se/en/how-the-riksdag-works/democracy/...

In it they write: "In Sweden, you have the right to have an opinion on anything and say almost anything you want. You have the right to express yourself freely on the radio, TV and the Internet. The Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression sets out these rights. It also describes what is not permitted, for example defaming or publicly insulting another person."

Being prevented from publicly insulting another person seems not only silly in principle, but impracticable.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#83
post #45
post #35

IANAL but in EU the EU laws override member laws. So, since GDPR if you want your info to be removed you' ll be able to do it. Of course maybe you' ll need to go to EUCJ to acheive it

He says the Swedish government ignores GDPR complaints, because they're unconstitutional. I don't understand how that could work though. I mean, unless EU laws are like "You must follow these laws! Unless you don't want to".

EU legislation is built into the constitution of EU members, so I'm not sure either what they are talking about.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#84
post #63

Initial reaction: WTF?! The more I think about it though, the more I'm aligned with the idea — except the home address part, that's just mental and dangerous. So all your details like salary, social security number, etc. are public. What's the end result? For me, nothing. I _could_ care less, but not by much. I know people get all worked up about things like their social security number being exposed, "because fraud!…

> I can see a lot of good coming from this...

Yet you don't name one single thing except that "bad things are possible" without it. I'm quite sure bad things are possible with or without everyone's personal data in a public lookup service.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#85
post #45
post #35

IANAL but in EU the EU laws override member laws. So, since GDPR if you want your info to be removed you' ll be able to do it. Of course maybe you' ll need to go to EUCJ to acheive it

He says the Swedish government ignores GDPR complaints, because they're unconstitutional. I don't understand how that could work though. I mean, unless EU laws are like "You must follow these laws! Unless you don't want to".

And he is wrong. GDPR is Swedish law, and governments take GDPR issues very seriously. Every community must by law have a GDPR compliance officer responsible for handling issues and reporting them to the government.

There has been some quite public cases where government orgs, communities have been fined for GDPR violations. And these cases are of course also public so that can't be hidden.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The people who need it the most are usually the people the Swedish government wants dead," Citation very much needed. Both on the claims that the Swedish government actually want people dead. And that this would need this protection _usually_ are in this category. There are literally thousands of people that has this protection. 14000 women has this, commonly to protect them against an abusive partner (not the gover…

If thousands of people need this every year (and the bar to getting it is low as you say) why is privacy not the default? Wouldn't that be easier?

Thousands of people get cavities fixed each year, but we don't drill out everyone's teeth.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#88
post #74

One of the "pranks" we play on expats moving to Sweden is to look them up on hitta.se, take a screenshot and send it back to them saying "this you?". They always freak out and with reason, these sites contain an obscene amount of personal information about you. Some of them even give you people's salary history, which is slightly harder to obtain but also totally legal. The weirdest thing I thought is that most Swede…

The question is, out of those trillion ways, how many actually happened? This Swedish info is actually public since quite a while, and I have yet to hear of lives destroyed. I'm not saying it cannot be, just that I didn't hear.

This makes me wonder why ordinary people are not swatted, police called on them, deliveries made in their name, etc. in Sweden when a country that doesn't have such public records like USA has this so regularly several people have died.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#89

I knew a software engineer who used to live in sweden. One day he had a payraise. Out of the blue his landlord raised his rent. Apparently she somehow found out about his payraise and now i know how. She even told him that she knows he can afford more. He left sweden for this reason and racism. Before you believe all them nice stories about scandinavia, be sure to talk to people that lived in any of those countries a…

This sounds incredibly hyperbolic. Others have already mentioned that this likely is an inaccurate retelling of events based on how Swedish rent control actually works. Additionally though, tax records from the previous year is publicly accessible, your current income (or any raise you receive) is _not_.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#90
post #74

One of the "pranks" we play on expats moving to Sweden is to look them up on hitta.se, take a screenshot and send it back to them saying "this you?". They always freak out and with reason, these sites contain an obscene amount of personal information about you. Some of them even give you people's salary history, which is slightly harder to obtain but also totally legal. The weirdest thing I thought is that most Swede…

The question is, out of those trillion ways, how many actually happened? This Swedish info is actually public since quite a while, and I have yet to hear of lives destroyed. I'm not saying it cannot be, just that I didn't hear.

Stalking is ridiculously common everywhere and there's no reason to think it isn't in sweden as well. If no one you know has experienced it, or felt safe enough to confide in you, that still means nothing to everyone else. "What has soco heard about" is not a meaningful metric of anything.
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