Live data from Hacker News

The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

commit.pizza

101–110 of 261 posts

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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

Yeah, also noteworthy that the concept of defamation (förtal) is not limited to false statements. Even if the accusations you make are true, it may still potentially be illegal.

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

#102
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The barrier to be accepted is very low. And there is another, lower "mark" as well called "Sekretessmarkering" ("Privacy mark") which can give you similar benefits and has even lower barrier. Or are you saying you did apply for this and it wasn't successful?

As mentioned previously, I applied and got denied. For obvious reasons I don't really want to go into details, but the experience I have of the swedish police force is that it is completely meaningless to even report things to them.

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

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 35-40 years ago. My grandmother never locked her door when she was at home, for example, even in 2020, because she'd lived so long in society as it was that she literally couldn't believe that it could end up as it had; and this wasn't due to stupidity. It was actually safe and normal once.

> My grandmother never locked her door when she was at home This whole 'golden age' of Sweden is just such a bunch of bs. Take a look, for instance, at this article about a part of central Stockholm which is now extremely expensive real estate: https://skarn.se/hans-marmbo/ (in Swedish) I thoroughly recommend running the page through Google translate or DeepL for an insight into the reality of Stockholm just 50 years…

yeah, and that was literally front page news and was an incredibly unusual event.

Furthermore, Östermalm has always been a place full of somewhat disreputable people, even though it ended up a place where relatively rich people lived. Notice that the story you're talking about involves prostitutes and all sorts of deranged stuff.

These people may have been associates of the upper class, but there is a reason we Swedes have always despised the upper class.

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

#104
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".

The GDPR has some carve-outs.

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

#105
post #40

>"You see, in Sweden all citizens are required to have a physical street address connected to your social security number." What about homeless?

You can be registered as having no address. In that case there are special procedures for getting mail and so on.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it reduces the value of data. It might reduce the acquisition cost, but not the value.

If the acquisition cost is lower, the value will be lower because you don't need to factor in the acquisition cost.

No, the value is what you can do with it. Now, if you want to sell the data, then having a competitor that offers it for free is reducing the value, but if you want to use the data, the value is independent of the cost.

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

#107
post #3

Almost as interesting, you can (as I understand it) look up the current salary of anyone you want to. Though in doing so they will be notified that you have done so.

Salary is not freely available, you generally have to pay for specific lookups as a private person.

However there is a lowtech way around this. Taxed income is published yearly in a book that resembles an old phonebook, Taxeringskalendern ("the tax calendar"). Freedoom of the press, see?

This book (or the part of the book that covers your region) will be available at your local library in the "reference" section. For most people you take the number from the book and divide by 12 and you have a lower bound of their monthly salary. Unless they are stalking you at the library noone will know. Very useful when going into salary negotiotiations to know aprox what the rest of the team and your boss makes.

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

#109
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> public since quite a while... I think this is an interesting point. If you were to suddenly flip a switch and have all US data exposed the same way, I think there would be chaos and maybe even violence. But I think that speaks more negatively to the current state of America than it does the idea of having information be public.

Can you describe why it will create violence? I could maybe understand that it could makes employment harder for some group or something, but how does it lead to violence.

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

#110

I feel this weirdly common in Scandinavian countries for some reason. Maybe their society lived in this "everything is peaceful and we have no corruption so nothing bad happens" long enough to have such an absurd level of trust in the government?

That’s the positive angle. But I think you could argue that the real reason is that we never had any popular uprising against absolute monarchy. So the Nordic countries are stuck in a pre-Magna Carta (or French revolution or American revolution) culture.
Post reply on HN