Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

commit.pizza

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 261 posts

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

#181

Post by Ekaros »

null_object wrote: post #117
iveqy wrote: post #49

I was biking in the northern Sweden and stopping by a restaurant. I left my luggage on my unlocked bike outside while going in for lunch for an hour. Nothing strange about that, why would anyone steal a bike? Noone locked their bikes! Instead of saying openess is bad, let's say what kind of society you would like to live in and then work towards it. Personally I would rather not have a bike lock, nor door lock.

> Noone locked their bikes! Wow this is a surreal comment. More than 65,000 bikes are reported stolen each year in Sweden [0] - but this is just the tip of the iceberg, as a stolen bike is so common that hardly anyone even bothers reporting it. [0] https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/cykel...

Also that actually reporting it stolen is useless. Unless you need to claim insurance, or have the number of chasis somewhere. Police won't do anything about stolen bikes.

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

#182

Post by adamrezich »

hairofadog wrote: post #166

I was thinking this morning about how strange it was that in the U.S., in the old days of phone books, you had to pay to be unlisted otherwise they'd just publish your phone number and address right there in the white pages. Contrast to today when you can't pay to be unlisted but you do have the option to join a class action lawsuit against Equifax after they oops your social security number onto the dark web.

we used to live in a significantly higher-trust society

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

#183

Post by pessimizer »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #101
andsoitis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> the concept of defamation (förtal) is not limited to false statements.

This is the creepiest thing about a number of countries that claim to have freedom of speech as part of their constitution or laws. Instead of limiting defamation claims to false statements, they make defamation depend on a) the mental state of the accused defamer (did they intend to harm), b) the effect (usually financial) on the alleged defamed, or more likely an unholy combination of the two.

The combination of the two results in, from a), a reliance on the fantasies of the court and law enforcement about other people's mental states (people they like didn't really mean it or didn't completely understand how it would be perceived, people they don't like are evil masterminds), and from b), the wealthier people are, the more dangerous they are to tell the truth about.

a) obviously leads to a VIP justice system for elites and the politically connected. The funny thing about b) is that it's the perfect law to protect quacks and fraudsters, because they'll be the most provably harmed by truthful statements.

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

#184

Post by psychlops »

adamrezich wrote: post #182
hairofadog wrote: post #166

I was thinking this morning about how strange it was that in the U.S., in the old days of phone books, you had to pay to be unlisted otherwise they'd just publish your phone number and address right there in the white pages. Contrast to today when you can't pay to be unlisted but you do have the option to join a class action lawsuit against Equifax after they oops your social security number onto the dark web.

we used to live in a significantly higher-trust society

I wouldn't say that so much as people had to physically go somewhere to use the stolen information. The possible damage was local and limited.

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

#185

Post by erk__ »

We have mostly the same in Denmark, though it is possible to apply for non-disclosure of name and address online [0] if you want to stay more private. I have spoken with expats who were rather surprised by it, but most danes don't really think too much about it. Similarly if you have a .dk domain your address must be listed on the whois.

It should be noted that non-disclosure of name and address goes further, for example it was possible to see if anyone had it in the online system my university used because they would show up as their student id instead of their name in the interface.

[0]: https://international.kk.dk/live/housing/moving-to-a-new-pla...

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

#186

Post by jwond »

puglr wrote: post #173
GekkePrutser wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you don't revolt against this to be honest. And in terms of 'safe', didn't the extreme right just win big because the mainstream parties totally ignore the uptick in organized violent crime? At least that's what they said in the news here, perhaps it's not fully accurate. I understand state agencies might want to see personal data, though I often don't agree. Having it available for anyone to s…

Based on my observations from having Swedish friends and spending time in Sweden, a lot of the rise of the extreme right there can be directly attributed to the tensions resulting from the Syrian refugee crisis. The last time I was in Sweden, ordinary folks were expressing ideas like "well maybe not everyone deserves free healthcare". Like many western nations, economic opportunities and quality of social services is…

> Standard practice for right wing parties to blame immigrants (or refugees, etc.).

On the flip side, standard practice for left wing parties is to deny that immigration causes any problems at all and call you racist for even trying to discuss it. However, as we are seeing in Sweden, sometimes the problems become too big to ignore.

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

#187

Post by ghaff »

adamrezich wrote: post #182
hairofadog wrote: post #166

I was thinking this morning about how strange it was that in the U.S., in the old days of phone books, you had to pay to be unlisted otherwise they'd just publish your phone number and address right there in the white pages. Contrast to today when you can't pay to be unlisted but you do have the option to join a class action lawsuit against Equifax after they oops your social security number onto the dark web.

we used to live in a significantly higher-trust society

We used to also live in an environment where it was far harder to scale the misuse of information and profit from that misuse.

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

#188

Post by bhelkey »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #115
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Swatting doesn't work in any other country than America because in any other country than America, the police won't immediately murder someone based on a phone call.

> Swatting doesn't work in any other country than America because in any other country than America

A Twitch streamer was swatted in the UK [1].

[1] https://www.shacknews.com/article/131816/twitch-streamer-kef...

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

#189

Post by nicholasjarnold »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #108

One upside of everyone's name, date of birth, address and personal ID number being public knowledge in Sweden is that organisations don't treat knowing any of those as proof of your identity. It's absurd how that's not the case in other places.

Yes, exactly.

In the US the financial institutions and the credit reporting and collection agencies have used rather insidious language like "stolen identity" to describe the situation where fraud was perpetrated on one of those agencies by an unknown 3rd party who presumably bore the ID credentials of the person in question thereby passing through the institution's identity checks.

The fraud in these cases is not the problem of the institution, it's the problem of the individual. They use that specific language to train everyone into thinking and accepting that it's their individual problem...you know, since someone "stole their identity".

Then, when the giant companies that collect and "securely store and process" the information that is typically used to perform ID verifications get hacked and this data leaks out for 300M+ people... oh well, tiny fine and a bit of bad press for a week. Then it's swept under the rug and the individuals in the society have to live with those consequences.

It's super fucked...and super stupid.

'Merica.

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

#190

Post by gazonk »

Mankaninen wrote: post #96
yrgulation wrote: post #27

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…

The article is not correct on salaries being public: What is public are your tax reports and those are done a year later. To my knowledge you cannot see all details either, only totals that the tax is based on. Thus I think your statement is wrong or at least it is not related to the public databases mentioned in the article.

The full social security number for a person is not easily obtained and not published by the free websites.
Post reply on HN