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The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

commit.pizza

241–250 of 261 posts

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

#241
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't have the police decide if you get your teeth fixed.

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

#242

"the laws do not apply if they contravenes the constitution" Isn't the EU based on the primacy of EU laws over local ones? The Sweden constitution should have been amended long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law "The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including…

There's no issue of primacy between laws as GDPR explicitly states that processing of private data which is required by some local law is legitimate. GDPR does apply to state and municipal institutions, requiring them to have a legal basis for processing private data, however, local laws can grant that legal basis and GDPR would not dispute it.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They most certainly treat knowing your personal ID as proof of your identity in plenty of cases. One example... People can change other people's addresses without any real proof, you need to opt-in at the tax agency so that you need an eID to do this. The tax agency explicitly mentions this on their website. https://skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/inengli...

> plenty of cases If so, can you mention just a few more? The address change fraud is a real problem, but the personnummer is used for identification and not authentication in that case as well. The government cannot mandate all citizens to have e-IDs, so other alternatives to change your address must be provided. Since having an up to date address is mandatory, this alternative process must also be accessible (e.g.…

Are you saying that your physical mailbox is being used as the identity authentication instead rather than your personal number?

> the closest tax office might be far away, so requiring the alternative process to be in-person would be impractical.

Some countries require that the police visit you at home to verify that you live there, the closest police is hopefully not as far away as the closest tax office.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these days we lock our homes even when we're home.

for what its worth im in America (where crime is way way higher) and i don't consider that normal. probably a cultural thing.

Where do you live? America is not uniformly high in crime. When I lived in NYC, people absolutely did lock their doors when at home. There was good reason for it too. I suspect other urban areas are similar.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lived partially in this era and had parents who very ḿuch lived in this era, you're wrong. Take one of the Agaton Sax books, a detective story. It's completely inconceivable in our present society.

I haven't read those. What about those books are inconceivable?

The general attitude in Byköping, the manner in which the villains behave and the inherent foreignness of Agaton Sax's adversaries.

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

#246

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.

Technically your personal ID is not public knowledge. The first eight digits are, which contain your birth date. The last four digits are always obfuscated. In reality, it is common to provide your personnummer verbally in non-private settings so if someone within earshot had some interest in remembering your ID they could. Edit: The above might not be entirely accurate, check out the thread below. Some of these look…

This is 100% WRONG.

Anyone can call the tax office and ask for the full person number of any person and they will give it.

Swedes are super confused about this so lots of people do the thing you talk about and think it's private but it's absolutely not. This disconnect between folk lore and reality is quite dangerous as people who believe the folk lore can start doing stupid shit like accepting the personnummer as alone being a guarantee of anything.

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

#247
post #223
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not deny that some who oppose lax immigration policies are racist, but just because some people who have certain concerns are racist does not mean that everyone who shares those concerns is also racist, or that those concerns are invalid. Some people have in fact been trying to have discussions about immigration policies, but for quite a while proponents of lax immigration policies have dismissed any pushback ag…

To your point, rape statistics in Sweden seemed to be the major talking point on this issue, and would generally trigger the response you describe.

The statistic is unfortunately being hijacked for that purpose. It is especially common for foreign news outlets to focus on this and it gives the impression that Sweden is not a safe place for women. The opposite is true however, Sweden is one of the safest places and on earth for women.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. I was in the Netherlands when there were gang wars in Amsterdam and these guys don't care about collateral damage at all. One time they shot up a tram full of people during some gang fight.

What does the situation in the Netherlands have to do with Sweden?

It's the same problem - heavy organised crime fighting turf wars in crowded cities.

Also, ATM raids are getting much more violent. They blow up half the building just to get to the cash in the machine. I think it's normal that people ask for the authorities to do more against this.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they often do. It is not that uncommom that politicians, government workers etc quit or get fired when embarrasing things are exposed. Esp if it relates to making personal economic gains from the position one has.

When it becomes common it stops being embarassing.

That would mean a society with rampant corruption. Sweden is quite far from that [0]. Given how fast people get sacked (leave their job to pursue a long time hobby) when being publicly caught and shamed, it is still very embarrassing.

We just had a community where the newly elected politicians raised their salaries quite substantially, this while unions and employee organizations try to talk about keeping the pay raise low, not trying to compensate for the current (hopefully temporary) high inflation. It took basically a day before the suggested raise was pulled back and at least one politician dropped out.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-index

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

#250
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's not true. I reported my bike stolen and got it back.

~~Has nothing to do with that they found it when arresting the thief for something completely different~~

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