What I want to know is: who wants those data brokers to exist?
And if those data brokers became owned by Chinese or Russian entities, would that change the answer?
And if those data brokers became owned by Chinese or Russian entities, would that change the answer?
You could then pay 10$ and get access to my legal history involving minor possession of drugs and DUI.
Now all my relatives know...
Yep this is pretty fucked, we also have our taxation calendar available for anyone to look up my declared income.
These systems and laws of openness worked great before the Internet, you'd have to call every court in the country to request access to my full legal history, and call the taxation office about my declared income. Now it's just 10$ away from anyone curious
Proper background checks for criminality are done by the police, who hands the paper to the person the check is done on, and can only be done for roles for which the police are allowed to do those checks for. Like banking and teachers.
The idea here is that the workings of the public authorities should be open to scrutiny. Hence, all documents (correspondence, working documents, the lot!) are public, except those that are explicitly made secret, and it takes national-security level issues to do that. The authorities are not even allowed to ask who’s asking.
The first problem is that even material on individuals, collected by the authorities, becomes public.
This generally went unnoticed for a couple of hundred years, as you still had to know which documents there were, go around and ask whichever authority held the documents, and probably pay at cost for copies. Now we have the Internet, which has led to the second problem. Several data brokers have started to request all data there is, and then index, repackage, and sell it on the Internet, drastically lowering the threshold to request all the juicy stuff on anyone. Now, that is obviously against the GDPR, but the law allows anyone to become a journalist, who play by different rules, by saying "I am a journalist!" and paying a token fee.
So, to summarize: Openness, intended to keep tabs on those in power, and which has historically been somewhat tamed by practical barriers has, those barriers torn down by the Internet, become uncomfortably open.
I don't mind these services and I think the recent development where they are blamed for enabling the violence is just a stupid distraction. The domestic terrorists we have would certainly still be a problem and would hardly stop their attacks if we got rid of our very useful public data laws.
The current politics are working hard on removing all the fundamental data laws of my country, beginning with making massive energy rebates confidential last spring.
One of those who got high private tax returns came out publicly and explained that his company was of the type "enskild firma" which means that it uses his person number, it's not a limited company. And apparently Skatteverket had treated all companies of that type as if they were private citizens. But of course most people just remember headlines, so if the headline had been "Look at person XX, that rich bastard got this much in tax returns!" you had probably remembered that but not the later explanation that it was his company that got tax returns.
Many mechanisms could have worked for this purpose. A fixed amount for instance. Or an upper limit on a tax cut. Remember, the idea was to keep a typical home warm.
Instead there was a tax cut with no upper limit. So the affluent heating outdoor pools in the middle of winter also got relief, not just home-owners on the brink of ruin trying to heat their old house. In the big scheme of things, probably not a big deal, but interventions by the state should appear (and be) as fair as possible, lest people will loose faith in the system.
https://www.regeringen.se/regeringens-politik/energikrisen/e...
Some employers and recruiting firms, to do background checks. I think they more or less funds the market.