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PRIVACY

Sex offender website under investigation

Swedish authorities are investigating a website for possible violations of the country’s privacy laws after it published the names, personal identity numbers, addresses -- and in some cases pictures -- of several sex offenders.

The site, sexoffender.nu, was launched several months ago and has since served as a sort of web-based sex offender registry.

Anyone visiting the site can access personal information about those convicted of sex crimes in Sweden, as well as find copies of court rulings and maps showing where the sex offenders currently live.

The Data Inspection Board (Datainspektionen), an agency charged with safeguarding Sweden’s privacy laws, has received ten complaints about the site, prompting it to launch an investigation, reports the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

“Those who have contacted us are mostly relatives of the people who’ve been exposed. There is now a supervisory order against the site; we’re going to analyze the publication and see if it violates the personal information law,” said the inspection board’s Jonas Agnvall to SvD.

The law, known in English as the Personal Data Act, came into force in 1998 and is designed to protect people against violations of their personal privacy stemming from the handling of their personal information.

But the case of sexoffender.nu presents a difficult challenge for the Data Inspection Board because the legislation remains vague when it comes to what is covered under the privacy law versus what may be considered journalistic work, which isn’t covered by the law.

“If such information had been published in a newspaper, the Press Ombudsman would have acted straight away. There is no such authority when it comes to things published on the internet,” Data Inspection Board head Göran Gräslund told the newspaper.

Sweden’s Press Ombudsman is in charge of pursuing cases in which newspapers have been accused of publishing inaccurate or libelous information.

According to Stockholm University’s Daniel Westman, an expert in IT-law, the publication of sex offenders’ personal information could be classified as defamation.

“The legislation not only covers instances when the information is false, but also when the information is offensive. Criminal judgments for those who have already served their sentences can’t be seen to be in the public’s interest. I think that publishing the home address of someone who has served their sentence is clearly over the line,” he said.

Should the Data Inspection Board eventually find sexoffender.nu in violation of Sweden’s privacy laws, it still may have a hard time shutting down the site.

“We may not be able to discern who is behind it or the servers may be out of the country,” said Agnvall.

PRIVACY

How Austrian privacy activists are taking on tech giant Google

Austrian online privacy activist Max Schrems has taken on a new battle: taking Google to task for the "illegal" tracking code on its Android mobile phones.

How Austrian privacy activists are taking on tech giant Google
Google headquarters in the rain. Photo: TOLGA AKMEN / AFP

The action against Google is the latest in what Schrems, 33, describes as “David versus Goliath” struggles against the internet’s giants.

Leading a team of seasoned lawyers at his privacy campaign group NOYB (None Of Your Business), the relaxed and affable Schrems tells AFP he is motivated simply by the fact that companies that dominate the internet “make profits from violating the laws”.

READ MORE: Eight weird and wonderful Austrian place names

NOYB was set up in 2018, at the same time as the European Union implemented its landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), legislation aimed at making it simpler for people to control how companies use their personal information.

The handful of employees at NOYB are currently pursuing no fewer than 150 complaints in various jurisdictions.

“Ideally we should not exist,” says Schrems, pointing to publicly funded watchdogs that ought to be keeping companies in line.

“The problem is that in many member states that is not properly done,” he adds. He cites the example of Ireland, where numerous multinationals have their European headquarters.

That means around 4,000 complaints are filed with the Irish authorities every year but according to Schrems “this year they plan to have six to seven decisions.”

That means that “99.9 percent of the cases… are simply taken and thrown in the trash can”.

“That is a fundamental problem we have in Europe, we are very good at passing laws and praising ourselves about… how great we are at human rights, but we are actually not very good at enforcing it,” he says.

‘Wilful’ rule-breaking 

The latest complaint against Google has been filed with the CNIL, France’s data protection authority.

At the same time, NOYB has an active complaint against Apple over a similar tracking code issue, despite Apple’s stated intention to update its operating system later this year to force app developers to ask users’ permission before tracking their activities across other companies’ apps and websites.

A decade after Schrems tackled his first cases, his outrage at the opaque workings of internet giants has not dimmed, in particular at what he terms “wilful” rule-breaking.

“If no one follows the rule and gets away with it, then why even bother having a democratic process in the first place?” he asks.

He laments the tendency for groups such as the internet’s “Big Four” — Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple — to engage in “responsibility shifting” to users by introducing new and often bewildering layers of privacy settings.

For example, “Facebook regularly puts out a hundred more buttons with options and then they present it as more privacy for the user, whereas in reality no one in the world is going to click on these buttons,” he says. 

‘Anti-Zuckerberg’? 

In the context of a debate that has sprung up in relation to coronavirus contact tracing apps, Schrems said he was surprised at the widespread concern over the apps’ privacy implications — despite many of them being well designed in this respect.

“It is a bit strange to think that people trust Google with all their data, but they wouldn’t trust their health ministry,” he says.

Alongside his current legal battles, Schrems is also keeping an eye on talks between the EU and the United States on the thorny matter of data transfers.

He has won two of his most famous legal victories in relation to that issue: in 2020 one of his complaints led the EU’s top court to strike down an online data arrangement known as “Privacy Shield” between Europe and the US.

In 2015, another case brought by Schrems scuppered a previous EU-US deal on which tech giants depended to do business.

What are the chances of a replacement deal that won’t meet a similar fate?

Schrems expects “a half-half solution” that will lead to “Schrems 3,4,5” being thrashed out in the courts, adding: “It’s kind of weird to have your name on a case.”

He strikes a modest tone when reflecting on the way he has become something of a poster boy for online privacy, the “anti-Zuckerberg”.

“You need a David versus Goliath and so on, so I accepted to be that David for the sake of having stories on it,” he says.

In the same way that “you need a Greta Thunberg to have a face on climate change because it’s a very abstract debate… I may sometimes be the face of that privacy debate,” he says.

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