Sweden Leaks the Personal Information of Millions of Its Own Citizens
Blog posts from Rick Falkvinge (Head of Privacy at Private Internet Access, and a founder of Sweden&#x27;s first Pirate Party):<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;swedish-administration-tried-glossing-leaking-eus-secure-stesta-intranet-russia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;swedish-a...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;swedish-transport-agency-worst-known-governmental-leak-ever-is-slowly-coming-to-light&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.privateinternetaccess.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;swedish-t...</a><p>(edit: for some reason, the above blog post URLs weren&#x27;t showing up for me...)<p>If I&#x27;m reading his blog post correctly, Sweden&#x27;s transport agency sloppily handled the nation&#x27;s vehicle registry, which does contain data subject to freedom of information laws, but contains confidential data that is not supposed to be out in the wild:<p>&gt; <i>Last March, the entire register of vehicles was sent to marketers subscribing to it. This is normal in itself, as the vehicle register is public information, and therefore subject to Freedom-of-Information excerpts. What was not normal were two things: first, that people in the witness protection program and similar programs were included in the register distributed outside the Agency, and second, when this fatal mistake was discovered, a new version without the sensitive identities was not distributed with instructions to destroy the old copy. Instead, the sensitive identities were pointed out and named in a second distribution with a request for all subscribers to remove these records themselves. This took place in open cleartext e-mail.</i><p>Since Sweden is 10 million citizens, about the size of a U.S. state, this sounds like a state DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) accidentally exposing the licensed drivers and registered vehicles database (part of which is public record). But the difference seems to be that Sweden&#x27;s transport agency also handles aircraft and military vehicles using the same database, hence the exposure of secret military info?<p>Ignoring the current fuckup, it seems like a bad idea to have one national data system for personal and govt&#x2F;military vehicles, even if it is efficient for a nation of Sweden&#x27;s size. The Gizmodo article notes that this database was accessible to all of the Sweden transport agency IT workers to access and download willy-nilly, which is a problem independent of the issue of it being accidentally leaked. In the United States, it&#x27;s a common scandal for state law enforcement to lookup driver information without proper authorization, but at least it&#x27;s just civilian driver information for their state, not the Humvees registered to SEAL Team 6: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbc-2.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;25334275&#x2F;deputy-fired-for-improperly-accessing-info-about-governor-nbc2-anchors-others" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbc-2.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;25334275&#x2F;deputy-fired-for-imprope...</a>