FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 09:06:01 -0400 To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: EU data directive bans church teacher, dog owner Swedish web sites Copies to: jpalme@dsv.su.se Send reply to: declan@well.com
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Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 12:10:09 +0200 From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> Subject: Interpretation of the EU data directive
Here is a report on how the EU data directive (which all EU countries must implement) has been interpreted in Sweden. For more information, see http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/society/eu-data-directive-freedom.html
How the Swedish Data Inspection Board has chosen to interpret the law based on the EU directive is shown by some test cases.
In the first case, a person who felt that a large Swedish bank had wronged him, published a web page with the title "Swedish Anti-Bank Activity". On this page, he named a number of bank directors, who, in his opinion, had acted in ethically unacceptable ways. He was prosecuted, and sentenced to fines. This decision was upheld, on appeal, by the first appelate instance. The second appelate instance, the Swedish Highest Court, has not yet decided on this case. One issue which the Swedish Highest court will look like is if you can really regard a web page in the Swedish language to be exported outside Europe, just because the page is formally available to any Internet user, also outside Europe. The lower courts, however, said "yes" on this issue.
In the second case, an animal-rights organisation published a list of fur producers in Sweden. This case has not yet been decided on by the Swedish courts.
I a third case, a confirmation teacher wrote a web page, describing the vicar, the chairman of the church board and some other people. She did mention, for one of them, that he had broken a leg and for another person, that she was a member of the socialdemocratic party. Such information is especially sensitive according to the act. She was prosecuted for this, the court decision is not yet ready.
In a fourth case, some dog lovers on a web page criticized the democracy of a certain dog owners society, including mention of certain criticized people, which according to the web page owner should be substituted in the board of the society.
Looking at the way the law is used, one can see that unpopular or controversial opinions are suppressed. In at least the first case, it might be possible that the laws on slander could be used instead, but these laws are more restrictive than the personal data act. It also seems that it is not permitted to criticize a named individual on the Internet in Sweden.
In the case of the animal-rights organisation, one might guess (though this is not written anywhere) that this organisation published names of fur manufacturers in order to give information to people performing illegal acts of sabotage against fur farms. And one might guess, that this is the real reason why the personal data act is used, even if this is not officially said. This case has not yet been decided by the courts, but the Data Inspection Board has asked a prosecutor to prosecute it.
In a fifth case, the Swedish telephone directory is not available on the Internet for anyone. The reason for this is that in that case, people in countries without adequate security protection might access to phone directory. However, people living in Sweden can get a personal account and password, and can then access the telephone directory from the Internet. Also, the yellow pages are available to anyone, it is only the white pages which are unavailable outside Sweden.
One should note, however, that these are exceptional cases. In almost all other cases, the Data Inspection Board has chosen not to act. Note that in all the three cases above, the page did not only contain information about a single individual, it contained lists of names of people. So maybe the act is unofficially not applied to mention of single individuals, although the act itself makes no such distinction. Also, the Data Inspection Board mostly acts when someone complains to them. So a probable reason why we have relatively large freedom of speech on the Internet may simply be that no one bothers to complain to the Inspectorate of web pages they do not like. -- Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH) for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/
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