Marc Rotenberg wrote:
Similarly, Anitha Bondestam, director general of the Data Inspection Board of Sweden, writes in a recent report, "It is more important than ever to bring back anonymity and make more room for personal space." She urges her colleagues to sharply limit the collection of personal data.
A Swedish free-lance journalist and author of well researched books on the information society, Anders Olsson, have some interesting things to say on the likes of Anita Bondestam, from sort of a 'leftish' democratic viewpoint. He sees the achievements of the 'establishment privacy mafia' as mainly preventing 'the people' from keeping track of the wheelings and dealings of the nomenclatura for it's own benifit, and he doesn't think that this is unintentional. Data privacy laws are certainly an obstacle for sociologic research, among other things, and research results can be threatening to bureaucrats, plutocrats and monopolists. Laws against matching various 'public' registers for multiple entries are also making life easier for tax evaders (who might be libertarian heroes of course, but remember that for most salary-dependent people of lesser income it works like this: the more the entrepreneurs evade taxes, the more they have to pay to support the nomenclatura) but also for welfare cheaters and the like (not libertarian heroes!). Asgaard