Forget Me Sweden
Legal reform
A Swedish government inquiry has already proposed a concrete legal change to reduce the online exposure of ordinary people's personal data.
The proposal would make it possible for ordinary privacy law to apply to searchable personal-data services when they create serious risks of improper privacy intrusion. That means services built to make people easy to look up online would no longer enjoy the same broad constitutional protection they do today.
Today in Sweden, it is often far too easy for strangers to find personal information about ordinary people online. Home addresses, age, phone numbers, family links, and other identifying details can be surfaced through searchable services that make private citizens easy to map and monitor.
This is not what democratic transparency was meant to become.
Public access rules were created to support accountability, not to make ordinary people easier to target, harass, or exploit.
A government inquiry, SOU 2024:75, proposes a constitutional change to limit the protection currently given to searchable services that publish personal data.
In practical terms, the proposal would make it possible for the GDPR and the Swedish Data Protection Act to apply to these services when they create special risks of improper privacy intrusion.
The inquiry proposes that the constitutional protection for databases should not apply to the publication of personal data when the publication is of a nature that creates special risks of improper intrusion into the personal integrity of the registered person, taking into account the nature of the personal data, the scope of the publication, or the purpose of the publication.
The proposal is designed to focus on the publication itself, with special weight given to:
This matters because the issue is not ordinary journalism. The issue is searchable personal-data services that make it easy to build a profile of a person.
This proposal would not abolish Sweden's tradition of openness.
It would draw a clearer line between public-interest journalism and democratic accountability on one hand, and commercial or searchable personal-data exposure that creates privacy and safety risks on the other.
This is not just an idea. It is a real government proposal. The inquiry proposes that the change should enter into force on 1 January 2027.
Send a message to the Ministry of Justice urging the government to move forward with the legal reform proposed in SOU 2024:75.
Ask the government to move forward with SOU 2024:75.
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