5 ms·

I'm not judging one way or another, but is privacy not something the Swedish people are interested in?

• zachsnow 13y ago
  If you were Swedish you might not consider it private information. Being from the US I do, but I don't consider my age private. It's difficult to say where a culture should draw the line, in an objective way.
  • cmarschner 13y ago
    How is that a privacy concern in the US if you find the salaries of over a million people on a government website? I find that a bit disturbing.
    • walshemj 13y ago
      It's certainly personal data within the meaning of the law in all the EU states. Everyone on here has a blue fit over the NSA but is fine with this!
      • judk 13y ago
        Government is the public sector.
        • walshemj 13y ago
          So I give up my human rights when I work as a civil/crown servant?
          • waps 13y ago
            Partially, yes. Like all employment, when you take a job you give up part of your rights. When you take a job as a public servant you give up more than you would if you took a private sector job. This includes some human rights. The most obvious one is the right to do whatever you damn well please all the time, but there's various others. As a public servant you, for one thing, lose the right to practice your religion during the time you work, which is not something you lose in the private sector (this is because the government, and thus it's employees, cannot be allowed to be anything but neutral in matters of religion). Read the contract you signed when you took a job. I bet it'll be entertaining and instructive. Don't take anything I say, or indeed the contract you signed, as legal advice. You do however, retain the right to terminate your employment (no matter what the contract says, and it must be free to do so, provided a certain period of notice is respected), and get back full enjoyment of your rights.
            • walshemj 13y ago
              Why there is no valid reason for individual salaries to be posted.
          • judk 13y ago
            That doesn't make sense. We aren't eating government employees.
            • walshemj 13y ago
              No but you are abusing my rights UNHCR # 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. As well as my rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" No valid reason exists for individual salary's to be posted just as with the blackmail scam with mugshots proves.
• kalleboo 13y ago
  On the whole, I'd say privacy is valued similar. It's just a small quirk. Same how Americans tolerate banks having a secret-sauce shared credit validation system with god knows what information they sell back and forth.
  • judk 13y ago
    You can get a copy of your credit report. It isn't secret.
• MaysonL 13y ago
  Given that the government already knows, and either your employer or your accountant knows, and your bank has a pretty good idea, why do you think your income is to any meaningful extent still private?
  • mhurron 13y ago
    Your neighbor knows how much you make? Everyone you've listed has a need to know, that doesn't mean that everyone has a need to know. Your doctor knows, your parents know and your insurance company probably knows, but does that mean you broadcast to the world that you have a third testicle?
  • sologoub 13y ago
    Personally, I wouldn't want it shared with the world. The people/organizations you have listed are somewhat trusted entities. Income data can be used for a slew of criminal activity. I wonder if you can correlate the release of the data with burglaries or other crimes spiking in the relatively wealthier households, compared to their neighbors.
    • acdha 13y ago
      It's a risk but it seems likely to only be a problem in places where there are significant variations in income: if you live in a neighborhood where the average house costs $500K, your hypothetical burglar is going to assume that they're all good targets – or they'll just go to the house with a Mercedes in the driveway.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    You ever listen to a friend, who has recently hit a rough patch, talking about their difficulty paying their bills and think "gee, this would be a rather inappropriate time to mention how much money I make."? That is where the desire for wage privacy comes from for me. Talking about how much you make, outside the workplace, has no benefits. It is just going to make the conversation awkward, or somebody is going to feel bad about themselves, or somebody is going to get an irritating spark of envy where none needed to exist. As far as I am concerned, you may as well publicize dick length. (Public employees opt-in to the public knowing how much they make. The reason the public gets to know in that case is because the public is paying that salary. There is an employee/employer relationship there.)
• umsm 13y ago
  You can use a house or lifestyle metric to determine who is richer or poorer. A house or your lifestyle is about as public as it gets.