I think this is good to highlight for non-Scandinavians.
Scandinavian countries are extremely open and transparent in a way that might be shocking for Americans. For example, in Norway, I can check nearly anyone's brokerage account holdings, addresses, phone numbers, etc. on public websites. I can in theory look up anyone's tax filings.
Personal identification numbers do not tend to be considered private in the same way that social security numbers in the US are.
> This system was one of the oldest IT systems in NAV, and ran in production for 51 years, from when the National Insurance Scheme was introduced in 1967. In January 2018, Presys was put into production, which together with Pesys became the successor to DSF. At that point, DSF was also shut down.
The system is written in PL/I.
It's like the Apollo 11 code, but for social services.
I heard a rumor that some people use this to check their neighbour's revenue and sometimes make snark comments if one of them has a high revenue but lives in a "average revenue" part of town.
They'd say that if you earn a lot, you shouldn't take a cheap housing.
There used to be a lot more of that, but a system was put in place where you have to identify yourself with electronic ID to access the information, and the information is logged so the other party can see it.
Nowadays I think mostly journalists use it to pull up information about politicians and other people that are in the public spotlight. There are of course the yearly "richest people in Norway" lists in various categories.
> There used to be a lot more of that, but a system was put in place where you have to identify yourself with electronic ID to access the information, and the information is logged so the other party can see it.
Yeah, kind of a fake solution, request it via Ratsit or whatever and all they get to see is that someone used Ratsit, but not who actually requested it.
Same goes for criminal cases, using Krimfup or whatever just leads to the service's name "leaking", while you can use fake details to sign up for both Ratsit and Krimfup.
> They'd say that if you earn a lot, you shouldn't take a cheap housing.
I think a lot of "humbleness" is also enforced this way, in the US seems normal (or even some European countries) to flaunt your wealth, and others seem more or less OK with it, while in Sweden it's much more socially unacceptable to in any sort of way brag about being rich, or showing that off. Humble-richness is OK and tolerated, but flagrantly displaying your wealth among the public is generally frowned upon.
So together with that, living in a average neighborhood but have a house that sticks out as clearly "rich person's house" will gain you evil looks from your neighbors, as you're "supposed to" live in a different neighborhood where neighbors look more equal, otherwise you again stick out, which is cause for friction culturally.
Lots of culture in Sweden is less about "lets correctly solve the problem" and more "lets ensure the gaping holes aren't so visible for everyone, so we can ignore it properly".
I have a friend who has moved to Sweden a while ago, and she told me a lot about the Swedish housing situation, and admittedly most if it went over my head, but in short, apparently very few places would even allow you to build even somewhat freely.
Apparently she was in a situation where she 'owned' her house, but still paid a monthly maintenance fee to some agency. and she wasn't allowed to repaint the rooms or do any sort of repairs, but had to go through some agency, who would do it for her.
Apparently that was a neighborhood thing, but she told me of epic (and apparently fruitless) struggles of her friends' who wanted to repaint their house in a different color and install some circular windows.
Probably just didn't really buy the house. Many houses are part of an association (BRF). When you buy one, you practically only buy the right to live in the house plus a share of the entire association. The fee that she paid was towards that association for things like maintainance, managment, trash-fees, internet, parking, likely heating and water, and possibly interest on the associations loan. It's just a different structure that many countries have for flats in a building, in this case applied to single family houses.
Here in Australia, I’ve seen what we call “strata title” applied to “single family homes” before (American terminology, we’d say “detached houses”) - it is uncommon, much more common with apartment buildings or townhouses/villas/semidetached (you share walls and maybe the roof with your neighbours, but there is no one above or below you)-but not completely unheard of
Hold on, I was sharing an anecdote from a friend living in a foreign country, and somehow you're somehow connecting this to a dastardly geopolitical plot by a league of evil nations?
Also may I ask who the heck you are to call my story uninformed? As far as I recall, there's nothing inaccurate about what I said, I might be missing some context or nuance, but there's no disinformation in there, and there's certainly no hidden motive (what would even that be?) you seem to imply.
Making snark comments about that sounds very unlikely. More likely they'd have respect for someone living frugally and not showing off. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
Is this not trivial to get a random person to check stuff for you in exchange for making requests for them (on people they are interested in)? Or is that illegal?
I think it was covered during a discussion about immigrants that are easily rejected - because they're immigrants.
The points was that it added another layer of issues for immigrants because they didn't understand the neighbourhood they "should be living in" with their revenue.
Why is this not the “shit people do shit things” category? This happens even without being immigrants. Large part of my family lives in a way poorer neighborhood than what we can afford, because we don’t care to move. People who have problem with this had other problems even before we got richer. There is exactly zero difference. The exact same people are snark as before, just for something else now. They were and would be snark even without this.
This seems to me a very bad attempt to hide xenophobia.
Because tax is not your bill from 'government Corp ', its your contribution to the community, to your tribe. And we have explicit goals for this, besides bringing revenue (like the strongest back should carry the heaviest burden).
When we have communal contributions in other settings, your contribution is usually not a secret.
It is meant to give the tax system more legitimacy, that you don't gave to wonder if people sneak out of their contribution, you can check. It also leads to yearly debates about the tax system as the list of the richest(usually inherited) is published together with what they pay in income tax vs wealth tax.
Previously you could check up anyone anonymous. These days you have to log inn, and they get a notification. But the list of the richest and their tax contribution gets published in the newspaper.
This has also the effect of fueling envy, and allows employers to discriminate you if they see that you have side income (or if you don't). Why make all of this fuss about RGPD if private data is in the open?
And why not include medical data as well? The "tribe" has the right to know how much each one costs, right?
It is usually those with little power that suffer when you do that, and those with a lot of power that suffer from financial openness. I ask this in the most naive way possible I think the Pandora Leak was a good thing, do you not agree?
Richer people have many ways to protect themselves from society, unlike poorer people who have to bear the envy of others and can't escape it. Just ask any homeless person.
A rich man can just (and likely should, given the comments here) leave the Swedish crab basket.
Having society obsessed with watching how their neighbor is doing is a very good way to get everyone to look away, while, in the case of Sweden, a single family owns a large part of the stock exchange.
First, lets me clarrify that I am trying to explain how this practise is justified in Norway, I am not arguing for or against it. Some of the justification is pure cultural traits, which you can try to understand even if you dont agree with them yourself. Also note that this is not completely non-controversal, but it seems like the current setup (where you need to log in to search, in addition to the public lists in the newspaper) has reasonable strong support.
This has also the effect of fueling envy
Yeah, I guess the same feeling can look like both "envy" and "sense of justice", depending on where you see it from. But we can't protect everyone from their feelings.
and allows employers to discriminate you if they see that you have side income (or if you don't).
I have never heard about this, and I don't really see the dynamic here. What definitely IS a effect is that it makes it a bit harder for employers to give employees with equal tasks very different salaries.
Why make all of this fuss about RGPD if private data is in the open?
Because this is seen as, at least partially, public data.
And why not include medical data as well? The "tribe" has the right to know how much each one costs, right?
No. And this is where you must just belive me when I say that this is just a truth about the cultue, most people (in Scandinavia) would not agree with argument. Your contribution is public, your weakness is private.
Let me give an example: The local kid socker team is organizing a cup, and the parrents need to help organizing, making and selling cookies, etc. This is organized through an app, where you sign up for tasks, and everyone can see what you are commiting to contribute. The same team also have an arrangement where the(small) membership fee can be waivered if you can't afford it, or you can get help buying equipment(shoes) for your kid. This is handled by you letting the trainer know in private, and he will discretely handle it.
Common citizens aren't supposed to be blockwarts judging who deserves or not their money.
> But we can't protect everyone from their feelings.
We can protect ourselves from the feeling of others by not sharing this data.
> equal tasks very different salaries
Unless you are an unqualified factory worker on a line with quantifiable output, in a service economy "equal tasks" are highly subjective.
> This is handled by you letting the trainer know in private, and he will discretely handle it.
Maybe the poor kid would rather not tell the trainer that he is poor and face paternalistic attitudes? And the rich kid wouldn't be reminded all the time that he is guilty of having richer parents? Add race/migration and you'll quickly tolerate bullying because of "social reasons".
As I said above, I explain the cultural norms making it seen as acceptable. I am not trying to convince you, and I am certainly not interested in a bunch of random tangental discussions.
Maybe the poor kid would rather not tell the trainer that he is poor and face paternalistic attitudes? And the rich kid wouldn't be reminded all the time that he is guilty of having richer parents? Add race/migration and you'll quickly tolerate bullying because of "social reasons".
It would be the parrent who ask the trainer to have it waived, not the kid. No kid, rich or poor, would know if they received help in paying the bill or buying equipment. The whole point of the example was exactly that while peoples contribution is public, their requirement for support is not, so there would be no cultural acceptance for the arguement "since taxes are open so should healtcare-usage". And again, this is a explanation of the cultural context, it is irrelevant if you feel like that culture is good or bad.
I don't follow. It allows citizenry to identify wage discrimination and other malpractices, people can get paid on the value of their work and not just how good they are at gaming the wage negotiations. Plus most of the civilised world has this thing called a "union" and "workers rights" that generally prevent your imagined scenario from happening.
What has medical data got to do with this? You can't very well go up to a disabled person and say, hey, you cost society more money, maybe you should have been born less disabled, you cost too much, pay more. Societal safety nets exist for a reason, and how much one is compensated for equal labour as your coworker... I don't see how it's related at all to the "make the disabled pay more" eugenics argument.
> It allows citizenry to identify wage discrimination and other malpractices, people can get paid on the value of their work and not just how good they are at gaming the wage negotiations.
Ah yeah, so you are for mob justice. "Value of their work" is a highly subjective topic, which everyone is an expert on, of course.
> Plus most of the civilised world has this thing called a "union" and "workers rights" that generally prevent your imagined scenario from happening.
Worker rights and unions don't prevent employers from setting wages freely with their employees. An employee with 0 revenue has much less negociating power if the employer knows about it.
> you cost too much, pay more
I'm pretty sure people can have envy about the disabled person earning as much as they do while he/she doesn't have to wake up in the morning. Or some disabled person would like to evolve freely in the society without having everyone know about it.
> eugenics argument
Sweden sterilized disabled and socially unfit people for a long time, until 2013, so yeah, I totally see it happening. Incidentally I have seen racial and social mappings made out of the Swedish public data in the past, so it's far from anecdotic.
Tax data is government data. Government data is public data. Instead of asking "what's the reason for making something public" the question is "what's the reason for making a carveout for some specific data to make it secret"
Government data about private individuals can be considered as private, for privacy reasons. If the government knows that I have a mental disability, should everyone know about it, so they can discriminate me accordingly? What kind of dystopian view of the world is this?
Or, if I own crypto, why should the government facilitate the work for criminals?
The Government IS the public. I agree that the public shouldn't necessarily know about your mental disabilities, but then you just shouldn't give this information to the government.
Giving this information to the government is needed to get either financial help, or just a card to justify accommodations. But yeah, let's create second class citizens out of disabled people, great idea, very "scandinavian" indeed. At least they stopped sterilizing them.
The Government is answerable to the public and should serve the public. But conflating the government with the public is simply bizarre, to my way of thinking.
Governments should be transparent as much as possible, yes. But that doesn't mean being necessarily transparent with sensitive information that they know about members of the public. Only with your (bizarre to me) conflation of the public with the government would this make any sense.
People thought that in France until a public official started to sell tax data to the mafia. Now there is a kidnapping almost everyday. Things can change faster than what you can imagine, and Sweden is not a safe country anymore by the way.
You will not find any reputable source for those statements, sure maybe as opinions. This is the issue here we are talking about facts. I have been able to look up this information for as long as we had a government in Sweden, and it works.
Financial privacy is a complicated subject, could you perhaps agree that there is a use for transparancy?
The problem is that when you get a high amount migrant from very different ethnicities and cultures than you, it starts to change. Those people do not necessarily want to play the same social game as you, and you risk having structured crime networks arising.
Just like in France where those kidnappings were made by the algerian "DZ" mafia (DZ is a slang for Algeria). Or in Netherlands, with the "mocro" mafia (= Morroccan) who put a price on the royal family's head, forcing the princess sibling to leave the country[0].
In the case of Sweden, this is now the case, although that many Swedish people continue to do as if it wasn't. Don't tell me that such news happens in a "safe" country:
And I don't see why there should be transparency about how much I own, or earn. I don't want the neighbors to know about it, or feed your voyeurist pulsions. The line is thin between "social justice" and "mob violence", or discrimination, in that aspect. Which is likely to happen in a country that sterilized "socially unfit" people for a long time.
I am wary to continue this, because you post unrelated tidbits and opinions.
My opinion is that opaque financial markets only benefits people with lots of money and power. Financial privacy is important here in Sweden, but having the net worth and income as public records has worked for us the last 250 years. I do not know where you come from and what society you live in. I do sense fear in your posts and that is usually a personal feeling. It might be different for us since it has been ingrained for so long.
I am talking from experience in our safe society (fact). Which obviously has severe flaws (opinion).
> Financial privacy is a complicated subject, could you perhaps agree that there is a use for transparancy?
No, because I don't believe in income tax or capital gains tax. I do believe in government taxes but they should be made on land holdings (Georgism) and on corporate activities, not on individuals' financial status (their earnings & capital).
The US used to be more this way. Not brokerage accounts as far as I recall, but whether you own a house, how much you paid for it, your address, phone number, even your SSN didn't used to be considered very private, people had it printed on their personal checks, and schools used it as a student ID number.
Newspapers used to publish hospital admissions and discharges, nothing medical but names and dates. Probably a lot of other stuff I'm forgetting.
Let's not forget white pages, those door stopper telephone books containing everyone's name, phone and address that everyone had (along with yellow pages for business listings).
Out of curiosity how do you authenticate yourself with government services and finance companies and such? The reason the SSN is considered private is because it's used for authentication. Usually an SSN + one or two pieces of trivially obtainable information is enough to sign up for just about anything in somebody else's name, unless physical documents are required as in the case of a passport.
In Sweden the most useful and supported way means that you need this.
1. An identification approved by the EU. You get this from the national Police. (A government agency)
2. An SSN which is your birthday and four extea digits. E.g. 1212121212 is a valid "PNR", you get this from the Tax agency
3. A bank account (you need 1 and 2)
4. A patched Android or iPhone.
5. The BankID a app from a company owner by the banks in Sweden.
6. A Certificate downloaded from your bank to you BankID App
7. A PIN to Protect the key in you BankID App.
8. Normal internet connection.
9. A camera on your phone to read QR code on Service Provider webpage for session initionation
When you sign something the app will send lots of metadata to "the Identity Provider" (BankId), e.g. how much root you have on your phone, if you run known malware, your current ip, and your phone HW info. This is used to calculate a score that you as a "service provider" (i.e. banks, government, companies) can choose to ignore (they usually do)
When you as a Customer either sign in or sign you will see a document that you sign maybe "I give you 100SEK", and who you sign that to. You enter you pin or use biometric to aprove.
With cryptographic keys, normally stored on a smartphone. BankID[0] is the most common solution, but there are others. I personally use biometric 2fa to log in, and PIN to sign contracts or pay.
And then there are widespread amounts of identity theft and mapping out of minorities, but you may sleep well as everyone knowing where you do so is an important step in making sure corruption is no more, don't think too much about it.
Oh yes. I'm Swedish and I do have to admit I have looked up quite a lot of people on these kinds of sites. It's become so normalised to do this even though I also feel like it would be better as a whole if they just did not exist in the first place.
Last update I heard about something being done about it was this:
> You criticize these websites when they affect minorities, but you use them yourself to look up men. That seems inconsistent.
This is very close to the "Yet you participate in society, how curious" mean, especially since they're implying they would vote in favor of a law that changes it so that the data is no longer public in the same manner.
But then your comment history reveals enough about your intent.
Because it's the law, and it's a good thing as governments and people tend to use violence against minorities. Don't like it? Move to a more racist country like Israel.
Yes, sadly, and a lot of it is MENA migrants. But that should be no surprise if you have any experience of the world and Sweden.
I think you are trying to be funny, but I am serious.
>“First, before 2015 it was not acceptable to talk about antisemitism which came from immigrant groups from the Middle-East. This made members of the Jewish community feel abandoned. Sweden has now changed and it’s now possible to talk about it and deal with the problem”, Kahn Nord says
> “antisemitism has long been a weapon of regimes in the Middle East, where it is deeply rooted, openly expressed, and legitimized. The spread of this type of propaganda via the internet by regimes such as Iran has contributed to the globalization of this hatred. Recently, it was revealed that the Iranian regime is suspected of having planned to murder Swedish Jews, among them Aron Verständig, the chair of the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities (Judiska Centralrådet). According to the Swedish Security Services (Säpo), Iran has also recruited Swedish criminal networks to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. The Swedish National Centre for Terrorist Threat Assessment (NCT) has reported that the biggest terror threats in Sweden come from violent Islamists and right-wing extremists, which both have Jews and Jewish institutions as some of their primary targets”.
Official Swedish statistics from the National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) show a clear rise in antisemitic hate crimes, increasing from 111 cases in 2022 to 217 in 2024 (doubling their share of all hate crimes to 8%), with a sharp surge (>450%) to 110 reports in late 2023 following the October 7 Hamas attack. This increase correlates with large-scale immigration from Arab and Middle Eastern countries, where antisemitic attitudes are significantly higher (e.g., ADL surveys show ~74% prevalence in MENA vs. low native Swedish levels). Multiple studies and reports, including Brå analyses and victim perceptions, indicate that perpetrators are often from Middle Eastern immigrant backgrounds, with spikes tied to Israel-related conflicts and imported attitudes, though not all immigrants are involved.
People like you are somewhat amusing. You keep going on and on about how you are Swedish when the right-wing playbook is global, this could easily be a post from any of your ilk anywhere on the European continent or the United States.
Let's even grant you the premise that these statistics are accurate. What do you want to do about it? Deprive people of their rights extrajudicially because of where they come from? Should we treat people from MENA differently before the law? What about a native Swede who is antisemitic? Should they lose some rights? Should we deport people based on place of origin? Is that what the West is based on to you, increasingly arbitrary or national/ethnic access to rights vs a universalist conception of human rights? Or would that be a "third world" degeneration?
What is the West? Are Jewish people synonymous with the West? Was that always the case? You talk about minority protections are Jewish people a majority in Sweden? If not, why do you advocate protections for some minorities and not others? Do you think Jewish people have suffered in the "first world" West? Where does antisemitism come from? Was the Weimar Republic the third world? How about the regime that followed? Should European antisemites be allowed into Sweden? Maybe everyone who enters Sweden should have to pass an ideological test to prove they are sufficiently non antisemitic and appropriately Western? Or maybe you let them in but they have to walk around in special outfits or with a special lapel or label on them so we can be vigilant regarding their whereabouts? Perhaps anyone who commits a crime in Sweden should be deported, as only an anti-western person would exhibit criminal behavior?
What do you want to do about it? Highlighting crime tells us nothing. Every society deals with crime. Most societies have minorities. What separates societies is how they deal with it. So tell us, warden of the West, what you seek to do.
I should know better than to wade into a debate with someone who argues like you. Your comment history does indeed speak for itself. But I will try to debate you in good faith. I look forward to your answers.
You are already poisoning the well before I answer, so I feel like my answer will not matter to you, but I will absolutely answer in good faith as I always do.
Not sure if you are American or not, but European migration policy seems especially harsh compared to yours, but we have our reasons. (2015 aware, wir shiffen das)
I voted for Moderaterna, to be clear. You can look them up.
>Let's even grant you the premise that these statistics are accurate.
BRÅ is a state beauru and they are accurate.
>What do you want to do about it?
Vote for the party that has policy on this I agree with.
>Deprive people of their rights extrajudicially because of where they come from?
Yes! We already do this. Everyone in the EU can freely migrate to another EU country in the Schengen zone. If you are outside EU you need Visa or Asylum. Thus, we treat people differently based on where they are from. We do not have "open borders", nor should we.
We see this also with the Ukraine war. Who do we feel closest to? Someone fleeing war in Somalia or Afghanistan or someone fleeing from Russia's invasion in Ukraine?
You know the answer even if you do not want to admit it, you maybe feel the same way.
Also, "rights" was never to be allowed to migrate anywhere. Never was, never will.
>Should we treat people from MENA differently before the law?
Yes! We already do. See above.
>What about a native Swede who is antisemitic?
That is bad and I reject any type of neo-nazi conspiracies. I also fight these online and there is a perplexing unity on neo-nazis and Hamas etc and their ilk on this. They always revert to "well jews control the media, usa etc". Ridicolous.
>Should they lose some rights?
Yes! We have a law called "hets mot folkgrupp". If convicted, you lose rights.
>Should we deport people based on place of origin?
No, we base it on behaviour such as crime etc. Then they should be deported.
The policy now is prevention also.
>Is that what the West is based on to you, increasingly arbitrary or national/ethnic access to rights vs a universalist conception of human rights?
Human rights does not mean to let everyone who wants in. It never did.
>Or would that be a "third world" degeneration?
That would be one of many criteria. See Pol Pot etc.
>What is the West?
Europe, with a line towards Russia, generally. Ukraine and Georgia I consider the west for example. This is based on behaviours. To the South, Mediterranian is a border. Greece Cyprus is part of the West, not Turkey.
UK is the West also. And Canada and USA. And Israel.
>Are Jewish people synonymous with the West?
Yes, Israel and its population have shown to be our steadfast partners.
>Was that always the case?
Sadly no, it was only Napoleon who started to let Jews in so to say.
>You talk about minority protections are Jewish people a majority in Sweden?
Yes!
The national minorities in Sweden have long historical ties to the country. In 2000, Sweden officially recognised the following minorities and minority languages: the Jews and Yiddish, the Roma and Romani Chib, the Sami and the Sami language, the Swedish Finns and Finnish, as well as the Tornedalians and Meänkieli (sometimes called Torne Valley Finnish).
>If not, why do you advocate protections for some minorities and not others?
See the official recognition above.
>Do you think Jewish people have suffered in the "first world" West?
Sadly yes. See my articles above. I also assume you mean Nazi Germany as some kind of "gotcha".
>Where does antisemitism come from?
Right now? MENA countries, see my articles above. Antisemitism has a long and sordid history.
ADL surveys consistently show antisemitic attitudes in the 74–97% range across much of the region. It's not fringe, its normal there. Nazi propaganda made it worse, but it didn't create it.
>Was the Weimar Republic the third world?
No? Nobody thinks this.
>How about the regime that followed?
No? Nobody thinks this. Antisemitism is not the only requirement to be third world.
>Should European antisemites be allowed into Sweden?
Yes! We are in Schengen after all.
>Maybe everyone who enters Sweden should have to pass an ideological test to prove they are sufficiently non antisemitic and appropriately Western?
There is no "test" for "entering Sweden". But there is one to be a Swedish citizen. And even before you are a Swedish citizen, you can now be deported based on your bad conduct.
Sweden has introduced or is in the process of implementing stricter requirements and assessments in migration law, particularly around good conduct ("god vandel"), self-sufficiency, and in some cases language/knowledge.
This allows the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) to deny entry, refuse a residence permit, or revoke/withdraw one based on a holistic assessment of the person's conduct.
Not following laws, court decisions, or authority orders (e.g., unpaid fines, ignored decisions).
Unwillingness to pay debts (to individuals or the state).
Repeated minor offenses.
Welfare system abuse (e.g., fraud).
Associations with criminal/extremist networks.
Serious addiction or a grossly irresponsible lifestyle.
This is not a moral philosophy test or quiz — it's a discretionary evaluation based on evidence (police records, debt registers, authority reports, etc.). It's broader than just criminal convictions.
For permanent residence or extensions in some categories, there are discussions of tightening rules (e.g., basic Swedish proficiency like A2/B1 level mentioned in policy contexts), but as of now, it's not a universal entry barrier.
For Swedish citizenship (medborgarskap), stricter rules are rolling out from June 2026:
Knowledge test in Swedish language (reading/listening comprehension at functional level) — planned start around October 2027.
Test on Swedish society/knowledge about Sweden.
Higher "hederligt levnadssätt" (honest way of life) requirement, similar to vandel.
Self-sufficiency requirement (no long-term welfare dependency).
>Or maybe you let them in but they have to walk around in special outfits or with a special lapel or label on them so we can be vigilant regarding their whereabouts?
I understand that you are trying to equivocate the current Swedish government to Nazi Germany, but the above is not done.
>Perhaps anyone who commits a crime in Sweden should be deported, as only an anti-western person would exhibit criminal behavior?
You have 2 parts here. We indeed should deport more foreign born criminals, and we are.
The new government have passed the "bristande vandel" or "poor conduct" addendum to the deportation law.
The concept was revived in the Tidö Agreement (2022). It called for investigating ways to deport or deny permits to non-citizens showing "bristande vandel," including things like association with criminal gangs, extremism, drug abuse, prostitution, or general non-compliance with rules.
It applies mainly to non-EU/EEA citizens and certain residence permits (not fully EU-law protected ones, though some security-based revocations are possible).
This does not directly apply to Swedish citizens (citizenship revocation has separate, stricter rules and constitutional hurdles).
>What do you want to do about it?
See above, all policy I voted for and agree with.
>Highlighting crime tells us nothing.
It does! It tells us who did it, who is responsible. And steps to avoid and correct it. Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ), continue to produce and release reports that analyze crime data by immigrant background or foreign background (typically defined by whether a person is born in Sweden to two Swedish-born parents, born in Sweden to one or two foreign-born parents, or born abroad). They did this in 1995, 2005 and again in 2025. If these stats offend you, maybe it says something about you.
>Every society deals with crime
Yes, but some more then others. Do you not want to live in a society with less crime or more crime? Every country has garbage and trash. Do you want less or more? Every country has electricity outages sometimes, do you want less or more?
>Most societies have minorities. What separates societies is how they deal with it.
Is that really the defining variable? It reads like something I'd have written in high school, the kind of line that sounds profound but dissolves under pressure. What about living conditions, quality of life, infrastructure, longevity, happiness? Those seem at least as relevant, if not more so.
>So tell us, warden of the West, what you seek to do.
I'm not offended. I actually appreciate you answering the questions and attempting a good faith reply.
I have some follow-ups.
> Yes! We already do this. Everyone in the EU can freely migrate to another EU country in the Schengen zone.
How about any other ways? When they are in the country? How about vs other non EU immigrants? Should people from MENA be treated differently than people from Israel? From the United States?
You say open borders are not human rights... but you said European antisemites should be allowed to come into Sweden. If you care about open borders and antisemitism so much, would you support a Swedish brexit? You seem to indicate you voted for a party that changed migration laws. Would you also support a party that banned European antisemites? Why is schengen inviolate but not your prior rules on migration or crime?
> The policy now is prevention also.
Meaning what? And on what basis?
> Yes, Israel and its population have shown to be our steadfast partners.
How is Israel a partner to Sweden? So a partner to Sweden is what makes a country Western? Earlier you seemed to suggest it was based on geography but also "behaviors". What behaviors would those be?
Lastly, I understand you think the Nazi analogies are gotchas. You'll have to forgive me. After all, while you take great care in your prior reply to be sensible, your other replies did not convey the same tone. Focusing exclusively on one minority group makes one look very suspicious. It's not like the thought of Nazis comes from nowhere.
You should know it was only last year your "Moderate" minister for migration Johan Forssell was involved in a scandal where his teenage son was pictured giving a Nazi salute, having attended neo Nazi gatherings. This is the same man that blames cultural degradation and parents for the actions of other teenagers, who wants to lower protections for young people and their parents accused of crimes or misconduct... do you not see an irony here?
Do you think he should have resigned? Do you not see any nexus between focusing on crime through a racial or ethnic lens and fascism? Do you take the responsibility of any criminal justice system to prove guilt and treat defendants of equal status equally before the law regardless of race, ethnicity, country of origin, .etc seriously?
Are you as surprised as he was, given his rhetoric, that the security services of your country had to inform him his own son was involved in such a group?
It seems to me someone who wants to make broad associations based on neighboring conduct and loosen protections before the law in the name of Swedish values and public safety should at the very least have the decency to resign in such a circumstance. It is deeply ironic to me and I think perfectly captures how I personally feel about the right, from Europe to the United States to Israel...
So in summary, is your position if a MENA teen in Sweden does a Nazi salute, you want them and their family deported? But if the Minister of Migration's son does it, that's fine? You agree with your party it's not a big deal?
Remind me again where antisemitism comes from?
You asked if I want less garbage and trash in my country. I'll settle for less Nazis.
Tidö have been going strong and are just starting to clean up our country. I hope they win again but I fear we have another disaster government next election.
I have a job and money so I will not be personally affected but if the left wins MP and V will dictate and it will be 2015 all over again. I do hope their voters take the brunt of the damage up close and personal that is to come from their own votes to this country.
NATO status acquired. S was controlled by V and MP on this and was so-so. We see it now with S complaining about the governments talks with France over their nuclear umbrella.
Redirected grants from lesser nations to Ukraine with the biggest aid package ever to Ukraine explicitly stating that it is a top priority. So overall, prioritizing EU and Europe.
Inflation was 12% now down to 3%
Largest increase in military spending since the Cold War, this is the new Europa.
A paradigm shift against organised crime, with tougher penalties, substantial resource increases for the justice system, and expanded tools for police and prosecutors.
Shootings especially have decreased, there was 0 in January 2026 (or maybe they just stay inside because of the weather xD)
Another paradigm shift but in Migration: They have implemented the strictest migration reforms in Swedish history, leading to the lowest asylum-related immigration since 1985.
Implemented a sharp tightening of migration policy in the first 100 days: increased internal checks on foreigners by about 25%, intensified work on returning people without residence rights, expanded detention capacity, and launched information and analysis efforts on voluntary return.
Cut the annual refugee quota from around 5,000–6,400 to 900, presented by the government as delivering on the promised “paradigm shift” in asylum and migration policy.
Reddit is crying about this ofc. But again, 100% support from me on this.
We already had a deal with Finland. Would have happened no matter was in power in Sweden. Though now with trump back it's not looking like the best idea.
>A paradigm shift against organised crime
Keep doing the same thing, ask cops how to solve the problem, more cops is always the answer. The war on drugs is a massive failure.
About to get a lot more refugees to Europe thanks to Trump.
>Would have happened no matter was in power in Sweden.
Maybe so but does not change the ideological leanings of the left being against us joining NATO.
>Though now with trump back it's not looking like the best idea.
NATO is more than just the USA, but the USA is a large part. I have faith that the Americans will come to their senses. NATO is a huge benefit to them in terms of military bases open to their disposal as we see with the Iran strikes. Hopefully CENTCOM & EUCOM can make Trump see this.
>Keep doing the same thing, ask cops how to solve the problem, more cops is always the answer
I mean as I showed, it is working for us, for now. There is a clear decline in crime.
>The war on drugs is a massive failure.
Are you Swedish or just an american leftie tiktok brained swede? We have our own drug policy, influenced by our alcohol policy. We used to be a very poor, rural, drunk country.
>About to get a lot more refugees to Europe thanks to Trump.
We can just... not let them in. How about that. Dont try and blame Trump for this. There are plenty safe countries in the Middle East they can migrate to. No need to go to Europe.
Not a formal deal but it's pretty widely known that if either wanted to join we would join together as we've had a long history of cooperation during the Cold War.
Trump can do whatever he and the project 2025 Christian fanatics wants to do, it's unlikely to stop in the mid terms or even the next presidential election. Now it's looking like a ground invasion of Iran. They thought they could do another Venezuela, they're getting a Vietnam in the age of drones instead.
I am swedish and well aware of our alcoholic history. And yes we are emulating the American war on drugs because the only solutions we try are more police. Keeping most drugs illegal is what fuels the gangs, yet politicians think people should just stop doing drugs to solve the problem. It's laughable.
American "interventions" in the middle east for the last 70 years have caused these migrations of people. They keep doing it to different counties so they're not safe if they just go to a neighbor, might as well go to Europe. The current Iranian regime is in power largely because the American and British got their government overthrown in the 50s.
The root cause of identity theft in USA and some other places is the lack of "proper" national identity and the associated use of various personal "secrets" (not that secret) for identity verification because there are no good easy other ways.
Businesses in Scandinavia and many other countries would not treat someone knowing your personal information as any evidence of identity (because it's not); having all that information is not sufficient to impersonate you there - identity theft does happen but it would require stealing or forging physical documents or actual credentials to things like bank accounts; knowing all of what your mother or spouse would know is not enough to e.g. get credit or get valuable goods in your name.
The US has no single national photo + chip ID card that is available to everybody, for free, including illegal and semi-illegal immigrants and homeless people with no access to their birth certificate and such.
It's completely crazy to me that you can be "out of status" with the USCIS and still get a social security card and a bank account, for example.
It absolutely isn't free here in Norway either, around $86 is what I'd have to pay now to get an id card as an adult (same price as a passport but easier to carry).
"Identity theft" is newspeak right up there with "intellectual property". It serves the sole purpose of diminishing real theft. If someone says "we gave all your money to this other guy, but it's not our fault because he had stolen your identity" doesn't make it so. There are cases of mistaken identity, and with criminal intentions, but there is also an enormous majority of not checking identity because someone was lazy.
"Identity theft" is a term invented to push the responsibility for fraud back on the person who is being impersonated rather than on the person or organization that failed to properly identify the impersonator.
This is such an excellent comment (along with SoftTalker's reply) and made me think. I've long rejected the term "intellectual property", along with the delusional/fraudulent term "artificial intelligence" (as opposed to real things like LLMs and machine learning) and "money laundering" but hadn't previously stopped to think about "identity theft". Now I have.
I believe that it's really important to consider the validity of terms that are heavily adopted and pushed around and whether you should use them yourself or call them out as intellectually vapid/dishonest.
Just knowing someone's name, address, and ID number isn't enough to like, open a bank account in their name or such. You'd need a proper ID card or passport for that. Similar thing with most businesses if you try to pay for some product with credit, they won't accept just a few digits and a pinky promise, you'll need to identify yourself properly (the BankID app for instance).
Just knowing the personal number is not enough to do much with. To get access to services, verify who you are on when talking to companies there is a verification step, most commonly with the BankID app.
Unlike American SSNs, which are secret and wield certain authoritative powers, a Scandinavian "person number" is neither secret nor authoritative. Common misconception.
Of course ID theft happens but I think one thing that differs is that in Sweden it is harder to get a loan without verification that you are who you are (for example by Swedish BankID wish is an electronic id) while in US it seems you can take a loan if you just know someone’s social security number
they don't handle it at all. they let it go on. you for example have hundreds of people falsely registering their place of residence as somebody else's home, which causes massive problems for that home owner or apartment resident, and there is nothing done about it at all.
These types of laws are designed for the 1950s where there were natural barriers to acquiring and disseminating information. There is no attempt whatsoever to update them and to reduce harm caused to the average citizen today.
By just accepting it as a normal fact of life that you will have some random stuff ordered in your name sooner or later with an invoice you'll have to dispute. Happened to a relative of mine, police do not care unless they order things above a certain value, without a police report you cannot get free ID protection, and then you'll have to sit for a long time in phone queues trying to cancel a subscription for a streaming service or whatever they ordered while get thrown around by support reps who go "you SURE you or someone in your family didn't order this?"
I am Swedish and never had this happen to me. Never had random things show up or ordered for me at all. What would the point be, you have to pay or get an invoice? For Klarna they use BankID so only I can order an invoice for myself in reputable shops.
I am in my 30s btw so I was alive before BankID and it was a worse time. Remember my parents paid bills with paper.
The OP didn't claim it had happened to you. What they said is that it is possible to use the information about regular individuals that is publicly available to cause harm, and there are no attempts to stop this.
There are plenty of reports online about how identity theft is becoming widespread in Sweden. The fact that something didn't happen to you is not evidence.
Yes, I don't think anyone truly wants it to be like this. But it's just what happens.
You of course cannot access and empty out someone's bank account this way, you're safe in that regard. But you need to dispute the invoices as soon as possible to show that it is fradulent, so you don't end up needing to actually pay for it. Or get debt collectors after you.
True. Those who think they are being unfair just now, this is actually the fairest they've been since forever. Fairest in terms of arm twisting and other tactics being applied to everyone equally instead of being selective. Previously it was on the lines of the west and the rest, but now its just America and the rest.
Try continuing this line of thought instead of stopping at one novel half-thought. Perhaps there is something to the western world order that's worth defending?
As an American I will argue against my government's unilateral global adventurism all day long. That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
> As an American I will argue against my government's unilateral global adventurism all day long
I'm sure there are many Americans who would oppose this adventurism. I'm not sure whether that's because they believe its just a bad strategy to continue the status quo or because its just plainly a wrong way to treat other nations by force.
> That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
I don't mean it as progress. Its a regression but I hope there's a silver-lining at the end of all this for everyone.
You ascribed the label "fairest" as if the current state is closer to a desired ideal. This is a standard pattern of fascist propaganda - pointing out the longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the system in support of going backwards to where we didn't even try to live up to something better.
If you'd focused on what you see as the positive path forward, in spite of current events, then I wouldn't have written my comment.
In what twisted imaginary world is saying that a serial killer was fair to all his victims by being equally brutal with all of them means killing was the desired ideal. I'm not sure who proposed going backwards or what it even means.
Everyone is acknowledging the hypocrisy because it is hitting their bottom line this time.
I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
> In what twisted imaginary world is saying that a serial killer was fair
Exactly this. One doesn't use the word "fair" to begin with. Being killed is decidedly not fair, period.
> I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
Write a script go to back through my HN comments as far as you'd like? I don't have a blog or anything.
Off the top of my head - I was against the Iraq War, against Obama's drone assassinations, against intervention in Libya, against Israel's apartheid and genocide except for maybe two weeks after Oct 7 (they burned through their credibility that fast).
The main US international military action I've ever been in support of is helping Ukraine - it seems like a just defensive war of people who earnestly want liberalization and closer ties to the western sphere of influence. But even on that subject, the covert US meddling that set that stage for that conflict is still condemnable.
On a different but related topic, I've been against the surveillance industry ("big tech") from around when the term AJAX was coined.
Is there anything else you'd like my opinion on to show I'm not new to the subject?
you are hung up on the usage of the word "fair" with no room for alternate interpretation but want others to let bygones be bygones because it is normalized and maintains the status quo.
Not letting bygones be bygones, but rather addressing them in a constructive context - where they might even be able to be concretely addressed rather than simply used as fuel for the fire and then dumped in the dustbin of history.
Yes, that is maintaining the status quo. And yes, that is awfully convenient as an American. I'll admit those biases. But even as a critic of US foreign policy for basically my entire life, I do feel there is still something independently-valuable in the post-WWII international order where we at least tried to move beyond overt large-scale aggression.
Defining it as "west vs the rest" is too binary, even if you're coming from a place of being content to see the rest of the west get their comeuppance. Don't you think Gaza is worse off with this new more fair approach? Venezuela?
As a heavily sarcastic and often irreverent person myself, I think sarcasm translates very poorly to online communication in public forums. The main problem is the complete lack of context where you don't know where a commenter is actually coming from, so you lack the ability to interpret them making a particular statement as a deliberate absurdity.
So sure, maybe talking to friends I would find myself using the word "fair" that way as a punchline to a joke. But they'd know I'm not looking to normalize the new dynamic, rather than highlighting its perversity.
Then specifically here, OP doubled down on the argument rather than repudiating it. So I don't think it's really correct to call it sarcasm.
Thanks. It took 6 levels of comments to point the obvious sarcasm. May be I give too much credit to average HN'er skills at recognizing sarcasm without an explicit /s :)
It's not resources (this time), it's the US' sinking relative standing in the world that is causing this. Any self-respecting empire facing the end of its global domination wants to self-destruct violently instead of slowly disappearing. Hence WW1&2 and now whatever will this be.
I have repeatedly said this but it doesn't even matter if they are a putin asset or what but what they are doing is literally what Russia wants and one can realize it when they think about it for soemtime but America's literally at the weakest right now.
So, since there's a lot of talk like this, how are we leeches?
If anything, surely it's the Americans who are leeches, what with the fact that they're living off software exports and monopolies as opposed to production of actual useful goods?
Do you think we didn't invest in our defence? Here in Sweden we put in 5% of GDP until the Soviet Union dissolved. It was pro-US politicians like Carl Bildt, a man who associated with US intelligence, who reduced defence spending. We had nuclear weapons and refrained from assembling them on a US request in return for being under your nuclear umbrella.
Not to take away from the larger point, but the US remains a manufacturing juggernaut compared to anyone that isn't China. It's still the #2 manufacturing nation in the world and produces more than the EU as a whole. It's just become a small aspect of a much larger economy.
Yes, but I think the US industrial output is overvalued.
The US has a very small value of total exports, and this lead me to assume that the goods it makes a lot of are not always competitive on the international market even though they sell for a great deal in the US.
I find this narrative in some corners of American politics fascinating because of how completely it misunderstands US power.
Hegemony isn't charity. It's expensive. What the US gains is an invitation to exert power all over the world from bases and ports within countries playing a willing role in the US position. It gains the US dollar as the reserve currency and petro-currency of the world. In particular, without the world accepting the US dollar as the reserve currency, the US's ability to maintain a large budget deficit evaporates.
To gain this sort of power without invitation and strong alliances built on shared understanding and trust will cost the US much, much more in the longer term.
As an American, that's not how any of this works. You've bought into foreign propaganda aimed at destroying the US's leadership position in the western world.
The US is a GDP ponzi scheme disguised as an economy. The silly prices exist to shuffle money between pharmaceutical companies, PBMs, insurers, pharmacies, hospitals, and who knows what other intermediaries. Everyone takes a cut and can put large revenues on their balance sheet.
The US today is structurally dependent on this sort of cash migration. If all Americans suddenly began to save 10%+ of their income every month (also structurally impossible for most), GDP would dramatically contract.
Another social issue on GitHub: you cannot use the "good first issue" tag on a public repository without being subjected to low quality drive-by PRs or AI slop automatically submitted by someone's bot.
I think the issue with centralization is still understated. I know developers who seem to struggle reading code if it's not presented by VS Code or a GitHub page. And then, why not totally capture everyone into developing just with GitHub Codespaces?
This is exactly what well-intentioned folk like to see: it's solving everyone's problems! Batteries included, nothing else is needed! Why use your own machine or software that doesn't ping into a telemetry hell-hole of data collection on a regular basis?
Every industry building at scale makes the same tradeoffs. Manufacturers that create physical products use thinner metal, cheaper fasteners, and not-top-quality plastics. That's not because their engineers are bad but because good enough ships and is profitable, while perfect doesn't ship and isn't profitable.
A $20 IKEA chair is not "bad furniture". It's just optimized for different constraints than a Herman Miller. Most consumers are totally happy with the $20 IKEA chair.
An underrated part of engineering skill is knowing what corners to cut. I think large tech companies have structures that impose this on engineers who view this as dereliction of duty.
I feel like that's the whole point of the OP. I agree with the overall post but mentioning the ICE relationship seems to detract from the main point.
"I hate GitHub because X Y and Z features are bad" is a good reason to move away; "I hate GitHub because one of their thousands of enterprise customers does not align with my political views" is not, in my opinion.
People protesting ICE do not do so out of political concern, but humanitarian concern.
This seems like a minor nitpick as those two are intimately tangled up, but it matters to make the distinction. Standing up for others is not petty or self-serving and that's exactly what this sort of conflation can falsely imply.
Just because people have a revolutionary fetish and fantasize about being the ones to stop Hitler in 1933 (they would not have) does not make their delusions a reality. These dorks make anti-establishment vibes so lame. Just because you say something doesn’t make it real.
Hello there (new-account){name}{number}! When did you discover that {you, a real person} believed that the only way to protect the {women!} and {children!} was this new agency founded under Bush in the wake of 9/11?
Did you know that all {women!} (over 12 million every year) are actually most endangered by their intimate partners, who are predominately within their same race and class?
Do you think this is more or less concerning than this inflammatory anecdata you've created an account to provide? Do you think that domestic violence prevention (less than 1 billion) should be more or less well-funded than ICE (170 billion)?
> (Under the Trump admin): Teams responsible for violence prevention have been decimated, and a reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services has eliminated divisions wholesale.
It's virtue signaling plain and simple. People who crafted their identities around the current thing in ~2017 are religiously attached to having to be part of the in group and can't let it go, and it inevitably bubbles up like this.
This will no doubt rankle those who align with that group, but they are a pathetic remnant of a terrible period of rampant sociopathy.
Though you will no doubt assume you're getting downvoted because you're speaking truth to sociopaths, I just wanted to say I'm downvoting you because your comment violates multiple HN guidelines. Reminder, those are here:
It's disappointing to see such a long-term community member engage so thoughtlessly. I know the guidelines also say I should just flag and move on, but this will only reenforce your narrative, and I am hoping to break the cycle.
Politics in the US is so extremely binarized these days that I think it’s hard to assign motive for political issues beyond “my friends say that our team feels this way.” Which I would argue is much more political than anything fundamental.
If they had not mentioned github's association with ICE,
then we'd be in a situation where everyone would be questioning whether or not the relationship had anything to do with the decision.
You got one. And how many good neighbors were dragged out of their cars, how many parents torn from their children, and how many American citizens wrongly harassed or dragged out of their houses for it? How many preachers praying peacefully in the streets were shot in the head?
This is not, and has never been, about the murderers. The murderers are the excuse, the people who are actually being harassed and brutalized are not them. And as mentioned, many of them are American citizens.
You can support sane border policies without also supporting racial profiling, the militarization of our cities and warrantless searches and detention. These two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but arguably much of what ICE has represented recently is what many people would consider to be unconstitutional behavior.
Ok, if you want to go down this road, should I start posting articles of religious leaders caught raping children? Should we be spending 170 billion a year trying to shut down all churches?
One or the biggest ironies in US politics to me is the complaints about the degradation of the rule of law in this country under Trump. While simultaneously arguing that federal immigration law should be actively ignored and blocked by cities and states. Of course the details are all messy and complicated. But if you feel both of those things are true, you owe it to yourself to take a moment and reflect on the irony of your own views. Empathy for people you disagree with is in dangerously short supply these days and is fundamental to a functioning democracy.
Cool. This concept is useful for adult language learners also. Depending on the language you are learning it can be very difficult to find reading material in the age 5 - 10 range to practice with.
> So I urge that community, at COP30 and beyond, to make a strategic pivot: prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare.
Like addressing the exponential growth of income inequality? Unsurprisingly not mentioned at all. Might mean that billionaires have to give up their carbon credit purchases and then how could they be dismissive about their own emissions?
Bill is one of the better ones with his personal capital allocation. He could've just tried to create the fastest sailboat racing team or something. But I find it extremely difficult to take the wealthy seriously when they speak about carbon emissions and climate change. It’s like hearing an arsonist lecture on fire safety.
> Thirty years ago, when I was running Microsoft, I wrote a long memo to employees about a major strategic pivot we had to make: embracing the internet in every product we made.
Is this the one that lead to the term "embrace, extend, extinguish"?
Excellent way to stay busy producing revised editions over the next few years.
I really enjoy writing Zig and I think it's going to be an important language in the future. I do not enjoy porting my code between versions of the language. But early adopters are important for exploring the problem space, and I would have loved to find a canonical source (aside from the docs, which are mostly nice) for learning the language when I did. A text that evolves with the language has a better chance of becoming that canonical onboarding source.
Scandinavian countries are extremely open and transparent in a way that might be shocking for Americans. For example, in Norway, I can check nearly anyone's brokerage account holdings, addresses, phone numbers, etc. on public websites. I can in theory look up anyone's tax filings.
Personal identification numbers do not tend to be considered private in the same way that social security numbers in the US are.
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