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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens (thehackernews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military's most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever.
In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what's terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.
In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what's terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.
switch cars with your neighbors.
You are right in that Sweden and Norway are culturally very similar. But I think you are wrong about this leak.
If the rest of the world can see details about every single driving licence ever issued in Sweden, I see no real harm. But this leak has (at least potentially) exposed things like which vehicles the secret army units have (and how many of them), who the Swedish combat pilots are and where they live, which roads and bridges can support which vehicle types (good to know when invading a country, so the road you drive on doesn't suddenly collapse under the load).
Apart from a lot more discussion than is normal about a political issue in Sweden, the only real thing that has happened is that the director responsible for this has been fired and fined some three weeks worth of wages. My personal opinion is that she should have been tossed in prison and left to rot there, this leak may have damaged Sweden much more than all spies that have ever operated in Sweden in the past.
My sources: a lot of reports in Swedish media.
Full disclosure: I live in Sweden and am a Swedish native.
The crime she committed ("Recklessness with secret documents") carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison (BrB 19 kap. Â9). And altough I wouldn't mind seeing her spending some time behind bars, after having read (the redacted, non-juicy, parts of) the Secret service investigastion, I wouldn't really put the blame on her.
The whole mess started before she was appointed director of the agency, she seems to basically have been brought in and told: "Sign these documents, otherwise the outsourcing is gonna be delayed even further".
I would like to see a lot more heads roll before this story gets filed away.
You can sue the government in many democracies. Not sure if Sweden is one of those places, but its certainly not something you can arbitrarily claim without looking into it. (Whether its useful to sue the government is another question of course..)
and giving the job to the more capable entity
Unfortunately neither organization has mastered preventing human error, so while you're not incorrect.. your statement is rather irrelevant to "someone f'd up," no matter how big an f they upped.