Swedish police dept. found guilty of ethnic discrimination for Romani database

[Aimless]

This is likely to be of v little interest but I am in a celebratory mood and would like to share some good news:

Police in one of Sweden's most racist regions, once known esp. for its infatuation with Nazism, have now been found guilty, in Sweden's lowest court, of ethnic/racial discrimination in addition to previously found violations of data protection laws.

The lawsuit was brought against the state by 11 people who were listed on a database of over 4000 people--among them over 1000 children--of Romani heritage. While the police dept. in question justified this secret--and extremely sloppily secured--database named "Itinerants" as being necessary for their investigations it soon became clear that it had become an extremely dubious collection of data that they maintained "just-in-case". It contained a detailed list of sensitive information pertaining to not only Romani suspects and convicted criminals but also their relatives as well as other Romani individuals who were neither suspects nor criminals nor relatives thereof. It also contained information on individuals outside this department's jurisdiction. Not sure if the verdict will be appealed but if it's upheld it will lead to additional damages.

No individuals have been formally punished for this, partly because of a short statute of limitations. In the wake of this scandal, other similarly despicable unsanctioned and illegal databases in other regions have come to light, among them a poorly secured database of women who have been subjected to various forms of violent assault. Several of these databases have contained irrelevant, sensitive and damaging information about psychiatric diagnoses, religious affiliation etc. as well as interesting epithets such as "pathological liar", "mental case", etc (in the same vein as the Romani register's "gypsies").

It's mind-boggling, although not surprising. Glad that it's led to some official criticism. Officially these databases have been discontinued but I suspect they'll either continue to be maintained or be reincarnated a couple of years from now.

[Hazir]

What was the violation ?

[Dreadnaught]

Sort of going back and forth on this. No, I don't like the idea of police keeping lists of people they want to profile. But I also recognize that police do need the ability to organize and process data, and crime prevention can happen from that kind of a process. Why shouldn't police departments benefit from the increase in processing power and analytics that everyone else does?

That may not have been what was happening here, but still.

[Flixy]

The problem is when you start adding people who are neither suspects nor related to any and are just on the list because of their heritage.