All-knowing files kept on Swedes

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 11

All-knowing files kept on Swedes

NZPA-Reuter Stockholm Fifteen thousand Swedes born in 1963 discovered yesterday that sociologists have been secretly monitoring every detail of their lives since birth.

Two newspapers disclosed that researchers at Stockholm University have been amassing computerised files on all 15,000 people born in the Swedish capital that year as part of a project codenamed "Metropolit.” Using information supplied by virtually all public bodies in Sweden, a highly computerised country, the researchers know the subjects’ school records, health — including alcohol and sexual problems — performance at work, family ties, income, and any crimes they committed.

They obtained information not on file by conducting a survey, ostensibly about television viewing habits, which asked 4000 of the “Metropolit”

subjects last year about their drinking habits, religious beliefs, and husbands or wives. “Studies like this make people like rabbits in a cage,” said Jan Freese, head of the state-run Data Inspection Board, which was set up 10 years ago to protect individuals against abuse of the vast array of information held about them.

The board will decide next month if the project should be allowed to continue until all its subjects are dead and whether the information already held should be destroyed. But a board member, Nils Ryden, said, “It is doubtful if this data bank will be allowed to continue.” Swedish law restricts the setting-up of data bases on individuals. It also gives people the right to see information held on them and, in some cases, to have their names removed. The “Metropolit” pro-

ject was set up in 1963, before the law was changed, and its existence has been a well-kept secret. Professor Carl-Gunnar Janson, leader of the project, is abroad. The newspaper, “Dagens Nyheter” quoted him as saying, “It would be grotesque if those interviewed were able to rob me of material which I have been working with for more than 20 years. The idea that they can own the information about themselves is fantastic.” Asked about the purpose of the project, Professor Janson’s wife and assistant, Ann-Marie Janson, told the newspaper, “Expressen,”- “We just want to see how things are for people in life.” Collating information on individuals is relatively simple in Sweden because all citizens have a 10-digit identity number, allocated at birth, which is the key to gaining access to all personal data.