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To reflect on law and privacy
Tor Sigurd Bransdal, a 46-year-old Norwegian, does not know whether he is a victim or an offender. Twenty years ago he opened his auto repair shop in the city of Vågsbyg, in the south of Norway, and in recent times his business has been hijacked several times. In one of them, they stole a scaffold of 50,000 crowns (around 19,000 reais).
Although he reported the theft to the police, tired of police inaction and to try to solve his case, he decided to place cameras and post the images on the Facebook, hoping that the population would identify the assailants, thus helping the police.
But the story has an unexpected end: Bransdal himself will have to pay a fine of 75,000 crowns (almost 30,000 reais), Datatilsynet, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, has detected that this typifies an act worthy of punishment: imputing an alleged crime to someone who has not yet been convicted by a judge (and not even identified by the police) and publicizing it on social media.
Are overzealous authorities, over-law, over-regulation or even criminals entitled to not be recognized and imprisoned?
Now that a privacy and data protection law is under analysis in the Brazilian Congress, this particular case can be quite informative and deserves deep reflection.
At the last public hearing of the "Special Commission on Treatment and Protection of Personal Data" (PL 4060/12) we reaffirmed the ABES 'position on the matter and the importance of the population's digital education, which is being carried out by the Brasil Pais Digital Movement.
Text written with information from the newspaper El País.
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