However, if I don't want to disclose my net worth and if law is on my side in my country, then Google making my data available is definitely wrong.
E.g. an abusive ex partner can check whether you’re likely to have switched job, even from the most basic info. If tax paid is revealed then you can work out what government benefits a person might be on, including those relating to health and disability.
Isn’t the implementation in Norway such that the press have special access not afforded to individuals? That also seems pretty questionable.
Your scenario seems pretty far fetched to me since this information will be published in October for the previous year. It contains the income and tax for the whole year only. It would be pretty difficult to know the information you suggest from the limited, delayed records.
As a Norwegian I fully support our system with public tax records.
People are notified but that’s hardly going to stop someone seeking to upset you as in the example scenario.
Though as I understand the press can do mass lookups with no notification. Don’t you find that disparity concerning? The idea that the government gets to decide what counts as ‘press’ is already something people from countries that don’t operate that way would consider objectionable. Let alone giving them the power to decide who should be 'outed' for their tax affairs.
To be fair, that's perhaps more an issue of this particular implementation, rather than fundamental. But it's an example of how it can be used to entrench the establishment.
We are a country with a high degree of social trust, and that is what I believe makes our country great. I realize that our system is not for everyone and that is fair.
I'm not fundamentally against open tax records like this, but even in Norway there are bad actors and if we are going to play a game of 'how can this be exploited', I think it's definitely possible to do so.
I can't really agree that a 500 limit with notification is 'in practice' the same as no limit with no notification. Data mining and other techniques are possible at scale but not with only 500 records. It also makes exploitation more profitable. Harvesting data for e.g. commercial targeting is not very appealing for n = 500. It's definitely appealing at n = 5 million.
Do the press abuse it in this way? Well, they don't publish stories about doing it. But how would you really know otherwise until some scandal breaks? Are lookups by press orgs also open to public inspection? Maybe you have some freedom of information laws that would let you request that data.
Curious about how it is used by the public. And can businesses login and check too?
In general this in theory could be challenged, but mostly based on the name and photos and not about inferred information. This might get even worse since a lot of celebrities are using stage names which might be protected as a brand but go unprotected as a personal information.