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Comment by otikik | Hacker News Reader

I found this other article which mentions "Ransomware-as-a-Service Gangs" [1]. I think the meaning of the word is "group of people engaging in criminal behavior", not necessarily "a group of gansters", a.k.a "street criminals".

In addition to that, police uses data brokers information regularly, and there's plenty of evidence of it. Example from the first google search page: [2]. Whether or not you consider them to be "just another gang" is dependent on your personal opinions and how corrupt your local police force is.

[1] https://www.securityweek.com/access-brokers-and-ransomware-s...

[2] https://issues.org/data-brokers-police-surveillance/

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... okay, but how is any of that relevant?

The Guardian article was about a bombing of the relative of a gang leader, which also killed a woman living nearby. The implication was that public name->address lookup played an important role in that bombing, so should be curtailed in order to prevent similar future events.

My complaint is the article presented no evidence supporting that implication.

This linked-to page uses the Guardian article to support their position, but I don't think the Guardian article has any substance.

FWIW, Sweden is one of the countries which requires you to register your address with the government. The Swedish police already have the name->address information and don't need a data broker for it.

The Swedish government doesn't check that the registered address is correct, and if someone you don't know chooses to register at your address then you won't know about it, and even if you did there's no way for you to get rid of that registration. There has been cases of police breaking down doors and rushing in to apartments just because some criminal had registered himself on that address, even though the people who lived there had never heard of that person.

The Internet is not only bad — it is now possible to sign up for notifications when somebody registers at your address (it’s on the Skatteverket web, somewhere). However, Sweden being Sweden, I suppose you will still have to prove that they do not in fact live there to get rid of them...

Made me think of the opposite problem - in Spain you have to prove that the people who live in your house shouldn't, really. It can take years to evict squatters.

It's partly a different issue.

In the first one, you have someone registered at your house despite not living there. Getting notified about it doesn't solve it though. You still have to report it as a crime and then they will investigate before fixing it. Due to all the bombings, they implemented a speed track a few years ago when gang members are involved (so they don't blow up your house during the process) but I still believe it takes months to solve.

In your case, you have physical squatters. Then you need to take it to court and prove that they shouldn't have access to your house. It takes many months to sort out and they can claim that they have an agreement with you. This was major news in Sweden about 5-8 years ago when waves of EU beggars were making camps on people's land that cost a ton of money to clean up afterwards.

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