Conference turris::scandia

    Re .0  
    
    Th drawback of having everything computerized is that people in
    Sweden is registred with the equal to their Social Security Number
    in all computers. This Social Security number actually called "Personal
    number" is used in all computers at for instance the social security
    department, the military athoroties, the tax departments and so
    forth. This makes it too easy to crossrun the computers to find
    out new things about every citicen in Sweden. 
    
    I have heard some months ago that they planned to instroduce something
    like our "Personal Number" in Germany, but the poeple said thei
    don't want to have this sort of registration.
    
    What sort of conclusion should you draw from this: Well don't
    registrate people too much, at least make it able for them to contain
    their personal freedom. I certainly recommend that you use different
    kind of numbers for poeple in different kinds of registers otherwise
    it will bee to easy to "crossrun" the data in different registers.
    
    Regards Stefan

    The is no such number in Germany, at least not yet.
    
    The controversy is about the new machine-readable ID cards being
    introduced here; this really gives a good opportunity for the big
    brother to watch you.
    
    Also, the new vards have a number on the but the officials claim
    it is *not* a personal ID number, just sort of a serial number for
    the card... whether you believe it or not, is another matter.
    

    From: [email protected] (Peter Aberg)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: The Magic 4 Numbers
    Summary: Actually *ten* numbers
    Keywords: Personnummer
    Date: 15 Feb 90 00:11:05 GMT
    Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:
>
>	My daughter mentioned in a letter that she had difficulty with the
>banks [when they were open!] and even renting a videotape in Lund, because she
>didn't have a card with "4 numbers" on it--some sort of national identity card
>like the USA's Social Security card, as I understood it.
>	[...stuff deleted...]
>	Can you really get by with a 4-digit identity card?  Or, is she as
>mixed up as I sometimes obviously am?
>
 
    The "personal number" (personnummer) system of Sweden is roughly
    equivalent to the Social Security numbers of the US, except that
    *everyone* has one (either given at birth or when you immigrate to   
    Sweden) and that they are used *much* more often than SS# seems to be.
 
    The full personal number is 10 digits long. The first six are your
    birth date in the YYMMDD fashion; May 10th 1959 translates into 590510.
    After these digits there is either a dash (-) or a plus-sign (+)
    followed by the *magical* four digits your daughter must have been
    speaking of. Of these four digits, the first two used to show where you
    were born (for instance, 00 is central Stockholm, 65 (I think) is
    V�ster�s), although that is not always the case any more. Larger cities
    will often have several digit-pairs. The third digit is a simple
    counter (since more than one baby may be born at the same particular
    hospital in one day) and it also shows your sex; even for female, odd
    for male. The final digit is a check-sum that is calculated through the
    use of some formula applied to the other nine digits of the complete
    personal number.
 
    The choice of having a (+) or (-) in your number depends on how old you
    are. If you're over 100 you'll get the plus-sign (since numbers could
    otherwise be duplicated).
 
    A complete number could then look something like: 590510-0037 (although
    the last digit is probably not correct).
 
    Whether personal numbers are a benefit or not is another discussion
    entirely...
 
	/Peter
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Aberg					Peter �berg
ISI						IDA
University of Southern California		University of Link�ping
[email protected]					[email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

    From: [email protected] (Torkel Franzen)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: The Magic 4 Numbers
    Date: 14 Feb 90 23:13:44 GMT
    Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista, Sweden

In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of 14 Feb 90 13:05:24 GMT
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:
 
   >Can you really get by with a 4-digit identity card?  Or, is she as
   >mixed up as I sometimes obviously am?
 
    Actually, 10 digits: the date of birth + 4 distinguishing digits, of
    which the last is a checksum. This is known as a person's
    "personnummer", i.e. "person number". 
    
    Since the late sixties, this number has been used to identify
    individuals in every conceivable context - from renting videos to being
    admitted to emergency surgery. Practically everybody knows his or her
    number by heart. It is a very efficient system of identification and
    epitomizes that highly organized quality of Swedish government and
    Swedish society that some people find so dubious or "Big Brotherish".

    From: [email protected] (Fridrik Skulason)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: The Magic 4 Numbers
    Keywords: Personnummer
    Date: 16 Feb 90 09:54:54 GMT
    Organization: University of Iceland (RHI)
 
    Here in Iceland a 10 digit number is used just like in Sweden -
    Everybody receives one at birth and it is used practically everywhere. 
    The format of the number is a bit different here:
 
                03 12 58 23 7 9  (a typical number)
                 |  |  |  | | |
        day------|  |  |  | | |----century digit: 8 if born before Jan. 1. 1900
        month-------|  |  | |------checksum
        year of birth--|  |--------"serial number"
 
 
    Foreignes staying here must receive a number if they are planning to
    work here or stay here long enough to pay taxes :-)  
 
    -- 
    Fridrik Skulason   -   University of Iceland, Computing Services.
    [email protected]        Technical Editor, Virus Bulletin (UK).

    This is how it works in Finland:
    
    ddmmyy�zzzc
    
    where
    
    dd mm yy	date of birth
    
    +		if born before 1900
    -		otherwise
    
    zzz		'serial' number, odd for male, even for female
    c		checksum character (0-9,ABCDEFGHJKLMNPRSTUVXYZ).
    		the first nine digits are divided by 31, the remainder
    		is the check digit.
    
    I don't know what they do with the � in year 2000 - I'd assume it's
    switched back to + under the assumption no onme is over 200 years
    old...

      Well, it's allmost the same in Denmark, but there are some
      small differeces.
      the "CPR-nummer" (CentralPersonRegistret) are composed of
      the birthday in the form DDMMYY followed by four digits.
      First digit of the "serial number" is holding the information
      about the century, 0-4 for this and 5-9 for the previus.
      I don't know what will happen in year 2000, but they'll 
      probably just start using the 5-9 numbers again. The two next
      digits are the actual serial number, and the last one is the
      check digit AND the carrier of the sex information. Odd for
      male, and even for female ( 1 for men, and 0 for whomen   ;-)).
      The way the checksumm is calculated is called modulus-11, and
      for a number like 1207441321 the calculation would be
      1*4= 4
      2*3= 6
      0*2= 0
      7*7=49
      4*6=24
      4*5=20
      1*4= 4
      3*3= 9
      2*2= 4
         ----
         120
      120/11 gives a remainder of 10, and 11-10=1 the last digit.


      -pELLE

    From: [email protected] (Ahrvid Engholm)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: Character sets (Was: Re: Example of 8 bit trouble)
    Date: 1 Jun 93 22:16:51 GMT
    Sender: [email protected] (Usenet)
    Organization: Stacken Computer Club, Stockholm, Sweden
 
    It's better if I confirm that it is indeed true to call much of
    Stacken's machinery a computer museum (apart from some more modern
    workstations which do the frontending). It's nothing to hide - the guys
    behind it (I'm not actively involved) are very proud of it. Stacken has
    the biggest collection of old Digital Equipment computers in Northern
    Europe (or possibly Europe). The club members have with their own hand
    built a quite large computer hall, with room for about 10 minis and
    mainframes (a few more are in stor- age). The cooling system for the
    hall is a unique design done by Stacken members (or to be more precis
    one Thord Nilson). All machines are operational but most of the time
    they can't be run because the electricity cost to much. DEC in Sweden
    has visited the machine hall and is quite impressed, and the project is
    sponsored by the Roycal Technical Insitute.

    The members behind love the machines. They refer to them as REAL
    computers, from the time when a computer was a closet, a disk another
    closet and when you if needed booted machines from a perforated paper
    tape. If you enter the computer hall when a number of the machines are
    running it is quite amazing. You lift a floor plate and see high
    voltage cables that feed the computers. You see stacks of old
    replaceable harddisks of a type that need a strong man to carry. You
    see perforated paper tapes lying around. You hear the constant humming
    of the cooling system - it is rather loud, you need to raise your voice
    to be heard.

    If you like computers and come to Stockholm it is absolutely worth
    seeing. It isn't a formal museum (yet) with opening hours, but I'm sure
    interested visitors can get a guided tour.

    However, these old machines are no longer used for the Stacken news
    access (because of the cost of electricity). So it isn't fair to say
    that Stacken is a museum when it comes to news access, and it isn't
    fair to imply that the members can't run the news system the way they
    want. If you can work a computer closet with a monkey wrench you know
    damn' well what you're doing.
 

    From: [email protected] (Ahrvid Engholm)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: The Swedish PC market - the fastest growing in the world
    Date: 2 Feb 1994 08:54:35 GMT                                         
    Organization: Stacken Computer Club, Stockholm, Sweden
 
    According to an article in the daily Dagens Nyheter, Saturday the 29th,
    the Swedish PC market is the fastest growing in the world. The growth
    last year, despite the recession, was a staggering 34%. Further, about
    a third of the Swedish households are estimated to have a PC at home.

    It should be noted that this development is despite that the Swedish
    market hasn't seen the full effects of the price drops, since the
    Swedish crown has lost ca. 30% towards the US dollar. And it is not an
    effect of a previously underdeveloped market: the sales figures for the
    preceding years have also been good.