Police Should Focus on Data Privacy, Integrity Leaks - Swedish Pirate Party

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — Police should provide more resources to ensure integrity leaks and consumer data protection, Swedish Pirate Party told Sputnik Thursday, commenting on the interception of the personal data of a million Swedish Google Chrome users.

Press Secretary for the Swedish Pirate Party Troed Sangberg told Sputnik:

“The Swedish Pirate Party advocates for a reallocation of police resources from harmless online activities, like non-commercial filesharing, to increased focus on integrity leaks and consumer data protection.”

This week, a story in Swedish media uncovered a "spy code" in an add-on to Google Chrome that had reportedly intercepted over a million Internet users' profile data and search patterns, including those of a number of unnamed Swedish companies. Google has removed the add-on.

According to the Swedish Dagens Nyheter newspaper, it was previously unreported to police, as law enforcement has limited resources to investigate this kind of incident.

The Swedish Pirate Party expressed concerns “about a perceived lack of enforcement by the judicial system and police force when consumers’ integrity has been broken.”

Earlier, Google's press office told Sputnik that the company had removed “any extensions from the Web Store that contain malware or purport to do one thing and do another" for its users to have the best possible experience when using Chrome.

Swedish media reported that the personal data of Swedish users was sent to a server registered in the United States, yet the IP address of the server is registered to a person reportedly residing in Israel.