En gammal lagstiftning i ny kostym? En rättslägesanalys med särskilt fokus på domstolarnas tolkning och tillämpning av brottet olaga integritetsintrång

Sammanfattning: The crime of unlawful invasion of privacy took effect in Swedish legislation January 1st 2018 and was introduced as part of the political work to modernize Swedish criminal law to be able to meet the legal challenges in our increasingly digitized society in a more satisfactory way. The rise of the Internet has had positive as well as negative consequences, for individuals as well as for the democratic society at large. The new era of communication and information dissemination has entailed obvious risks for violation of the privacy of individuals to a significantly greater extent than was previously possible. However, the criminal laws protection of personal integrity cannot and should not be absolute. All regulations aimed at protecting the individual's personal integrity are based on a solid belief that each individual has the right to respect for his or her dignity as well as the right to self-determination. At the same time, opposing interests such as freedom of expression and the free formation of opinions should not be restricted to a greater extent than necessary. The previous legislation to protect personal integrity was outdated, but had by a developed practice been able to apply on situations that may arise in society today, such as the spread of privacy-infringing material on the internet. Precedents regarding illegal invasion of privacy has been poor on the part of the Swedish Supreme Court. Only two cases has been tried by the Supreme Court since crime took effect, both in 2020. According to a study I have made of more than 500 cases from the lower courts, the usage of the crime in the lower courts are diffuse, inconsistent and uncertain, and I believe that the legal situation is in great need of clarification through precedents on many points. The assessment of intent needs to be clarified, as well as the propriety of dissemination and it would be desirable to have precedents that deal with more types of material, to clarify the actual boundaries of the punishable area. Only a few of the rulings in my study deal with other material than that with sexual and/or nude content, which is unfortunate as the legislation allows for a much wider use of the regulation. According to the legal situation in the lower courts today, illegal invasion of privacy is limited to mainly deal with such material that could already be punishable by, for example, the defamation regulation. In my opinion, only an expansion through precedents or additional criminalization can meet the ever-growing need to punish dissemination of particularly privacy-infringing material on the internet.