EU:s skydd av personuppgifter rörande lagöverträdelser och personnummer på internet i praktiken – omfattningen av undantaget till skydd för rätten till yttrandefrihet i dataskyddsförordningen

Sammanfattning: The information society brings many questions in terms of how personal integrity is to be balanced with the freedom of expression and information, which the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has not yet provided many answers to. In this thesis, the phenomena with websites containing personal data, obtained from official documents, published on the Internet for commercial purposes, is examined. In the Swedish national legislation, such websites are under certain circumstances legal due to a generous interpretation of the exemption in Art. 85 GDPR for the protection of the freedom of speech. By publishing personal data records on the Internet, websites can profit on curious Internet users interested in their neighbors’ criminal records or entire social security numbers. Swedish law is therefore discussed throughout the thesis in order to exemplify the different interests that need to be weighed in the balance between freedom of expression and the right to privacy. The thesis aims to examine if these records are legal according to the new data protection regulation. In order to answer this, the scope and interpretation of Art. 85 GDPR is discussed, since it can be interpreted in two ways; either as if the exemption covers publications for journalistic purposes only, or as also comprising other kinds of publications to protect the freedom of speech. The conclusions that are drawn is that due to the interpretive nature of the GDPR, the Court of Justice of the European Union will have an important role to play in the development of the data protection in the EU. No actual answers have yet been given regarding the scope of the right to freedom of speech set against the right to protection of personal data, which is the reason to why case law will be of determining importance in creating a balance between the two interests. The exemption in Swedish law is, however, clearly not entirely in accordance with EU law. The strong protection for the right to protection of personal data in art. 16 TFEU on which the GDPR is founded in combination with the particularly strong protection of the discussed personal data in the GDPR gives that the EU law provide stronger protection than the protection in the Swedish national legislation.