Interesting. In Germany this database does not even exist. Each town keeps its own data and they are not connected. I think the reason for this are the evil uses of data bases by the Gestapo during Nazi times.
Most states keep all data in a state-wide database and all registers are electronically connected. This is the reason why you don't need to deregister anymore when moving within Germany, a new registration will suffice.
What there isn't is a single central database and if you want to query data you will need to ask different authorities to get it all.
They look at the ID card or passport you present. They may make a record of your entry and may look up whether your ID was stolen or there is a warrant for you.
They certainly don't look up in a database whether you are a citizen. Such an EU-wide thing simply doesn't exist. Heck, even the entry and exit records are not in a common database. At the moment many borders can't even verify the government signature saved on the chip.
That's the same how other government officials determine your German citizenship in most circumstances. Only very few people go through the process of getting definitive proof of their citizenship (Staatsangehörigenausweis) in any point of their life as there is simply no reason to. This process takes quite some time, often including looking at some non-digitized paper documents archived somewhere.
They certainly don't look up in a database whether you are a citizen.
OK, "citizen or valid resident / visa holder / having some other legitimate reason to be holding something that looks like an EU identity card", then.
Whichever -- I was just simplifying. But something tells me that something at major border crossings (e.g. hub airports) has to at least authenticate your right-of-entry -- and that your travel document isn't outright fabricated -- at least a significant portion of the time.
Again, as applies strictly to cases of persons attempting to enter the Shengen area, on the basis of possession of an EU identity card, or a similar travel document asserting current legal residency in one of the member countries. I just don't see how they can (effectively) tell whether the document hasn't been forged or revoked, without comparing against a master list.
I can assure you that they do not check for positive entry in any database when crossing into Schengen whatsoever. Usually they check if the presented document is marked stolen but even that is sometimes skipped as the database (SIS II) is rather slow. This database contains around 50 million entries which shows that it can't possible hold information on all residents.
There is neither an EU-wide database of citizens, nor of permanent residents. They do have a database of most issued short-term Schengen visa nowadays (VIS) but even that took a lot of effort to implement.
And as said, at the moment they can't even verify all electronic signatures in electronic passports but that should be fixed soon.
I'm not even sure how they would create such a database of citizens as even not the German government has a conclusive list of all citizens and I presume it's similar in other member states.
That check for the right-of-entry is done with the presented document alone. Revocations are checked against and while it's possible to forge the documents it's not easy. But yes, there are known cases of people successfully entering with forged documents.
Yes it does (and this is required by international agreement). The number contains an identifier for the issuing authority (and its name is also printed on the passport) so they know where to look for info if they need to.
I'll tell you something interesting. I crossed from Bulgaria to Turkey without presenting my ID to Bulgarian authorities. I crossed into Bulgaria by just showing my ID to Bulgarian authorities. Turkish side stores detailed records but Bulgaria is not interested where I am. They don't know wheter I'm in Bulgaria or not.
"Unlike common belief there is no central administration — except for foreigners (see Central Register of Foreign Nationals (Germany)) — the resident registration is run by 5283 local offices throughout Germany."
For passports, I'd guess that there is a different database.
For passports, I'd guess that there is a different database.
OK, so that makes sense. So at the national level, they only have your Meldeort (place of registration), as it appears on your ID card -- but not (in theory) your residential address.
In 2007 they introduced a unique tax number for every natural person.
In fact, assigning these numbers was complicated by the fact that there is no central registration data base. They started from all the local data bases and then filtered this data to remove duplicates.
The data released contains national identification codes that are confidential.
I believe the Swedish equivalent is the 'personnummer'.
The sites you indicated appear to be regular person search engines, like the US equivalent Whitepages?
Can you show a specific search result, pick any Swedish name you want, that would also list the person's personnummer?
The mentioned websites contain at least the full name, birthdate, registered address and marital status of every Swedish resident (at least above the age of ~16?), with the exception of a very small percentage of people with protected identity (which you can only get if you're under a "serious and concrete threat"). They get this data straight from the government - it's all public.
Go to e.g. http://www.ratsit.se/, write "Stockholm" under "Var" and hit "Sök" and click on a name for an example.
You won't see the personal identification number ("personnummer") that we use for absolutely everything, however as tednoob mentions you can get access to this by paying for premium access. Or you can call the Swedish Tax Authority. They don't have the right to ask who you are or why you want someone's number.
In Finland even salary and capital gains data is released. Newspapers compile high score lists from it each year. There might be some lower limit to how much you need to earn before your data becomes public.
You can actually access the public tax information for anyone if you visit the tax office or call their free customer service. Newspapers publicise only the top earners, but nothing stops you from finding out how much your neighbour earned last year in income and capital gains, if you really want to (and I guess quite many want, Finland is after all known as the "land of million of enviers" in addition to the more famous "land of thousand lakes".)
It will list the "personnummer", but usually not the last 4 digits. This became a big deal a number of years ago, when they did list the complete numbers, and this was changed so that if the complete number is requested, the party you request information about needs to be informed. However, the complete numbers are still public. Just with that caveat nowadays. (unsure if some still sidestep the "new" legislation, there were some more or less shady companies for a while that still informed you of their full numbers)
The 'personnummer' is also publicly available, though the sites usually have to limit access in order to comply with Personuppgiftslagen/PuL (Swedish version of the Data Protection Directive).
Difference being that in Sweden there is a different requiremnet for causing harm (IE; national ID card or passport - or linked bank account) simply having a social security number and address is not enough for identity theft to occur.
in other countries they treat SSN's as private, thus they are trusted.
I ordered some stuff yesterday and I only had to provide the SSN and it filled out the adress and everything. Then, I specified Klarna and the order was away.
But if you'd tried to get them to ship to a different address than the one they filled in then they would probably refuse. That adds a least a little bit of fraud security.
Actually it is and there have been a couple of cases both in Denmark and Sweden.
The problem is that the CPR is tied to all sorts of information from you credit card to your patient journal. You only need to get access to one of those things before you have the potential of access to all the other places.
As an American with a Swedish wife, I was very surprised to learn about the availability of this data. But something that really turned me around was that it makes verifying strangers much easier. My cousin-in-law was using it to look up the people offering to become au pair to her children. Then also of course, I remembered that we have the same service in the United States, it just costs you ten or fifteen dollars for the information. You can get exactly this information that is up-to-date and accurate by paying for one of those background checks from one of the major providers. Same stuff.
I would say there is more issues than gains. But sometimes it's nice, I once found someones wallet and was able to find his phone number with the service. Called the guy, he came and picked up his wallet and gave me 500kr as thanks.
I'm not saying there aren't drawbacks, but I can think of two benefits:
1. It makes some forms of investigative journalism easier. For example, there has been a lot of discussion about the potential problems of having most of the influential journalists in Sweden living within a very small "hipster" area in Stockholm.
2. E-commerce companies may decide to only ship to the adress where you are officially registered, making it harder to commit e-commerce fraud.
On the other hand it's trivial to change someone's official address. Just send a certain form by mail to the tax agency. (Not sure if they send a confirmation to the old address; but if they do, the perpetrator only has to pick someone who's on vacation; hello Twitter & Facebook.)
If you have registered an email / phone number they will send a message there about your changed address.
I don't know if they've done this yet but a while ago there were articles about them working on a way to disallow changing your address via the mail form:
There is also several sites that provide this information like a search service and it's perfectly legal:
http://www.merinfo.se/ http://www.ratsit.se/