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Denmark:New university security scandal

01 May 1994

In March it was revealed that over a ten year period, ending in 1991, the names, addresses and identity numbers of about 40,000 students at Copenhagen University were illegally given to the Police Intelligence Service (PET).

Lars-Erik Allin, the Legal Advisor to the University Rector, was responsible for security matters until the exposure of his involvement in the first security scandal at the university (the bugging case, see Statewatch vol 4 no 1). Then when he met the new Rector, K Mollgard, in January this year he revealed the wholesale passing of information on students to the PET. The Rector said this was "an unacceptable break in the confidence that any student must have in the university's way of handling personal information in a responsible way".

Prior to the Law on Data Protection (Registerlovgivningen) passed in 1982 lists of students were publicly available, the effect of this law however made the handing over of lists illegal.

The head of PET, Birgette Stampe, told the press that the lists had been used for investigation purposes to confirm peoples" identity and was the same as the telephone book! Confronted with the fact that identity numbers are not in the phone book she replied that PET has access to identity files anyway.

Law Professor, Vagn Greve, of the Institute of Criminology at the University has been asked by the Rector to investigate the matter.

Information, 5 & 6.3.94.