Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.?
My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.
I'm in Chicagoland (in Oak Park, directly adjacent to the west side of Chicago) and it literally depends on which suburb you're in. Oak Park is hostile to ALPRs. Berwyn, our neighbor to the south, and River Forest, to the west, are carpeted with them. They're there because people want them.
Found this amazing redlining map. I think I've highlighted Berwyn. I don't have knowledge to contextualize the map but I'm curious if any patterns from the HOLC map are strongly present in your area now.
It's not a very simple question to answer, but I'll do my best. In general terms, most Swedes trust the government and all government agencies to do their job in a fair and just way, barring the occasional case of incompetence. When a Swede say they don't trust the government, in my experience, they typically mean that they disagree with the current government on matters of policy, not that they suspect it of corruption.
I myself don't trust the current government, in that I think they will likely make the wrong decisions on important matters, I think they have the wrong priorities, and their argumentation is often insincere. I do not, however, suspect them of anything more nefarious than engaging in right-wing populism(by Swedish standards, our default is considerably further left than America's)
A coup attempt by a government official in Sweden, such as we have seen in the USA and Brazil among other places recently, seems to me about as likely as our current prime minister turning out to be a literal lizard-man.
Do note that I'm speaking rather broadly here, and only about my perception of the majority of Swedes. I have ties to northern Sweden and Stockholm, but very few to the south, so regional variance might also be a factor to consider. Most Swedes live in the south, where my connections are few.
I felt a need to expand on this. In Sweden, the various agencies are independent from the elected politicians to some degree. This means that while I personally do not trust the current government, I do still trust, for example, the tax agency.
The Swedish tax agency is very different from the American IRS, or at least the impression I have of the irs as a Swede who's never been to the USA for longer than it takes to switch flights, but consumes a likely unhealthy amount of social media which is typically full of Americans.
In Sweden, the tax authority kinda do your tax fillings for you. They send them to you electronically once per year, and give you the chance to correct any inaccuracies, add any information they might have missed etc, and then sign the final result.
I don't think I'm the only one who signs those declarations without even reading them. Regardless of who is currently prime minister, the tax agency typically get it right, and I trust them enough to just accept what they say, and attach my legally binding signature without reading.
I'd estimate about 95% of my Swedish friends do the same.
The fact that we can't do this in the US boggles my mind. So the data is already reported to the IRS, yet I have to fill out a tax return containing the same data, and then I'm responsible if it's screwed up? Why can they not just send me a bill if they already have all the data, then I dispute it if there's a problem?
I don't claim to know or understand, but I can venture a guess: as far as I can tell, America doesn't really have a good digital identity solution. In fact, given the frequent online discussions about whether it should be allowed to vote without physical identification in America, I'm given to believe that you don't have a good personal identity system at all!
The above combined with the to me foreign notion that tax filings could be considered private(in Sweden, everyone's income and their complete tax filings are public information) probably makes it problematic for them to just send it out willy nilly. What if they sent you the wrong filings?
Based on a very widespread stereotype about Americans, I imagine the irs would get sued.
But, as previously stated, I've only been in America long enough to switch planes, so my guess is likely to be inaccurate!
On the digital ID part, the government + regulated industries like banking will enforce validating specific types of IDs via third party companies and data sources to use said government / regulated industry services - which is used as a hacked duct tape and silly string version of digital ID. Other than that… yep you got it.
I can’t speak to Swedes, but as an American Norwegian, I can say that the level of trust in Scandinavian is WAY higher than in the US. It’s not utopia, of course, (see Chat Control, for instance) but you really can trust the government here to take care of things when it goes off the rails for whatever reason.
My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.