Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Swedehearts

What were they thinking?
Two Swedish border control officers risk disciplinary action for keeping a photo collection of ''exceptionally beautiful'' women that passed through their checkpoint, police officials said Tuesday.

The officers, who were working at a ferry terminal near Stockholm, made photocopies of the women's passport photos and placed them in a binder. They also noted the date of birth next to each entry, the Stockholm police department said.

The binder contained instructions on how to compile the collection, and orders to make backup copies in case the binder would go missing or be confiscated by ''evil-minded bores,'' police said.

The instructions also stated that only ''exceptionally beautiful'' women belonged in the collection and that no personal data, aside from the date of birth, should be included.

The men's employer found the binder and reported them to police, but the matter was dismissed because the compilation was not considered illegal.

Stockholm police passed the matter to the national police's disciplinary board, which recommended the men get away with a warning.

I have no idea what the relevance of the birthdate was supposed to have, unless they were doing some kind of study of age-distribution of beauty (I doubt this).

Granted, I don't know Swedish law, but I can't think of what law this would be breaking. It's terribly inappropriate, though. I'm pretty sure that if anyone at my company did something like this, they would be fired pretty damn quick.

Also: Photocopies? Of passport photos? Their victims'(?) beauty would have to be exceptional indeed to survive that double whammy.

1 comment:

karmic said...

Man the swedes were so staid that they did not go beyond passport pics? Just kidding, tend to think of them as dour reserved people.