Criminal Investigation Into Discarded Documents

The case is being investigated as a possible violation of laws governing privileged communications. A conviction could lead to up to a year in prison.

A decision to take the affair to court will lie with the around 30 people whose private information is contained in the documents found. The papers include information about social benefit payments and child welfare cases, along with numerous physicians' evaluations of both children and their parents.

Because of the sensitive nature of the material, police will also include the national Data Protection Ombudsman in the investigation.

Telecom information in the rubbish In a separate, unrelated incident, the newspaper Savon Sanomat reported Monday that a number of service contracts of customers of the Saunalahti Internet and mobile phone service provider were discovered in a rubbish bin outside an apartment building in Kuopio. A retailer of Saunalahti services operates in the same building. Some of the documents included clients' names, social security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, email log-on IDs and passwords. Saunalahti's parent company, Elisa, says that the contracts should never have been printed out, and that retailers should not even have access to clients' email passwords. YLE