65 Karsten Loiborg Head of 5th Division When authorities use publicly available personal information Are authorities allowed to check out citizens on Facebook? A caseworker logs into Facebook and comes across interesting information about a citizen. The citizen’s Facebook profile is public. The caseworker can therefore immediately see the information, but is the caseworker also allowed to record and use the information in a case? This issue is very relevant today when ever more personal information is becoming publicly available through for instance social networks. As a starting point, the rules are straightforward: an administrative authority may only record and use publicly available information about citizens to the extent that it is legitimately relevant to the authority’s tasks. This applies generally and therefore irrespective of whether the authority’s task is actual administrative activity – such as education, hospital treatment or childcare – or involves making decisions in relation to citizens. In its daily work, an authority probably often uses publicly available personal information in connection with actual administrative activities – for instance if a local authority’s technical administration looks in the local directory to establish who needs to be informed about major excavation works on a residential street. In practice, however, it is probably mainly cases involving decisions which may give rise to doubt at an authority and disagreement between authority and citizen in relation to the authority’s use of personal information. Is the information publicly available and is the authority allowed to find and use it? There may undoubtedly be a need to use publicly available information in all types of cases involving decisions – whether they involve a citizen applying for something, an authority considering issuing an order or a prohibition notice to a citizen or an authority performing control measures in relation to citizens (con-