66 annual report 2011 trol cases). For instance, a local authority receiving an application for planning permission may consult the Land Register for information about the ownership of the property. However, it is the use of publicly available personal information in control cases that has recently received most media attention – especially the social services’ control measures to establish whether citizens are receiving benefits to which they are not entitled and the tax authorities’ control activities to establish whether tax and duty evasion has taken place. Information may be publicly available in many ways. It may appear in the media, in reference works, in public records (such as the Land Register or the Central Business Register) or on the Internet. If information is available on a generally accessible website, probably nobody would dispute that the information has been made public. However, an urgent practical need has arisen for clarification of what actually applies in relation to the now very widely used social media on the Internet. In a case concluded by the Ombudsman in the report year 2011 (Annual Report of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, 2011, Case No. 2011 15-1), the Central Customs and Tax Administration, SKAT, had obtained information about a female taxpayer from her Facebook. SKAT was searching for information about the tax liability of a person known by the woman, and in this connection, questions arose about his association with the woman. On this basis, SKAT obtained material from various authorities and companies about both the woman herself and the other person. The information about the woman was obtained in order to check her statement to SKAT concerning a loss made by a business and the calculation of her private consumption. In this connection, information about the woman, including information of a personal nature, was also obtained from her Facebook. The woman was not happy about this, and an accountancy firm complained to the Ombudsman on her behalf about SKAT having obtained information of any kind from the woman’s Facebook. Throughout the case, the accountancy firm maintained the view, among others, that the information on the woman’s Facebook was not publicly available. The firm distinguished between information on a public Facebook page and the Internet generally. It argued that Facebook involves sharing information among a closed circle of people, not making information available on the Internet for direct search via a search engine. The Ombudsman did not agree with the accountancy firm’s view of the matter. At the time when SKAT obtained information about the woman from her ­Facebook, her profile was set up to allow all Facebook users to see the infor-