[markalexander]

Sure, I've spent some time in Norway, I get it. It's definitely very different to societies like the UK or US.

I'm not fundamentally against open tax records like this, but even in Norway there are bad actors and if we are going to play a game of 'how can this be exploited', I think it's definitely possible to do so.

I can't really agree that a 500 limit with notification is 'in practice' the same as no limit with no notification. Data mining and other techniques are possible at scale but not with only 500 records. It also makes exploitation more profitable. Harvesting data for e.g. commercial targeting is not very appealing for n = 500. It's definitely appealing at n = 5 million.

Do the press abuse it in this way? Well, they don't publish stories about doing it. But how would you really know otherwise until some scandal breaks? Are lookups by press orgs also open to public inspection? Maybe you have some freedom of information laws that would let you request that data.

[Phaedor]

Sure, almost any system can be exploited so at some point we just have to compare the advantages with the disadvantages. I am not aware of any abuse of this system. Everyone knows that their tax and income is pretty much public knowledge so they will live their life by that assumption.