Försäkringskassan Refers Two Staff to Prosecutors Over Google Translate Data Leak

Försäkringskassan has referred two of its own case handlers to prosecutors for suspected breach of professional secrecy after they pasted protected client records into Google Translate. The Swedish social insurance agency’s personnel liability board, PAN, took the decision on 27 August. They are the first cases involving employee use of AI tools that the board has ruled on.

Both work in the department for international care which processes cross-border healthcare claims. In February and again in April, a case handler ran clients’ medical certificates and case notes through the public version of Google Translate without first stripping out names and other protected details. Google Translate is an approved tool under Försäkringskassan’s own rules. Pasting unedited text containing personal data into it is not. In both referrals to PAN, the department head wrote that the employee had entered “secrecy-regulated information into an AI service”, according to Arbetsvärlden which reported the referrals on 19 August.

Negligence Carries Fines. The Four-Year Figure Does Not Apply

Försäkringskassan’s press office told Publikt that the board acted because there is “reasonable suspicion” of a breach of professional secrecy and that nothing indicates either employee intended to break confidentiality. That distinction decides the exposure. Chapter 20, section 3 of the Swedish Criminal Code sets fines or up to 2 years’ imprisonment for an intentional breach. The aggravated offence running from 6 months to 4 years requires serious potential harm, a large number of records or conduct otherwise assessed as particularly dangerous. Negligence carries fines and nothing else. A minor case is not an offence at all.

The four-year ceiling has circulated in the coverage of these cases. It is the wrong number to fix on. The agency’s own compliance investigators found no evidence of intent and neither referral describes the volume or the harm an aggravated charge would need.

PAN normally decides whether an employee is cleared, warned, docked pay or dismissed. Once it refers a case to prosecutors, that process pauses until the courts are finished. Thomas Åding, ST branch chair at Försäkringskassan and the union representative on the board told Arbetsvärlden that a decision on any penalty now sits between six months and a year away.

The Agency’s Own Investigation Pointed at Workload

Managers described both employees as careful workers. Investigators at the agency’s compliance department could not establish that either of them meant to put personal data into Google Translate and concluded that workload and carelessness were the likely explanation.

The pressure is documented. Both case handlers told the investigation they felt pushed to save time and money and to be efficient and said roughly 90% of the documents they handle need translating. One had already warned the employer about a high stress level. The unit manager acknowledged the workload and a clear steer that the department get its caseload back into balance. That same department has been running a dedicated government catch-up assignment for two and a half years.

Åding told Publikt that the rules are clear enough to anyone who reads every policy document closely and that very little time is left for reading them when faster case handling is what counts.

Stockholm Ordered More Than 100 Agencies to Move Faster on AI

On 19 December 2025 the government issued AI assignments to more than 100 public agencies through their 2026 appropriation directions. Each agency has to report how it will increase its capacity to use AI and data-driven working methods. Civil affairs minister Erik Slottner framed the exercise around agencies he sees as still at an early, exploratory stage.

Speaking to Sveriges Radio’s P3 Nyheter in late 2025, Slottner said agencies that failed to accelerate could expect serious formal criticism. Asked about the handling of sensitive information, he said Sweden would see some mistakes and errors here and there.

That remark reads differently now that two case handlers are facing a prosecutor. The mistakes are being absorbed at the bottom of the delivery chain rather than by the policy that set the pace. Åding put that argument to the board saying the incident “ought to be seen as a mistake” given the focus on production and he believes the point landed. The board referred the cases anyway. ST filed no formal objection.

The Internal Tool Still Cannot Handle Every Language

Andreas Spång who heads the department, declined to comment on the individual cases. He told Arbetsvärlden that secrecy protection ranks above speed, that the department has been explicit about this with staff and that cases have to take the time they take. He also confirmed that the agency’s own AI tool, the one that keeps data on Försäkringskassan’s servers is still under development and does not yet cover every language.

So the approved internal alternative could not do the job, the public tool could and staff were working under an explicit instruction to keep the pace up. Two of them took the shortcut. A control that depends on an overloaded case handler remembering to redact a medical record by hand is not a control.

Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, the Swedish data protection authority, has reviewed one of the two cases and found no grounds to criticise the agency. The second is still open. The regulator cleared the organisation. The organisation referred the individuals for prosecution.

One claim in the coverage deserves more caution than it has been given. Arbetsvärlden notes that because the text reached Google’s servers, it may also be available to the company’s AI assistant to process and train on. Neither Google nor Försäkringskassan has confirmed that these specific documents entered any training set and consumer and enterprise terms differ on precisely this point. What is established is that protected medical data left the agency’s control. For the criminal question and for any risk assessment, that is the fact that counts.

Block the Route Out, Not the Employee

The transferable part of this story has nothing to do with Swedish public administration. Any organisation handling regulated data has staff under delivery pressure and a public AI tool one browser tab away.

Test whether consumer AI and translation domains are actually reachable from the workstations that process regulated data. Guidance in a policy document is not a control.
Where an approved internal tool exists, check its coverage before writing the policy. Language gaps, file formats and throughput limits are what push staff to the public version.
Log and alert on large paste events into browser text fields from systems holding protected data. Without that telemetry scoping a disclosure after the fact is guesswork.
Settle in advance who owns the incident. Here the regulator found the employer blameless and the employer referred its staff for prosecution.

Försäkringskassan’s department is now drawing up an action plan Publikt reported. The prosecutor’s decision will take between six months and a year. Do not wait for it before checking what your own case handlers can paste into a browser.