No mobile phone? No relief...

We all know that the Swedes love of mobile phones and person-numbers is unbounded, but this is ridiculous.

Sydsvenskan reports that in the People's Park in Malmö (Folketspark) you now no longer pay in coins to use the restrooms, but you send an SMS to a specified telephone number with the number of the door you want opened. The fee is debited and your special secret code is SMSed back to you. You enter this code on the key pad, and they you can finally get some relief. They do this not only to save having to empty the coins, but also so that if the toilet is dirtied, they can identify you because they save your mobile phone number.

What do you do if you have to pee and don't read Swedish or have a mobile phone with a Swedish number? Well, there are other facilities elsewhere in the park.

I would have thought that this was an April Fool's joke, but it's July. One would have thought that Sweden already had Big Brother everywhere (although Amazon is doing a much more effective job, deleting Orwell's 1984 from their Kindles) - doing your taxes is easy, the government sends you your tax form already filled out. You send in an SMS with the code printed on the form if you are happy with this and don't have anything to tell the government it doesn't already know. But it appears that there are creative Swedes looking for even more areas of privacy to invade.